Omnichannel - Build Branding That Converts

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Send us a textIn this episode, I was honored to interview Rene Hassan, brand mentor. He has explained to us what branding really is and what is not! What elements are to branding, and how it affects the way you are being perceived online?Listen to this interview to understand branding basics and what are the key components of a great brand. You will also be able to get an insight into what it looks like to work with a brand mentor and the stages of them working with you and coming up with high-converting branding for you!Get your free resources from Rana!Expresocreative.com/website-relaunchExpresocreative.com/expert-brand-workbookRana Socials:Instagram.com/expresocreativeLinkedin.com/rebrandwithranaGet a FREE Copy of the High Converting Online Events Book: https://book.dominikalegrand.com/

Essentially what you are helping is to build a perception, right? Like if I want to be perceived in a way, you come in and you help me execute that with the way I present myself online, correct? Yeah, that is correct. And once you are building your perception, there are four parts of it, right? Brand as a symbol, like what kind of colors, fonts, logos should come into their minds when they are imagining your brand. The second part is a brand as an organization. Hello, everyone. I'm so excited to have Rana with us today.

And he is a brand mentor. As I was reading his bio bio he says he's working with empathic women entrepreneurs or something like that was so it's so interesting and especially with the branding aspect of the business can you tell us a little bit about yourself your origin story how did you get into brand mentorship and um yeah let's just get from there and then we can go further thanks for having me on your podcast tell me i am so excited to be here and yeah um a bit about myself i'm rana i'm brand mentor and um my origin story is a bit interesting because I am an engineer, basically an electrical engineer. And so once, yeah, well, in between my degree, I was in third semester, I was sitting idle.

And my dad asked me to do some course and do something with my life. Like I was sitting idle for three months. So I randomly went to an institute. They were offering short courses. It was a random selection, but I enrolled myself into a graphic design course. And that's when I discovered that this is something that I want to do for the rest of my life, right? And after like, but I completed my engineering degree because I didn't want to leave that. But right after that, I established my own branding consultancy. At first, I used to work with a lot of lifestyle and e-commerce brands for creating their social media content and managing their social media.

But the problem with that was I was only creating content for them. I was just a tool user, right? I was just creating pretty graphics for them, but I felt like I have to add more value in these brands. I can add more value, right? So that's where I started to learn the strategic side of branding. And once I started to learn that, my existing clients used to tell me that you can offer coaching as a standalone service as well. So then I thought what is that niche that I would love to work with when it comes

to as a coach and building their brands. So from the start of my career I have been working with a lot of great women entrepreneurs and it has all been been a wonderful experience working with them. Every new project is a new challenge. So I decided to completely serve female entrepreneurs, female experts who are led by purpose, build strong online brands so that they can stand out in a saturated market, attract more premium clients, scale their business and more fun stuff. So this is a bit about me yeah but it's it's lovely to hear that you have completed your degree you know that you went and

finished i also finished my law degree and for me it was like i just finished it because i started but and also because of my parents right they were They were like, well, you know, you wasted all your time. You, you know, at least finish it. So I finished it and I never worked a day in my profession either. So it's just so funny how we do things for our parents. Yeah. We don't care too much about that. Right.

Yeah. And it's also a matter of luck, right? For some people, talent discovery and the passion discovery comes very early in their career. And it's all the natural progression. And for the people like us, we get the right thing at the wrong time, but we make it right. So it's like that. It's also a matter of luck. Yeah, I think determination as well. And you have to be brave as well to go after the graphic designs and then growing yourself out of that into becoming a brand mentor.

