A week or so ago, I mentioned on Instagram that I’ll be hosting a free training just for designers guiding you through How I Craft High-End Brands that Convert, and I received dozens of direct messages from fellow designers asking: What are your best tips for building brands that convert?

Fellow designer, I can totally resonate with this question!

When I was getting established towards the beginning of my little business, I spent so much of my personal time studying brands that were successful, exploring ways to increase my clients’ bottom line through the brands we build, and educating myself on how I could craft brands that were as purposeful as they are profitable.

Now, I feel so fortunate to craft brands that convert within 24 hours after launching, or brands that bring in big bucks each month! And in the hopes that I can save you all that time (and a whole lot of trial and error!), I’m diving into my top three strategies for building brands that convert below.

1. Start with a Strong Foundation

Before diving into color palettes or exploring the perfect type pairings for your clients, it’s crucial that both you and your client understand the core of their brand. If you’re going to make informed design decisions, you have to know your client’s brand values, mission, vision, a clear profile of their ideal clients (this should go so much deeper than “Where does your ideal client like to shop?”), and what their brand message is.

Chances are your client won’t come to you with this heartfelt info clearly defined and tied up with a pretty bow on top. Which is where you can come in to guide them through a brand discovery process that leaves no stone unturned!

Rather than having your client answer a few questions on an online worksheet and leaving it at that, I’d encourage you to challenge your clients to dig deep into the heart behind their brand.

Why do they do this work that they do?

How do they see their work fitting into their ideal client’s life?

What separates their brand from others in the industry?

Start your work together with a strong foundation so you can both move forward with clarity. (Psst! If you want to swipe my exact brand development process that I use to guide my clients through a branding experience that delivers results, be sure to join the waitlist for the Brand Strategy School coming soon!) 

2. Design with goals in mind

Here’s one of my favorite ways to craft brands that convert after they launch—design with your client’s goals in mind. Rather than focusing on their preferences or what their favorite color is, I prefer to focus on a few specific things:

• Who are their ideal clients? Who do they need to reach through their branding?
• How did their current or past branding let them down? What pain points are standing in their way, what problems did they see from their past branding, or what themes did they hear clients or colleagues share in reference to their old branding?
• What big goals are on the horizon? Where do they want to go as a business after this launch? How can my work help them achieve those goals?

Knowing who they’re trying to reach, where they want to go as a brand, and how their past branding let them down enables me to make thoughtful design decisions that will elevate their visual identity as a whole. On top of that, it will authentically resonate with their ideal clients because it’s designed to speak directly to those wonderful people in the first place!

3. Make your offer crystal clear

Where I see brands struggling the most as they attempt to connect with their ideal clients has everything to do with how they’re crafting their offer. Audiences become incredibly confused when they have to work to understand who you are, what you do, and how that work fits into their life. And a confused audience is hardly likely to become a paying client, right?

Rather than crafting brands for your clients that attempt to meld all of their products and services under one hodgepodge of a roof, focus on crafting brands that choose to be one thing for one group of people consistently. Make the same offer well-known from the minute potential clients land on your website to the posts they read on your Instagram account. When you’re known for one consistent, dependable offer, there is no confusion over who you are, what you do, or how that work fits into your ideal client’s life.

When you’re working with your clients to make their offer crystal clear, ask them to describe what they do, who it’s for, and how it adds value (or solves a problem) for their ideal clients. If they’re having a hard time working all of their services or offerings into this one response, then it might be time to explore creating a cohesive parent brand for all of their endeavors. 

The Brand Strategy Blueprint

In an effort to provide even more actionable education created specifically for designers and strategists, I’m peeling back the curtain on my signature brand development process I’ve used to guide hundreds of creatives to purposeful, profitable brands that bless their lives. And I’ll be teaching you everything I know so you can elevate your client experience, guide your clients through a proven process, and craft heartfelt brands that are designed to endure!

If you want to stand out in a saturated industry, if you want to guide your dream clients through an intentional process that delivers results, and if you want to work less doing work that you love, then the Brand Strategy School is just for you, sweet friend.

I’ve created a totally free, Netflix-style masterclass to walk you through how to triple your income without taking on hundreds of branding clients.

In this masterclass, we dive into even more strategies you can swipe that will elevate your brand strategy process.

Register here!

The Brand Strategy School will teach you my signature brand development process where you can swipe my exact process and begin immediately guiding your clients through an approach that works. Plus, this content is designed to teach you how to position yourself as the branding expert you are.

Join the Free Masterclass