As a med spa owner (or solo injector), each day you are given opportunities to introduce your brand to new prospects, engage with potential clients on social media (or, in person), and set it apart from others in town.
But how do you ensure your brand is accurately, effectively and cohesively represented each time? How can you guarantee brand consistency everywhere your business has a presence?
How can you ensure your employees and subcontractors (i.e. receptionists, social media marketers, etc) fully understand how your brand is supposed to sound and feel like at every customer touchpoint…without accidently giving the wrong impression —or, worse— turning off an ideal client?
The answer — a comprehensive set of brand strategy guidelines and brand style guide.
What are Brand Guidelines?
Brand Strategy Guide
Brand strategy consists of intangible components such as ideas, tone and emotions that influences the relationship your brand has with its audience and the world. It’s important to be aware of these elements so that they can inform all aspects of your operations.
The core goal of a brand strategy is to create a consistent message, communicate it well to its target audience, and to sell products or services effectively.
From design through marketing communications, brand strategy not only maximizes consistency around your brand’s visuals, but helps raise awareness of your brand and eventually builds brand loyalty. This is what we call brand affinity.
Brand Style Guide
The brand style guide defines all the pretty, fun, parts that everyone usually thinks of when they think of a brand: colors, fonts, and graphics. It’s important to adhere to these principles so that your audience can always visually recognize your brand in any marketing medium.
The Components of a Brand Strategy Guide
Defining the Brand Identity
Brand Mission, Purpose, and Vision
The most successful businesses are those who can instill inspiration where others can not. By sharing your WHY, you will connect with your ideal audience. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe and collaborate with you to achieve that greater goal.
Brand Vision: Your brand’s aspirations for the future and what it hopes to achieve.
Brand Purpose: The reason your brand exists.
Brand Mission: How your brand will achieve its purpose.
Brand Values
Brand values are the foundational beliefs that a company stands for. They serve as the compass that guides your brand story, actions, behaviors, and decision-making process.
Brand values attracts new customers, improves brand experience, builds brand loyalty, retain top employees, improve operational efficiencies, and develop a competitive advantage.
Unique Value Proposition
In a nutshell, your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is communicating to the world precisely how you’re different than your competitors.
Your UVP can be defined by pricing, who you’ve trained with, injection philosophies (i.e. less is more or MORE IS MORE, etc), a combination of all three, and more. The brand strategy process helps us define this succinctly so everyone, especially your clients, are 100% crystal clear on what makes your med spa unique.
And, it’s what make them keep coming back.
Brand Persona
Brand strategy ideally gives your brand a personality based on brand archetypes. Here, your Brand Strategy Guide breaks down the unique combination of brand archetypes and how this looks like in its operations and communication with your audience.
Brand Voice & Brand Tone
The brand voice is what your brand communicates to its audience.
Your brand voice is about projecting your brand’s personality through the communications you distribute. It’s directed at your target audience and helps build a memorable connection between your brand and them.
Your brand tone is how your brand communicates to its audience.
Your brand tone of voice may vary based on a few different factors, such as target persona, where a client is at in the buying journey, communication channel, etc.
Competitor Analysis & SWOT
What other medical aesthetic businesses in your area could your ideal client book services with instead of you?
What are their strengths – so that we may learn how to strengthen yours?
What are their weaknesses – so that we can focus on making you a shining example of how to do it right?
What opportunities do they above two observations create that can we implement to differentiate your business?
What threats do your competitors pose (i.e. pricing) and how do we overcome this?
Audience Demographics & Psychographics
What makes your customer lose sleep at night?
What could they do if you solved this problem for them?
What causes do they care about, and, is there a crossover with their interests and yours?
Customer Buying Journey & Sales Objections
How do your customers find out about your business, and what possible sales objections does your marketing have to overcome in order to close the sale?
A Brand Strategy Guide is a Framework for Your Brand
This is how you can easily communicate WHO your brand is and WHAT it stands for with any key stakeholders in your marketing plans.
Social media marketers, digital ads specialists, SEO marketing, hiring employees …they all benefit from keeping this information at the forefront of your operations.
The Components of a Brand Style Guide
Defining the Brand Visual Identity
The primary purpose of your Brand Style Guide is to lay out the entire visual aesthetic of your brand to ensure the visuals stay cohesive.
You may be tempted to give your logo a shadow behind it to make it “pop” but please don’t do this! I promise going rogue or getting “creative” with your branding will not do your brand any favors!
There were hours and hours of thought and work into creating your brand, so to maximize your investment (and guarantee brand recognition), always ALWAYS follow the brand style guidelines.
Logo Identification & Usage Guidelines
Mila Design Co. designs several logos for each of our clients, and each one has a different use.
You may have one that is horizontal that’s perfect for letterhead or the top of your website, but does not work for social media profiles.
Or you may have a compact logo that works great for social media, but would be a poor choice for the top of the website due to how much vertical space it requires.
Here we see the recommended logo variation for a social media avatar for a medical spa’s Instagram account.
This is the icon logo in an Instagram mockup to illustrate a proper use, including how much spacing around the icon we need to maintain an upscale look.
Their brand guidelines had recommended logo variations that could be use as the profile image avatar.
Also, never distort or stretch out your logo. Doing so will change the intended look and feel.
Typography & Font Usage Guidelines
Using the wrong fonts on your social media and website is one of THE biggest indicators that the brand style guide was not used when designing. A brand style guide lays out the brand fonts and the very specific ways they are to be used (sizing, color, etc) in order to maintain cohesiveness across all marketing channels.
Color Usage Guidelines
You should have a core set of 4-6 brand colors that you always use in your branding.
Did you know that you can create more colors of out 1 color?
That’s right. By adding white or black, we can create tints or shades, respectively. So don’t feel restricted by the handful of hues (colors) in your brand style guide. You can create many more tints and shades throughout your marketing materials for a dynamic brand.
Use Brand Guidelines for a Recognizable and Cohesive Brand
As you can see, both a Brand Strategy Guide and a Brand Style Guide serve different but equally as important roles in your medical spa’s brand recognition.
If you’re ready to elevate your med spa’s brand in the eyes of your target audience, book a call today to get started.
