I'm Sophie, aspirer, designer, boy mum, wife and entrepreneur. I'm passionate, motivated and most importantly I'm here to help you grow your creative business with visuals that uplevel & sell.
Sophie Ellis Design is a brand and website design studio based in the UK and working worldwide.
For creative entrepreneurs that are ready to uplevel and elevate their brands with thought-provoking and timeless design.
September 16, 2021
Are you feeling tired and fed up of not attracting the right idea clients for you?
You’re more of a client deterrent than a client magnet and you’re feeling a little hazy about what to do next?
Well, let me ask you something… when was the last time that you looked at a brand and thought:
Can you remember it? If so, what were the reasons why you can remember it so well?
I can bet because it SPOKE to you and it pulled you in from the heart. I bet it spoke to you in a way that made you feel it was too irresistible to not notice.
Well, foremost, you need to get clear on who your audience is and whom you’d love to appeal to. You need to do the research them and do market research. Figure out what makes them tick. Are you even positioned in the right place in terms of price point, location, visual design and marketing?
Perhaps you aren’t and therefore that is why you aren’t being irresistible to your ideal clients.
Oh, I know, trust me, what it is like to price yourself too low. People (like me) are CONSTANTLY telling you to price yourself higher. But you’re scared. You’re scared of then not getting a single sale. Your sale isn’t because of your pricing, it’s because you are positioning your brand within the wrong area and it all falls back down to strategy.
If you are offering a product or service you need to really SPEAK to your ideal client. Hit them at their pain points and make them WANT your product or service. Lure them in and be direct with your marketing. This could be out of scarcity (ie: limited numbers – think Hermès, every female I know would love one of these bags because they are so scarce).
If you price yourself too low within your market you risk people thinking that you’re just starting out, don’t know your trade or there’s something wrong. Either/Or, they’re less likely to buy from you!
You know who you WANT to work with but your messaging just isn’t clear enough or consistent enough. For example, one day you’re posting about how environmentally friendly you are and then two weeks later you’re posting about something that isn’t environmentally friendly (yet you don’t realise it isn’t because you’ve not done the research). You need to become far clearer on your brand messaging and you need to ensure that you then hit this across every.single.touch point.
Start with re-visiting your tagline and see how that is positioned to your ideal client but also see whether it aligns with you. If it doesn’t then something is a miss and have a think about reevaluating it. Your tagline won’t be too long, but it get’s to the point quickly.
Think Nike – Let’s do it! (as a sports brand, Nike is telling you to buy their products and get on with it!)
Then, have a look at your value proposition. What is your promise to your ideal clients from your brand? How can you deliver the value, luxury, user experience that your audience are desiring? Write a few short paragraphs on this and it will help you to become clear to your audience.
Finally, what are the top three things that make you (your brand), you? Write these down and under each of these add three supporting examples to each. These are your brand pillars.
These three items on brand messaging will help you to become clearer on WHO you are targeting and WHY. Print them off and pin them somewhere. Better yet, get a whiteboard so that when you look up from your desk it is there, ingrained into your mind.
So you have the strategy, you’re now clear on the messaging but now you’re stuck because you’ve realised that one (huge) thing is letting you down. You don’t have a unique, visual identity that is helping you bridge the gap from sales and no sales.
For this you need to think about the colours, the graphics and more importantly the uniqueness of your brand. You will NOT be an irresistible brand if you have a logo that was designed in Canva. It won’t cut the mustard. Nor will it lure your audience in because a: it’s likely to be bad quality and b: it isn’t unique, it doesn’t stand out from the crowd and it certainly isn’t personable.
Start looking at the design of your brand and start thinking about having a unique identity that works for you as well as your ideal client. For this you are likely to require a designer (oh hey! I hear you!) and one that truly understands your brand, its voice, strategy and it’s ethos. Yes, I too love the pretty, but we also need the ground work too, that’s how I design best when I TRULY understand who you are and what your mission is. You will also require *ahem* more than just a logo because you are going to need to use your identity EVERYWHERE… from social media, to packaging through to website design. Trust me, your audience will tire of you with just a logo and they may then find you a little on the novice side (and that’s not what we want, we want irresistible remember!) Take a look at my portfolio here to see how I have totally transformed brands for past clients.
So, if you’re going through this and you’re going… tick, tick, oh wait, I’ve no strategy or visual identity then check out my signature experience where I can take you from forgettable to truly irresistible
Love, Sophie xo
design by sophie ellis design
Monday - Friday 10-2 GMT
© Sophie ellis design 2017-2022
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design by sophie ellis design
Privacy policy
© Sophie ellis design 2017-2022
Monday - Friday 10-2 GMT
Email: sophie@sophiellisdesign.com
Saturday + Sunday - closed
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