How to build a loveable (and profitable) personal brand
Borrow ideas from big brands, and apply them to your freelance biz to boost your brand love, and your bottom-line.
Take one hot minute to think about brands you love (I’ve been loving-on Go-To Skincare, ThankYou Group, Girlfriend Collective, and ettitude for a while now). There’s something about them that keeps you loyal AF and lining up to buy, even when alternatives are presented, even when the price may be higher than others. They have that special kind of charm that woos you, makes you feel good, and keeps you coming back for more.
So what can we learn from these big brands to help us cultivate the same kind of brand love in our humble companies of one? And how can we forge beautiful long-lasting customer relationships without a huge team, global brand status, or big marketing budget? The good news is, it’s possible. In fact, being a solopreneur or small business gives you ample opportunity to connect in an authentic way that even the big guys can’t compete with.
Let’s look at 4 essential ingredients (with examples from the big guys), to show you how to to bring a little more brand love into your biz.
Firstly, ‘brand love’ might sound like an airy-fairy concept, but look at any ‘well-loved’ almost cultish brand and it’s easy to link their ‘loveable’ status to tangible business benefits like customer loyalty, profitability, and market dominance. Before we begin; brand love, also known as “brand intimacy”, refers to “the measure of how intimate or close we are to brands we use.” (source)
Why is cultivating brand love so important? As rational as we humans like to think we are, we tend to buy based on emotion over logic. Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman says that “95% of our purchase decision making takes place subconsciously”, so creating #warmfuzzies and #goodvibes is definitely a deserving pursuit in your biz strategy.
#1 Make your clients feel seen
No one likes a date with someone who constantly talks about themselves and barely asks you a thing—it’s a huge turnoff right? Keep that in mind when building relationship with your clients.
It’s simple, put your customer’s needs first. Then means you need to listen, show interest, ask thoughtful questions, ask for feedback, and take that feedback on board (even if it isn’t 100% rosy).
A brand I love for this is Girlfriend Collective, they straight-up declare that they’re “for everyone” and you see this from the moment you land on their homepage. Dig a little deeper and you’ll see models of all shapes, sizes, genders, and skin colour represented on their website. They walk the talk.
So what can we learn from them? Girlfriend Collective know their audience, they listen, and their audience feels seen. As a freelancer, apply this attentiveness to your discovery call. Listen and speak less. In a recent sales masterclass for Cool Wow members, Sales Coach Bay Bradfield said “your greatest skill is to shut up” meaning “you should only speak about 20% of the time during a discovery call” the rest of the time it should be your potential client speaking.
Many freelancers go wrong here by launching into “pitch mode”. You start telling the customer what you do, when TBH, at this point, the customer doesn’t care. What they really care about is what you can do specifically for them. Put simply, your potential client won’t feel heard if you don’t listen first. Make sure they are the hero in the story (just like Girlfriend Collective do), and make them feel cherished simply by listening.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
#2 Craft a memorable experience
Experiences are incredibly powerful when building brand love. Some brands thrive on these and have created almost cult-like love status through the power of experiences. Take global brand Lululemon for example. Lululemon know their audience is seeking “spiritual enrichment”, so their biz revolves around creating spaces and experiences that support their customers on this journey; think yoga studios, meditation spaces (online and in-person), healthy juice hubs, and community gatherings.
Source: Lululemon
Lego is another leading brand that knows their customers love creativity and "making stuff” so they host events that give people a chance to express their creativity.
Now as a freelancer on a freelancer marketing budget, I know it’s unlikely you can go and create huge events of scale, but you can incorporate micro-experiences that trigger feel-good hormones and help make you more memorable.
Think about the entire journey your client has with you; you have a call, you onboard them, you work on the project, you deliver the work, you end the project—these are all opportunities to leave a lasting impression. Why not send a beautiful welcome pack to clients, record a personalised video, celebrate milestones, or send an experience-based gift when your project wraps up that they can enjoy and associate with you.
“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you. Shout aloud, I am glad to be what I am.”
#3 Be uniquely you
Brands with personality are simply more ‘sticky’ or memorable than bland ones with zero vibe. But to become an authentic personality-rich brand, you’ve got to know yourself first.
A big brand that does this oh so well is Go-To Skincare. Go-To values cruelty-free products, worry-free skincare, and the environment. Sprinkle on a fun, uncomplicated, and vibrant personality and you’ve got a recipe for loveable-brand status. It also doesn’t hurt that the founder Zoë Foster Blake is a cool and funny human too, so the brand is almost an extension of her (good news is, yours can be too!).
Now as a freelancer, small biz or solopreneur, you have a unique edge over the big brands because you are your brand. Spend time working out your core values and what makes you unique. Then lean into your own personality and all of the magical things that make you. Simply doing this and showing up as you will help build deep, authentic, and lasting bonds with your clients.
#4 Find a higher purpose
There is evidence to suggest that we humans love contributing to something bigger than ourselves. Purpose is important. In fact, “75% of consumers worldwide expect brands to contribute to their personal well-being and 71% of millennials prefer brands that promote social or environmental change” (source).
You only need to look around to see that many of today’s leading brands are built around purpose. Patagonia goes all in on environmental activism, ThankYou Group is all about ending extreme poverty, ettitude bedding is all about comfort for all at no cost to people or the environment. Each of these brands makes decisions that align with their core purpose for a positive impact.
So stop and have a think about the things you are passionate about? What cause could you align to? Impact, even on a small scale, can spark brand love. With Cool Wow Collective, I plant a tree for every member who joins the Virtual Coworking Club This doesn’t cost a bunch in the grand scheme of things, but protecting the planet is something I care about, and it gives my member’s #warmfuzzies knowing that their biz investment has helped the planet too. Help your clients feel good by contributing to you, their biz, and something even greater than themselves.
Over to you
Draw on these big brand examples to help your lil biz ignite a spark with clients and create beautiful, long-lasting, and profitable relationships. Try it and let me know what #brandlove you’ve ignited in your biz.