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The Importance of a Brand Statement

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BRANDING TIPS

We're professional photographers, Mr + Mrs and Mom + Dad. We like to share insights into our industry and empower other photographers to build their biz.

Hi, WE'RE ERICA+JON

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As we’ve been working with more and more photographers looking to grow their brand photography business through our Virtual Mentoring Sessions or In-Person Workshops, we’ve noticed a not-so-positive trend among our students. One of the questions we ask in our pre-session questionnaire is for our students to write out their brand statement in 1-3 sentences. Now, almost all of the brand statements we read are positive and dream-oriented, so they’re good things. But very few are precise statements that tell us exactly what the brand does, who it does it for, or what they are promising or guaranteeing. Often, what we receive is a ‘why-type’ statement for the brand, which is really important, but only one piece of the puzzle. So to help unpack this mysterious statement, we’re dishing all about The Importance of a Brand Statement and the three essential parts to building a solid one.

To be completely fair, we have to back up a bit. We didn’t really understand the importance of a brand statement either until we became brand photographers. We started noticing a problem when people would say, “What do you guys do for a living?” When we responded with, “We’re Commercial Brand Photographers,” we’d get puzzled looks and awkward head-scratching moments. We were leaving people confused about what we did and who we served. People would walk away thinking we filmed TV Commercials or that we were Brand Designers <—Nope and….nope. But it wasn’t their fault – the confusion was self-inflicted. 

Now stop for a second and let the ramifications of that set in. If we couldn’t clearly communicate an answer to that simple question – “What do you guys do for a living?” – then how could we even begin to think that prospective clients would get us? In other words, if we, the business owners, couldn’t clearly articulate our brand statement, how could we expect anyone else to understand what we did? And how could we expect them to have the confidence to do business with us – or even know how to do business with us in the first place?

We knew we needed a better way to communicate our Brand Statement, or, ‘Elevator Sales Pitch,’ to those inquiring minds so that they would walk away with a clear understanding of What we do, Who we do it for, and what we Promised in return.

This is what we came up with:

“We partner with commercial and personal brands to plan, style, and intentionally create compelling imagery. The result is professional photography that promotes people, products, and personalities for impactful marketing that stands out.”

Phew. That might seem like a lot, but we have no doubt you now understand exactly what we do, right?! We actually didn’t fully realize how important or helpful this was until it was pointed out to us by Nathan Holritz during our time with him on The Bokeh Podcast.

So let’s break down the three essential parts to building your own solid Brand Statement. 

WHAT THE BRAND DOES

This part is pretty straightforward, and most of the time people get this right on the first try. It’s simply stating what your brand does. Do you serve clients through photography? Do you plan events? Do you do custom design for brands? What is it that you do? 

For us, it’s found in this chunk of our brand statement:

“We partner with commercial and personal brands to plan, style, and intentionally create compelling imagery. The result is professional photography that promotes people, products, and personalities for impactful marketing that stands out.”

A key point here is to be specific. We wanted to make sure our clients knew that we don’t just take photographs, but we also partner with brands to plan and style those sessions as well. Don’t leave out the details that are unique to you that separate you from your competition. Make sure to add them in here so a prospective client fully understands what you offer.

WHO THE BRAND SERVES

The next step is to identify who your brand is serving. There is a lot of talk about discovering your ‘Ideal Client’ and you’ve likely walked through exercises designed to help you discover yours. If you haven’t, stop here and take a moment to walk through this exercise with our friend and brand expert, Jasmine Star.

Ok. So now that you have your ideal client in mind, it’s time to plug that information into your brand statement. Your prospective client needs to know not only what you do but WHO you do it for. 

Here’s where this falls in our brand statement:

We partner with commercial and personal brands to plan, style, and intentionally create compelling imagery. The result is professional photography that promotes people, products, and personalities for impactful marketing that stands out.”

We wanted to be clear that we serve a wide range of client types from smaller personal brands to large-scale commercial clients. We wanted to make sure the commercial brand knew we had the experience and know-how to tackle their more complicated projects while also signaling to the personal brand that we were still approachable for them too!

So who is your ideal client? Who do you serve? It may be more than one type of client, so be sure to include all the details.

WHAT YOU PROMISE OR GUARANTEE

This right here might be the most important part of your brand statement. Now that you’ve lined out what you do and who you do it for, you’ve got to explain what it is a client can expect from you.

Imagine this, I’m your ideal client and we meet in an elevator. I ask what you do and you tell me WHAT your brand does and WHO you do it for. The stars are aligning for me as your ideal client because I’m checking all the boxes. I need the services your brand offers and I’m exactly the person you do it for! But the conversation ends. That’s it. No promise. No guarantee. Nothing to look forward to. Dud.

Those who see your brand statement on your website or social media will have this same experience as they read! They’ll being to identify (or not <—which can be a great thing!) with your statement and feel like this is the solution they’ve been looking for. But without painting a picture of the end results, you are leaving them hanging!

Here’s what we tell our prospective clients about our promise through our brand statement:

“We partner with commercial and personal brands to plan, style, and intentionally create compelling imagery. The result is professional photography that promotes people, products, and personalities for impactful marketing that stands out.”

They can expect professional photography that supports impactful marketing that will help them stand out! Whoo-hoo! Sign me up, right!?

List out the things your client can expect from you. What will the end result look like for them? Show them by specifically calling it out in your brand statement!

Alright, friend, you’re now equipped to craft your perfect brand statement and have an answer ready to go when someone asks you exactly what you do. Use this brand statement everywhere – your website, blog, social media, etc and consistently reinforce it so that there is no question what you are offering to the world!

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