What is your brand messaging? 9 questions to help you get clarity

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I’m sharing 9 questions to help you get clarity on your brand messaging.

While my intent is to get you started with your next website, this clarity will help you in whatever season you’re in with your business.

Brand messaging is more than just the text and the words that are on your website. It’s more about the overall feel of what you do, the transformation that you help people get. It’s about, letting someone know that they’ve landed in the right place, that you can speak to the problem that they have, and solve that problem it in a way that will make their life better.

These overarching ideas can help you with your marketing, your pricing, developing your offers and more.

Prefer a printed version? I made you a worksheet too! Leave your email here to get it sent to your inbox:

There is one more spot left at early bird pricing for the Website Launch Accelerator. We start live on Thursday. If “new showit wesbite” is on your to-do list, you’re going to want to be a part of this!

About Kate Hejde

Kate Hejde is the host and creator of How You Pictured It Podcast and Dear Kate Brand Strategy. She helps photographers create a profitable business that fits into their lives. With over 10 years of experience running her own photography business, while raising three kids, Kate believes that business is not one size fits all and that you define your own success.  Kate teaches through her podcast as well as through courses, group coaching, and 1:1 mentoring. 

Check out Kate Online: Website | Instagram | Tiktok | Pinterest


FULL TRANSCRIPT

Before we get into the meat of this episode. I have a quick favor to ask. If you could go into the app that you’re listening to this on and leave a review for the, how you pictured at podcast. I would so appreciate It really helps the podcast grow and helps me be able to share this information with you.   Let’s get started

All right I have been talking websites for a little while now, but I really want to roll it back and actually go back to the beginning of what you need for your website. And that is content. And before that even, you need to figure out your brand messaging. Brand messaging is more than just the text and the words that’s better on your website. It’s more about the overall feel of what you do, the transformation that you help people get from one point to the other, it’s about, letting someone know that they’ve landed in the right place and that you can speak to the problem that they have and fill it and solve it in a way that will make their life better.

So today, what I want to do is go through a few questions that you can ask yourself to start really digging into what your brand message is, and this will help you when it comes to creating that website. It will help you when you’re coming to even just post something on social media. It’ll help you write those captions and know who you’re speaking to, what you need to say and how to help them understand what you do for them.
So let’s get into it.

The first question we’re going to ask is what exactly do you do? I want the details of it. No flowery language here. Just really get clear and concise and explain what your job is in a way that people will be searching for. If you are a photographer, portrait artist is not going to cut it here. People are not searching for a portrait artist. They’re searching for a photographer.
You can get clear on what kind of photography you do. Um, you can say you’re a portrait photographer, but a portrait artist. Really kind of skews the language a bit. And we want to be clear and concise.

Question number two, who do you do it for, this thing that you’re doing? Who is the person that you’re serving. Think about where they’re at. Think about as many details about that person as you can. For me personally, as a family photographer, I know that I’m serving families with kids. In age ranges, really from newborn all the way up to high school. And, um, sometimes even older, once they start having babies of their own.

I do really have a large range of families that I work with but those families that I have with older kids are typically ones that started with me as younger families and have stuck with me for years and years. So I know that I’m talking to the younger family, who’s searching for a photographer now. Oftentimes those families with older kids have a photographer, or they’re they start looking for like senior photographers and that’s not really my niche. So I know that I’m talking to the younger families more.

I do share photos with older children on my website so that people know that they can stick with me, for years and years to come. I talk about that through out my website as well, that I typically do have families that are with me year after year after year. It tells them that getting family pictures yearly is a normal thing to do and that’s what most people do.
I also tried to look at if these are working parents or stay at home parents. If they have kids that are in private schools or public schools.
I think about the activities that children might be doing and how I can tie those things into what I’m saying on my website.   

Next question is: what does the before and after look like for those you serve? What does it look like for them in their life before they find you? What causes them to reach out for you and look for your services? And what’s the transformation or what’s the after that you provide? This, I know sounds kind of hard as a photographer, but there is a before and after the, before is usually something like, I know I need family photos so that my kids have pictures of us all together, but.

I don’t know how we’re going to fit it in. And, the after is they work with you for a mini session so you were able to do it in a short time period and they get those family photos. That’s a very basic version of this question, but I want you to delve deep into that and think about where your clients are before they come to you and what it looks like after. This is a big one and you want to show this on your website, in your content, in your emails everywhere. That really helps people see what it is that you do and how you are going to help them.

