8 Branding Mistakes That Are Costing You Customers and Harming Your Brand Positioning
I assume that if you're reading this, it's because you realize how important branding is for your business. A strong brand identity will help you establish your position and stand out in a competitive and saturated market.
However, even though many female entrepreneurs know that branding is vital to growing their business, I very often see critical mistakes in both the brand concept and the graphic design that is supposed to support and reinforce the brand’s message.
That’s why today I want to talk to you about the most common branding mistakes I see out there and what you can do to fix them.
Mistakes in Your Brand's Conceptual Design
Let’s start at the beginning—with the basics, the foundation of your branding. Because without a solid starting point, your brand could run aground before it even gets off the ground, and, as I’ve already said, without that foundation, you can’t create a design that will help you achieve your goals.
1. Your target audiences aren't clearly defined
Yeah, I know... everyone talks about target audiences and how important it is to define them clearly. But there’s no getting around it: it’s a vital step in any branding process, and if you don’t get it right, your brand will always be limping along.
When you haven't clearly defined your audience, you end up talking to everyone... or at least, you're talking to more people than you should. And if you're addressing an undefined crowd, it's unclear who your brand is targeting on your website, your blog, your social media, or any other platform where you interact with your audience.
We’re often afraid of narrowing our target audience too much… we think that if we focus on a smaller group, we’ll reach fewer people. But the reality—as paradoxical as it may sound—is that the exact opposite is true.
Why?
Well, because when you talk to everyone, you’re not really talking to anyone in particular. And with your brand, you want to be able to speak one-on-one with your ideal customer. You want every person who reads your content to feel like you’re speaking to them personally, that you understand their problems and know how to solve them. That’s how you build a connection with the person on the other side of the screen—so they recognize who you are and how you can help them, and so they can easily remember it.
That’s why, when you’re developing your brand concept, it’s essential to clearly define your audience and segment it if possible. Only when you identify and truly understand your audience—who they are and what interests them—will you be able to create content that resonates with them. As a result, you’ll gain more readers and build a strong, recognizable brand.
2. Your brand message isn't consistent
The second obvious mistake that arises when branding hasn't been done properly is the lack of a clear and consistent brand message:
What values do you want to convey through it?
What is the key message you want to leave with the people who come to you?
These are tough questions to answer, but they’re incredibly important if you want to get your project off to a good start. When your brand message is clear and well-defined, it becomes your compass. It’s much easier (and more efficient) to align all your efforts around communicating and reinforcing that message, which helps you stay on track and avoid getting sidetracked along the way.
What’s more, with a consistent message, you’ll ensure that when someone interacts with your brand, they’ll understand at a glance who you are, what you do, and why you do it. That’s why, even though it takes a bit of effort and time to define it (sometimes it can take months), I recommend that you keep this in mind.
Once you have a clear understanding of your target audiences and what you want to communicate with your brand, review your entire branding strategy and identify the changes you need to make to align your communication efforts (both textual and visual) so that they reinforce your brand message. I promise that when you do this, you’ll see a significant difference in your results.
3. The topics you cover are not limited
Just as trying to appeal to everyone isn't a good strategy, neither is trying to cover everything under the sun. But of course, until you've clearly defined your audience, you won't be able to zero in on the topics that interest them.
Sometimes we think that if we focus only on certain topics, we might get bored of always writing and talking about the same things... I know I find myself wondering all the time if that will happen to me. But in those moments, we have to remember that the content we produce as part of our business isn’t a personal blog. Our audience will come to us if we talk about what interests them and solve the problems they face. And the only way to do that is by focusing on those topics.
Plus, this narrow focus will allow you to specialize in your chosen topic and establish yourself in your audience’s mind as a go-to source. And in the long run, all of this will add a lot of value to your brand (and your products or services) because you’ll be an expert in one area, rather than a jack-of-all-trades who knows a little bit about everything.
For example, I have a thousand creative interests, and honestly, I’d love to talk about all of them… but I know that’s not a good decision for my business. Even though these are topics I’m passionate about, I focus only on those aspects that help build brands for creative entrepreneurs so their businesses can thrive.