I really want to clarify this one for the listeners because initially when we had our conversation, I even had this problem and I thought that branding really is just about colors and, you know, colors and brand colors, logos, like that's branding. But you kind of told me that's not just that. Can you tell the listeners what you mean by that? Yeah. So that is the general perception right the colors fonts and the visual part the fun part that is all branding while i would like to explain

that by that traditional iceberg picture where the tip of an iceberg is on the top of the surface while the real the foundation the bigger foundation is at the bottom of surface right so when it comes to branding um what people see is that tip of the iceberg which is their logo fonts colors and but they don't see um the internal work that is done before going towards the external brand. And that is your mission, vision, purpose, target audience, brand story, your original story, your brand archetype, your brand DNA. Finding that competitive advantage in the market, how you can stand out as an expert, like as a gold brick among other red bricks, your positioning, that all comes before you dive into the vehicle part. So branding is really like shaping the perceptions of people about you. It's how people think, feel.

And like, for example, if Domi, like a Domi's face comes on social media, what would I feel, think, and think, and what would I imagine? What is she offering, right? What are her professional capabilities these are a set of associations that I would associate with you and that is branding that is where branding comes in so that the way I think about you um is same as the way

you want me to think about yourself it is just that bridging uh gap bridging and that is where the branding comes in um yeah i love that you i mean it was so many information and there's so many interesting thing that you just said and i don't i don't want to go into like everything because your triangle is massive and i have no idea what's a brand archetype and none of that. But what I have understood is that essentially what you are helping is to build a perception, right? Like if I want to be perceived in a way, you come in and you help me execute that with the way I present myself online, correct? Yeah, that is correct. And once you are building your perception, there are four parts of it, right? Brand as a symbol, like what kind of colors, fonts, logos should come into their minds when they are imagining your brand. The second part

is a brand as an organization, like what kind of culture should people imagine when they think about your organization, right? What kind of employees, how to live, breathe in that organization? What's your company culture? That's where employer branding comes in. So the third part is brand as a product, right? What kind of services, products should come into their minds when they imagine your brand? And the fourth part is brand as a person, right? So that is where personal branding comes in. And so these are like four areas where you shape the perceptions of the people. What people think is only that one area and that is brand as a symbol.

That is your visual identity. That's so interesting. But what you're saying is that essentially in order for you to determine like all those four you know key key branding pillars you need to kind of sit down with the person and and define that you know what do i want my culture to be what do i want my perception to be and that has to be defined do you think and what do you think is the biggest mistake when it comes to branding especially in your clientele that you see entrepreneurs make? I think the biggest, because branding is all about the long-term game, right?

And it's like, because you are shaping the perception and you can't just shape their perceptions in one day. So people think that it's a short-term game. And when they invest in branding, like they can get immediate short-term deliverables, but you have to cultivate it by yourself. And you have to live, breathe, live and breathe your brand. So thinking it like a short-term game is a really big mistake. So other like biggest mistake that I would consider is jumping straight into the visual part again, right? Having a website. I have seen so many people investing in a logo and a website, right? But that is just sitting idle like a Mona Lisa painting and doing nothing in their business.

They don't have any idea like how are they going to convince the strangers that just entered into their world and convert them into excited buyers. They don't have any idea about their customer journey. They are not clear about their functional emotional and experiential benefits about the offer the target audience um and they just jump straight away towards the fun part which is the website um and the logo and then they start complaining branding people um that um hey you built a website but that has not done nothing for me in the next for the last five years wow that's incredible and um you were talking about logo website i think

and and correct me if i'm wrong but i think any entrepreneur who ever started the business first tried to figure out a name and then bought the domain name and then started to jump ship on website building and then either designed logo on design hill or had someone on fiverr design logo for them like that's how i think and then they have name and they have website and logo and they are like done right so nothing else but that's like the first what i see entrepreneurs do all the time they just grab this abc name logo website and then just run with it um yeah that's very common honestly yeah and uh that is also to do something with the employee mindset right so a lot of entrepreneurs are coming from the background where they have been in corporate jobs and they idealize their bosses.

