The importance of branding cannot be overlooked, and it is essential for helping your practice stand out from the competition.
Dive into the six essential pillars for building a brand:
- Find your target audience
If you have an aesthetic practice, you probably already have a good idea who your target demographic is based on your existing patients. However, branding gives you an opportunity to speak to a wider audience—as long as your brand resonates with them. Perhaps you want to bring in younger patients, or maybe you want to expand your body offerings. Your branding can help attract the patients you want. - Establish your mission statement
Why did you create your business? The answer to this question will help you build your mission statement, which defines your purpose and passion as a business. Be sure to capture your unique purpose first, so the other elements of your brand (logo, tagline, imagery, voice and personality) reflect this as well. - Define your values, qualities and benefits
You’re probably not the only aesthetic practice in town, and there are surely many other doctors in your market who do what you do. Creating a brand is your opportunity to make your practice unique. Start a list of the values, qualities and benefits that make you different and how your products or services improve your patients’ lives and contribute to their happiness or success. - Create visual assets
It’s best to tackle this part of the branding process once you’ve established your target audience, mission statement and identified your practice’s unique qualities. Once you have these in place, you can think about the logo, color palette, fonts, iconography and other visual assets that will support and convey this messaging. As you create these elements, build a set of brand guidelines that includes and the acceptable (and unacceptable) uses of your visuals. This will ensure that anyone who uses your branding (such as designers, social media consultants, etc.) does so accurately and consistently. - Find your brand voice
If you had a conversation or texted with your brand, what would it sound like? It’s essential that your target audience “hears” your brand voice—because if they don’t, they won’t pay attention. The tone you use to communicate with your target audience should be consistent across all of your written content, from your website and in-office messaging to social media posts and advertising. - Put your branding to work
Once you’ve finished creating your brand, it’s time to integrate it into every aspect of your business.- Your website: This can be considered the foundation of your practice’s identity, so use your logo as well as the color palette and fonts in your brand guidelines. Make sure all copy, calls-to-action and product descriptions reflect your brand voice.
- Social media: Use your logo as your profile picture (this helps customers recognize your business) and make sure all other imagery is on-brand. As with your website, make sure all posts and captions are in line with your brand voice.
- Packaging: If physical products are part of your business, packaging should align with your brand guidelines.
- Advertising: The point of digital and print advertising is to raise awareness, so it’s critical that they feel like a natural extension of your brand. In fact, your brand guidelines will help outside designers and copywriters capture you brand’s look and voice.
- Sales and customer service: Anyone who represents your brand (especially when engaging with patients) must be aware of your branding—and use it. An often-overlooked opportunity to promote your brand is the messaging patients hear when they are on-hold. (Although you likely do your best to ensure they speak with a member of your staff immediately—this can be unavoidable at times.)
Just remember, it takes time to create a successful brand—it doesn’t happen overnight. Take your time, bounce ideas off employees, ask friends and family for their thoughts, and perhaps turn to colleagues you trust for advice or opinions.