When someone visits this blog, they'll know they can always find high-quality information on these topics here, because I specialize in them. So I recommend the same to you: find your areas of expertise, focus on them, and don’t lose your way.
4. Your communication lacks purpose
A lack of purpose is closely tied to a lack of strategy in your business and your brand message. What do you want to achieve in the long, medium, and short term? You may have your target audiences clearly defined, but if you don’t know what you want to do with them, you’re in trouble.
It’s important that every communication effort you make has a specific goal. It should be a piece of a larger puzzle—the overall goal you want to achieve with your business. If you start creating pieces at random, without a clear purpose, and without ensuring they fit into that puzzle and help you complete it bit by bit, you’re wasting your time and resources.
Of course, thinking about a huuuuge puzzle can make you lose your bearings—north, south... and even east and west. Plus, it seems like too big a task for you to complete. That’s why, when it comes to business strategy, you have to take it step by step and stay organized, just like with puzzles: first the edges, and you focus only on the pieces with straight sides; then the sky area, and you work only with the blue pieces; then the trees... and so on, little by little you complete the whole picture.
In your business venture, set incremental goals:
What do you want to achieve in five years? How do you break that big goal down into individual years?
What do you need to do each semester to achieve your annual goals?
And, what matters most to us here: What communication strategies do you need to implement to achieve your short-, medium-, and long-term goals?
If your current goal is to build a list of 1,000 subscribers, focus on the steps needed to achieve that goal. If you’re launching a new product or service in a few months, design a launch campaign and focus on it during that time. If you need to communicate your brand’s values, craft messages that reinforce them consistently. Of course, you can have several goals running in parallel, but everything you do must contribute to achieving one of them.
Common Mistakes in Your Brand's Graphic Design
Once we have a well-defined concept, we can move on to expressing it visually... because we want to create a design that’s well-founded and helps you achieve your goals, not something that’s just pretty but lacks substance. So now I’m going to talk about the mistakes I often see in the visual aspects of branding.
5. You don't appreciate the design
The first design mistake is simply underestimating it or not giving it the importance it deserves. And it’s not just because it’s my thing… but good design is very, very important.
Well-executed graphic design:
Capture the attention of your potential customer—and no one else—because it helps you narrow down your audience.
It helps you stand out from other professionals who offer services or products similar to yours because it highlights what sets you apart.
Build trust with your potential customers by demonstrating professionalism, attention to detail, and clarity.
It helps you attract customers because it directs your audience to your website and encourages them to click where you want them to.
And if you're not sure it's really that important, just look at all the brands you admire and look up to: I'm sure they all have a carefully crafted design that sets them apart from the crowd. Right?
Of course, I understand that when you’re just starting out, you don’t have the resources to hire a designer, and your brand and target audience aren’t very well defined yet—and frankly, it’s not worth making a big investment at this stage. However, even if you’re just beginning your project, I do recommend that you at least invest in a decent template if you’re going to host your website on WordPress or Blogger. If you go with Squarespace, you’re in luck because it comes with tons of high-quality templates that are customizable without any coding, all included in your monthly subscription (if you’re not sure what Squarespace is, I explain it here, and in this other post, several entrepreneurs who use it share their experiences ).
If you want to give Squarespace a try but aren't sure how to get started, check out myfree Squarespace course, where I explain how to set up and customize a blog on this platform.
That said, as soon as you have a clear idea of the direction your business is taking, I strongly recommend that you invest in a good design. If you don’t, you’ll end up losing more than you save in the long run because you’ll have to spend a lot of time learning the basics of design, and then hours designing what you need. And in the end, the result won’t be of the same quality as if a professional had done it, so you’ll likely have to make that investment sooner or later.
What’s more, it will take you longer to project an image that matches the quality of what you offer, your potential customers will take longer to discover you and trust you, and your business will grow more slowly.