They have the fancy offices. They have the secretary. Right. And they do all the fun stuff and they idealize that. So when they start their own business, they start with doing the things that they idealize about their bosses, getting the nice office, getting a nice website, while all the need is getting clear on the target audience, how they are going to convert strangers into buyers, what does their funnel look like, lead nurturing funnel. And even if you are not giving them 100 hundred percent bespoke visual experience you can still work it out at start um in starting one has to really focus on offer and how they are going to nurture their leads and things like that but but if you are just investing in a website or logo

without investing in foundations first without without getting clarity on the foundations, then it's just a waste of money. Yeah. I mean, I love that you say that so honestly, because I see like, I don't want to shit on like website builders and web designers but um they're not going to dig into like hey like do you have buyers like who do you serve like they're just like oh you want this color do you like this color oh you want this image do you like this image like they're not really and I don't know um the type of web designers that you know or you do as well but like i just see them as they're just they just serve what the client likes you know the colors you know oh yeah yeah just build some website yeah i like this color or that color and that's there's nothing deeper than that than just

like surface level like looks right yeah 100 100 you're right. I mean, most of the web designers are like so they are all always focused on the macro results like i want my website to bring leads on bad that is their that is their mindset right um um i they will say i want to make money with facebook ads right so they are not focused on the micro results like what part of their website is not converting um is there a problem in the lead magnet is there a problem in the landing page what is the problem within the website within their branding that can be solved so i think focusing on the micro problems both on the branding experts and and the client sense um is the best way to get predictable results yeah thank you so much for sharing that i think um just to ask you this

question because i see that very often and maybe you can comment something on that. I see entrepreneurs with no websites, zero, you know, branding. They just grab their phone or a camera, not even like camera, like a phone. They sit down, they ramble, they put their videos on YouTube. And the only way to connect them is an email address. That's it.

And they are selling at workshops. They are full-blown private clients. They make so much money. And they have none of that. They have no logo, no website, nothing. It's just a phone and themselves. Their authentic self. And that's enough for people to connect.

Yeah. I mean, you know, the methods, the proven methods exist to get predictable results to most of the people. Right. So when it, I have, look, I have also seen people like design brand designers building their six-figure businesses without any marketing strategy they just started posting on social media and that's where they got started getting inquiries and they're now they are multi multi six-figure businesses but that doesn't mean that marketing doesn't work or Facebook ads doesn't work. Same is the case with branding, right? It might be like some person had been putting videos on YouTube and they got success like that.

But that shouldn't be the proving point that branding doesn't work. It is just to get you predictable results i mean just think they did all that without getting clear on their foundations imagine how much money more they could make while building their brand properly so that's the point like they did the thing improperly imagine how far they would go if they do build their brand properly yeah that makes perfect sense but i think what i was trying to go with is that um sometimes when you have your definiteness in you like the type of person that you are the type of clientele you want to talk to so because i don't think it's it's like people

talking about shit and getting used like the these people have their foundations like who they are and who they serve so i think that's where they're coming from with success that the reason why they sell out is because they know and they work out the foundations of who they serve, what they say, the way they say it. And then whoever resonates is going to find and share your content. So that is a strong foundation there. But just like you said, branding can enhance results. On the contrary, and maybe you can come here and give me your opinion in this one. But you can have, and this is what I see as well.

You have the most beautiful branding. You have beautiful, I mean, branding, I mean, colors. You know, you have beautiful cover photos. You have amazing website, you know. And yet, when I see a video of this person talking, she is like reading out a script and I have no idea what she's saying. And I have no idea how this person, you know, have all this fluff yet very little personality, you know. That's also something I see all the time.

Yeah, you're 100% right. Like getting clear on the foundations is must otherwise and once you're clear clear on that you can get pretty good results um and again uh if someone's making a pretty clear on the message and and all the overall positioning and target audience they are good in one of those four areas which we talked about earlier right which is brand as a person they might have a strong personal brand or um like a brand as a product they might have very strong products so out of these four areas they already have very two strong areas that's why they are successful um you already you also said something else uh can you say that again yeah so i was uh asking you about the opposite when i see very strong you know designs uh websites

beautiful cover images photos and i see a person who comes and shows up in in her videos with like reading a script and like a very um almost like this person has no personality just reading something out and so much around her that looks beautiful but she's not it you know she's not living up to her brand branding yeah so the point is uh the you know a very important role of branding people is to increase the perceived value of your product you know you have a strong brand when people are paying you a premium without any objections and people see you as the a people see you as the only option while there are thousands of other options in your industry, right? You are being seen as the only one. But what if your messaging, like you said, that they are just reading the scripts is crappy?

