The word ‘visual’ isn’t there for style.
If it wasn’t obvious before, recognition is your service's first line of interaction with a potential client.
Are you attempting to bring awareness to the services you provide? Then your visuals: graphics, pictures and colors help you to get your foot in that door. It is within that window, you have a fleeting chance to make the right connection through storytelling.
What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling is all the insights and context you alone have serving your niche, strategically used collectively, through a handful of sentences to connect your ideal clients with the value your services alone can provide.
As Steve Jobs said, “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t.”
The more curious you can become about the situation those you’ve successfully served were in, you’ll be able to create the right story that connects more people just like them with your services.
Once you understand what you’re attempting to communicate, the visual aspect of that message is there to first attract and hold the viewer’s attention long enough for them to want to read what you have to say.
But the storytelling experience doesn’t end with one post.
The Structure of Storytelling
For someone providing a service, you're not just attempting to convey how you can solve a problem your ideal clients have. You’re also branding your approach. That means your audience should at least be able to have some inkling of what you're saying through a quick scan of your visual posting sequence.
This isn't a revolutionary concept. The world is built on storytelling and all stories have a beginning, middle and an end. Books have chapters, movies have sequels, and TV shows have seasons. Naturally, the viewer will expect order, especially if we (the storytellers) expect them to get a sense of what we're communicating.
Unfortunately, despite the billion dollar industry's importance, there are some local founders who downplay visual branding.
Why Do Some Local Founders Dismiss Visual Branding?
“A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox's mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."
And off he walked very, very scornfully.”
The moral of the story?
...It's easy to despise what you cannot get.
I know it’s not the answer you were hoping to hear, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Can you say branding without the visual part? The whole purpose of branding is to make your marketing stand out. So it defeats the purpose if “pretty visuals aren’t important”. And if those denying its importance utilizes something “resembling” visual branding to attract people to their business, something deeper has to be going on.
Is it far-fetched to see cost as the deterrent here? Remember the fox wanted the grapes, but its positioning placed it out of his reach making him “sour”! And sometimes people, when they can’t acquire something for themselves, they’ll oppress someone else’s ability because of their own insecurities. And such shenanigans are considered normal amongst the service-based community because everyone’s brainwashed by the enticement of outdoing someone whose purpose is so far removed from their own.
OK, Well Where's The Guarantee Visual Branding Will Work For Me?
I’ve had the unfortunate encounter of dealing with a client once who just expected their website to bring them clients without doing any marketing because quote “they hated it.” I’ve had 2 clients pumped to sell their services after working with me but soon after one close their business because of bouts of depression brought on by external factors, while the other didn’t renew their hosting because she was dealing with a personal situation.
But I’ve also had 2 clients who took the work we did together and ran with it. One of them came back and said that their business overall grew 40% because it. But design isn’t the reason you receive a client, the brand is.
So let’s shake the cock n bull about who you think I am and what you think I do. I’m not a magician and visual branding isn’t some magic wand I wave over your services. If after taking my time to understand your industry, and why the people you want to work with, works with you and then differentiating that service such that it sticks out like a sore thumb, you do nothing with it, that’s on you, not me.
Your visual identity only plays a supporting role in your journey accomplishing your business goals.
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB **Put the service you provide online with The One-Page™ **Do the research on your own with The One-Page Workbook™ **Sign up to receive these weekly articles in your inbox if you’re not quite ready to work with me yet.
Comments