6. You change the design all the time
Do you often get bored with your design? Do you want to rebrand every six months? Would you like your brand to look like every new trend you see on Instagram?
This happens when you don't have a clear vision of your brand and what you want to achieve.
But keep in mind, this isn't necessarily a bad thing... if what you have isn't working or you don't feel comfortable with it, you need to change it, and often what you envisioned in your initial branding isn't what reality ends up showing. But if these changes aren't strategic decisions and you're just floundering aimlessly, there's a problem. And that problem shows up in your graphic design.
If you have a well-defined brand and a design that works, avoid constantly tweaking and changing it. Always keep in mind that, in the design of your brand and your website, every decision made was driven by a specific purpose. In good design, everything should serve a purpose; nothing should be missing or superfluous, and every element should convey something—something that is part of your brand message.
I see brand designs out there that I really like... I even like some of them more than my own. But right now, they don’t align with my branding, the audience I’m trying to attract, or the values I want to convey. Maybe, in a couple of years, my business will have evolved in a direction that calls for a rebrand (whether subtle or radical), or maybe everything will keep running smoothly and I won’t change a thing… we’ll see. But right now, the design I have does communicate everything that matters to me and is working really well for me, so I’m not touching it.
That’s why I recommend the same to you: if you have a well-designed look that works for you, stick with it and don’t change it on a whim, because your audience will think your brand has a split personality or bipolar disorder, and in the long run, that weakens your branding and undermines your credibility.
7. The photos you use don't match your brand's tone
I've seen so many well-designed brands and websites with images that have nothing to do with the rest of the design concept that I've lost count.
And when that happens, the design as a whole stops working; it breaks down.
It often happens that photos come from free stock sites... and I have nothing against using this resource—not at all—but it’s not enough for the image to just be pretty. For example, on many free image sites, the photos are edited to be quite desaturated, a bit dark, and have a matte effect that gives them that trendy vintage look. I personally like those photos, but they don’t work well with every brand.
Photographs are a powerful visual element with great evocative power. Furthermore, many factors influence what an image conveys: the lighting used, editing, framing, the scene being photographed... That’s why it’s not enough to simply choose a pretty photo that matches your brand’s colors, because all the other elements can cause it to communicate something different from the rest of your design, resulting in a lack of cohesion.
It’s clear that you can’t always invest in professional photography tailored to your brand, nor can you always take the photos yourself, so free stock photo sites are a good option. What I do recommend is that you choose the photos you’re going to use carefully so you don’t throw all your design work out the window. Remember that it’s not enough for the colors to be similar or identical to your brand’s, and always ask yourself: What is your brand’s tone? What are the values and brand message you want to convey with your design? Does the photo you plan to include reinforce that message, or does it undermine it a bit?
8. You overcomplicate the design
Finally, I want to talk to you about when you visit a website and it looks like a carnival... colors everywhere, buttons all over the place, and even confetti falling from the sky. Luckily, a much more minimalist aesthetic has been gaining traction lately, and that helps, but I still see overloaded designs all the time.
When you overload your website’s design (or your e-book, or your newsletter, or whatever) with unnecessary elements, all you’re doing is creating clutter… your reader feels overwhelmed, unsure of what to do next, which of the many options to click on, or what you’re actually trying to say. Your brand message gets lost amid all the frills, and that’s something you must avoid at all costs.
As I’ve said before, a baroque design isn’t bad by definition; it can be done well and look great. Just as a design with minimal elements can look terrible. It all depends. The important thing is that each element has a clear purpose and helps convey a message: your brand’s message or whatever you want to achieve on a particular page of your website.
In summary
To create effective branding, it’s important to start with the concept, because only with a solid foundation can you develop strategic, high-quality graphic design that will help you achieve the goals you’ve set for your business.
Both in the conceptual branding process and in graphic design, mistakes are often made that will ultimately have a significant impact on your brand if you don't correct them.
Is there anything that's still unclear to you? Or maybe you'd like to share your experience with any of these mistakes? I'd love to hear from you, so I look forward to your comments.