You are not adding a dime of value. And you are saying that branding, visual branding would amplify your current script that's gonna not gonna happen if you aren't already providing your content with very surface level um you're just a quote expert what i say they're just posting quotes on social media so that's now not how it works right you have to be very clear at the value you provide. You have to be damn good at what you do. Then visual branding can surely amplify your message and get you greater results. Yeah, I agree with you on that.

What kind of questions would you ask your clientele when it comes to figuring out their voice? Because, and maybe you can correct me on this as well, but what I see online especially is, I see like one person, you know, saying, I help X, Y, Z. And like two months later, I do this. And again, like switching and turning

and changing their niche every other day you know changing who they serve every other day and there's so much confusion you know around what they do uh what is your methodology of finding out um like questions about them to be able to build a strong branding or perception so the first is the way i started because there are a lot of industries uh there are a lot of sorry about that there are a lot of people in and the industry that start with why right there is a general perception i um and i'm not in a hundred percent agreement with that i start with who all the time like getting clear on their target audience and then we dive into the purpose and so the first thing is to get clear on who you want to serve, right? Knowing them better than they know themselves. And then finding your transformation statement. And that is the bigger transformation statement

from the point A to point Z. And then once you have that bigger transformation statement, you can just divide that transformation statement into smaller transformations and those smaller transformations are you become your offers right um so this is how i proceed when i am starting my branding projects um there are a lot of like experts who are already clear on their transformations and their offer so we don't dive deep into that part once if they are clear on that but that's how i would start if people are not clear on the transformation yeah that makes perfect sense thanks so much for sharing that you were mentioning that uh essentially branding is a long-term game you know you said it helps you get predictable results

but when you say long term how fast you know they can see results when you have you know came you do your magic you define their goals their audience everything like how fast do you feel like it takes for them to start seeing or attracting clientele in their in their business so um it also depends on the client the level of action that they are taking to promote and to build their brand right like my last client was a copywriter because a lot of like the branding transformations are inner as well. Clients start feeling more confident. They start feeling that they are worthy of more high level clients. So once I worked with her, she wasn't feeling that confident pitching to big podcast as she wanted to pitch to Emmymy potterfield as a client and she wasn't really

confident enough but after like i worked with her on her rebrand for 40 days and revamped her website she started feeling more confident she took the action massive action and within just two weeks um she signed a one-year contract with Emmy Porterfield. She has been featured in some amazing publications. So while there was a coach that I worked with, it took for her like two to three months to promote her offer and sell out her signature program after working with me. So it is very much dependent on the level of action that clients take after I do branding for them. Like if everything's, if they're not working,

if they're just lying on bed, sitting there, thinking that their branding would sell for them that's not gonna happen they have to do the work afterward they have to put in the effort yeah yeah yeah no that makes perfect sense so it depends on the person um and the level of actions that they take after they done the transformation with you right um i wanted to ask you about something but i've forgotten i think uh during your when you were saying about you know brandings and then the way they have oh yeah premium pricing that's what that's what i wanted to talk to you about yeah because you said that if branding is done right um there will be no objections around the pricing.

Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Sure. So this is part of my process where I help my clients identify their brand touch points, right? From like, this is, you also know this, there are five like stages um awareness interest desire call to action and advocacy right so um i have my clients map their touch points on based on these five stages like for example for awareness um what are the platforms they might be using, if they are using Instagram, what kind of post they are using,

like reels or carousel posts or short form videos, something like that. So we really get clear on that customer journey. And what happened is that before working with me, clients are literally working, jumping on the sales calls with strangers who just enter into their world, right? So if you're just going on a road and ask a stranger, hey, this is my world's best offer, buy 5k for it, they wouldn't do that right online work a world works in the same way strangers don't pay a premium so during my branding process i help my clients create the process