Our next question is, what do you want potential clients to know about you personally? This is most likely going to go on your about page. You’re also going to sprinkle it in through your content. You want to think about things that they will like to know about you and how they can relate to you. So as a family photographer, it’s important for them to know that I’m a mom; that I have three kids. I can tell them the ages of my kids. I can tell them, um, you know, that I stayed at home with my kids when they were younger or
That we have dealt with different things with my kids, whatever, whatever I think will help them see that I am a relatable person and I’ve been in the position that they’ve been in. I can also tell personal stories from my before of having family photos and my after. So like I could talk about that time
I felt really uncomfortable in my skin and in my body type, but I knew that I wanted family photos for my kids to have. And now that they’re done, I look back at them and I don’t see the weight that was there that was stopping me. I see my kids at that age because I can’t get that back. So sharing stories like that, about how you can relate to the situation that they’re in, you can share things about you personally, as far as like you know, where you like to shop or what you like to do. Those things can help potential clients relate to you and get to know you and trust you.

Our next question is what do you want your business to be known for? If someone’s going to say, oh, Hey dear Kate studios, she’s the _. I want you to, to have that thing written down. I want you to think about what you want people to say about you and about what you offer.

Alright, our next question is where do you serve people? Do you serve people in person? Do you serve people online? Are you a studio? Are you shooting outdoors? Um, and these questions are not written specifically for photographers. So, um, this really just depends on the service that you’re offering.
But you do want to jot down and include this information in all of your content. Where are you and where do you serve your people? I find even on like Instagram, when you tag the location, that super helpful. Your website has to have the location precisely spelled out clearly in many places so that people know where they’re landing. They know that you are someone that’s available to work with. And we talked about this in the previous episode about websites. Your location is just so important. It’s important for people to be able to find you and then once they do find you to know that they can work with you.

The next question, that we’re going to talk about is what are other people saying about you? These are your testimonials, or like dig back through old emails. Things that clients have said back to you after your session or while they’re searching for your services. This helps you get to the heart of what people love about your service.

It also helps you see the problems as they’re talking about them and the language that they’re using when they reach out to you. If I go back and look at my contact forms, I can see, you know, that people are saying that. I want to get photos of my family before my kids get any older, um, or get any bigger. Those are words that I need to then use on my website because it makes your potential clients feel like you’re inside their head. Like, you know what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling.

Our next question is: what questions do you get asked all the time? This kind of goes back to the previous one about, um, what are people saying? You want to be able to answer those questions that are coming in through your emails or, through your DMS or whatever comments that you’re seeing. You want to be able to answer those questions before they’re even asked.

And again, that goes back to making your client feel like you understand them and that you’re kind of in their head.
And then the last question that I want to. Pose to you is why wouldn’t someone hire you? What objections do they have to hiring you as a photographer? Spell those out. Think about why someone tells you that they’ve gone with someone else.

Knowing these things makes it easier to overcome those objections. And again, you can kind of jump out in front of what people are saying or asking and objecting to , before they even get there.
So if price is an issue you’re commonly facing, you’re seeing people say, oh, you’re too expensive for me.  This is a place where you might think, okay, well maybe I need to have my pricing on my website or better explain my pricing so that people are not feeling that objection. I need to share my value more. I need to talk about, yes, it is expensive, but this is why kind of things and that will help you again with all of that messaging on your website.
If you want more help with your website, I do have space available in my Website Launch Accelerator. These questions, plus a few more, come in your prep work for that program it’s a four week live coaching program. And we will walk through building your Showit website. I will help you break down all of the answers from these questions and help you figure out where to put them on your website, what order they go in? Um, and help you figure out some of the language around writing those things, as well as the design, the SEO and all of those strategic aspects of building a website.
We’ll be working with the Showit platform, which is my favorite. I love it. It’s so easy to use. Once you get in there and really start to understand how everything works, which I will walk you through in our first call, which is taking place next Thursday, November 3rd. Um, if you’re hearing this later and you’re like, “Oh, ah, I missed it,but I’m interested in this” DM me at Dear Kate Brand Strategy on Instagram or on TikTok.
I would love to share more with you about this program and you can find a link to the program in the show notes. Again, this is a group coaching program, so it’s live group coaching calls and then community-based Feedback and you can ask questions and get lots of just support as you work through building your website.
I know, personally, I love to build my own websites because I like that control over it. But figuring out where everything goes and learning the ins and outs of the program and understanding all of that took a long time for me to get. To a point where I feel really good and confident in being able to help you do the same thing. There is a way that a website should be built.
When you’re a solopreneur, and you want to do it yourself, you jumped right in and you kind of goof on things that could have been done a different way, and it would’ve been much more successful. I will prevent you from making some of the mistakes that I made in my first Showit website that I now have to go back and fix, and help you figure out exactly how to do all of that again, with that community based aspect as well so you’ll have support from your peers too and feedback from peers.
All right. Thanks so much for listening into this episode of how you pictured I would love for you to leave me a review on apple podcasts or Spotify. Those things help other people find the podcast and help me share this information more. I will talk to you again soon. Have a great day.
Bye.

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