so that they can really nurture their leads and their leads are pre-solved pre-convinced due to the whole experience that they are giving throughout their customer journey so that is how i eliminate like objections and um help my clients charge a premium with confidence so essentially to resume what you were saying, that it's first getting clear on their journey and not expecting to sell right away just because you have an offer, right? And then building that relationship gradually until they get there, right? With their branding, certain websites and programs, when I see the way the landing page or website is designed, you can already tell if it's an expensive program or if it's a cheap program. And that's usually the way it's organized. You know, if it's like flashy buttons and it looks very salesy like what's your take on that uh approach to premium like what do you think is

um necessary not just like nurturing part but like look wise to look premium to sell yeah Um, that, that has much to do with design and also your brand photography, right? Visuals make a great impression. Um, a lot of people invest in, in a website and rely on design while they forget to invest in brand photography. And that's why, um, if my clients don't have brand photography during my rebrand process i make it mandatory for them to invest in brand photography and it's you're right like there are certain websites um where we land and we feel oh my god this expert is really premium there's no way i'm getting anything like 150 bucks from them right

and there are experts out there who have great websites they they give the clients an incredible premium experience with the fonts colors all these spacing between the text imagery and you start feeling like they are like 5k and 10k experts. So it's all about if you're giving someone a Walmart experience, they are going to pay a Walmart price. If you are giving someone a Harrods or Cartier experience, they are going to pay a Cartier price. You mentioned brand photography. Do you mind just tell us, the listener, what you mean by brand photography? Yeah. So I would, again, give you an example of my last line, right?

So the copywriter that I work with. So during my rebrand process, after brand strategy part, I create a brand direction document so that my clients can hand it over to their brand photographer or marketing specialist, copywriters and other like specialists so that they have a kind of cohesive appearance on all their touch points. So in that brand direction document, I also planned her complete shoot direction, like what kind of patterns can she wear on the shoot. She was scared of smiling.

She wanted to smile, but she said, I don't know if people would take me seriously i said that smile as hard as you can and it's my job to take that people should take you seriously or otherwise you can have your money back so they had is she had like small insecurities whether I should wear pink or not. I love pink but would would I be too girly in pink? So, that is where the brand direction came in and I finalized her. I took out her all insecurities and gave her confidence that go with full authenticity and give this direction to photographer and do your thing so once she did that she i can see like once she did the shoot afterwards she i felt the transformation she was

feeling more confident in herself right so yeah brand photography also makes two kinds of differences once it or the one difference is um it tells you story your values about your company about your culture and then the inner transformation which is you start feeling more confident more like more you that makes perfect sense i was noting a couple of things that you were saying um i think you should work with men because women we have a lot of you know shit you know we're overthinking everything because if your client is like oh i don't know do i do i look good when i smile like what do you think if you know i wear pink you know like a guy would be like fuck me like just get me out of this room like they don't care they're like okay what do i do what do i do like tell me so i think women especially they are like overthinking like oh what if i wear this color oh

my god what do i what do i think if i wear these shoes like there's so much over complication you know in the process as well as you said lack of confidence as well like yeah i mean it's not comfortable to be on photo shoots i mean unless you love to be photographed which is like i don't know how many women unless you're a model of course but like it's it's not a comfortable process but um but as you were saying that these type of photos, you are able to give them directions on like the type of the photos, how they should look so they fit in the frame of their branding, the brand directions that you provide, right? Yeah, exactly. And what else do you include in this, you know, brand directions? You know, you said colors and

fonts like how does how does it look like it's like a pdf document and then you have everything like this is how the photo should look like or what is it um just walk me through your process i guess to establish this direction sure so once we have the strategy dialed down, we create two mood board concepts, right? So in those mood boards, I get to portray what their branding would feel on their overall touch points. How would their logo look like? How would their website look like? would their website look like what kind of fonts would we be using and I also include like brand keywords which represent their brand right so based on from those two mood boards client can select one mood board right so now after that mood board stage me and my client are on the same page.

And this is what like goes wrong in so many branding projects. Clients and designers are not on the sameography suit, and not just telling them about the fonts, but how those fonts are going to be used in their overall applications, design applications, right? What size are they going to use for headings? What size are they going to use for headings? What size are they going to use for paragraphs and small details like that? So typography and their signature brand pattern, like the pattern that they are going to be using on their Facebook cover, on their profile background,

on their website, on their clothing, everywhere to make them more memorable. The last client I worked with, her pattern was the green check pattern. So she has used that in her clothing and website and everywhere. And we use the check pattern because her brand DNA, that is your brand distilled in one word, was quirky. So we wanted her audience to feel a little bit quirky and professional at the same time so after patrons um i do a complete photography direction um for my clients and yeah that's all that's my brand direction isn't it mean, it's such a deep work to get to that point

because you said, you know, we want them to be memorable. So I guess the goal is to be showing up online as this person that is just standing out and then using, you know, the quirky side of the person. I mean, you go so much deeper than just like, hey, what's your target audience? But it has to be like how you are going to be perceived in the online space.

And then there's very much like a well thought out process, it seems to me, right? Yeah. And that's a big responsibility. And a lot of marketing people think that they have nothing to do in building a brand, right? While I say that marketing people are equally as important as the branding people when it comes to building the brand. The branding people create the identity your brand

identity like how you want to be perceived what kind of associations do you want people to have and then marketing people really enforce that perception they eliminate they are the protectors of brand identity they eliminate they try to eliminate the bad perceptions and enforce the positive perceptions yeah that's that's such a that's a lot of work it seems to me um can you tell us the listeners um how they can work with you and um like what are your availabilities um i think you talked about your process already but like how they can find you and uh what type of projects are you mainly focusing on right now and how you help them in meet your i think you're mentoring as well yeah yeah so I am both mentoring experts and also doing done for you branding for them. So I have a few offers.

The first is the shift workshop, which is to help you lay the foundations of your brand, get clear on your positioning, target audience, competitors, and how you can start out and things like that. It's a three-day workshop. The other one, my signature offer is a 40-day rebrand experience, which is stop the scrolls to help you. And it is to help you rebrand and launch your website in 40 days. So it is for women entrepreneurs who are already in two to three years of their business. They have been like they have validated their offers. They have super successful offers, but they the experience is not that great.

The website is still basic. The branding is still basic. And if you want, I have few resources for the audience as well if the first is the website relaunch checklist which you can download from my website i think you would mention the link in the description and the second is uh a expert brand workbook so that you can like if even if you are not ready to hire me you can download that workbook and really like see how you can start building a strong powerful brand yeah so they can either get the the website relaunched uh checklist right or the expert brand workbook workbook right those are the two that they can get from you for free and you were talking about your three-day workshop and the 40-day rebranding

um for the three-day workshop it's the paid workshop that they can come to yeah it's a paid workshop and for the 40-day uh is a 40-day is like the done for you type of thing or like it's consulting or it's more like done with you slash done for you because for the first part first few days because my clients have to be involved in the mood boarding process in the brand direction process and the first part which is the brand strategy process but then whatever comes next their website automation similar integrations that's all done for you oh wow that's amazing um okay well i'm gonna put everything in the description if you guys wanted to reach out to rana and have your branding redone if you haven't done any branding before then just you know create it for you i think

that's very important um what you do so i'm going to make sure to include that in the description is there anything else ronald that you think that we should also cover that we haven't talked about and you would like to talk about uh i think we have pretty much covered it all uh i hope that your audience can take few nuggets out of this conversation and um start implementing what we discussed and build a powerful brand yeah thank you so much for your time and for for being here i learned so much i didn't know there's such depth in this whole branding thing like i didn't know there's so much you know it's it's so well thought out you know process so i might be i might be heating you up at some point you know to to help me out as well uh but it's incredible so thank you so much for everything

and um yeah i'm sure it was helpful for the audience as well and yeah guys if you are listening to this one uh make sure you check the description for the downloadables from Rana.