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I’ve spent 12+ years in design and branding, and there’s one belief I hear more than almost any other from business owners. It goes something like this: a professional brand needs a professional price tag. So they wait. They put the logo off, the colours off, the whole thing off, until “there’s more money coming in.”
But that wait is costing you more than DIY branding would. In this blog, I’m covering why an inconsistent brand costs you, the myth around DIY branding for small businesses, the four essential things your DIY brand needs and the two things you can skip for your business right now.
The hidden cost of inconsistent branding
Not investing in your brand doesn’t save you money, it costs you more in the long run.
Every person in your audience is scrolling past millions of images a week, and their brain is constantly deciding what’s relevant and what isn’t. If your visuals don’t signal “notice me, this is for you,” people scroll straight past without ever reading what you had to say. It’s not that your offer’s wrong, it’s that your branding never gave them the chance to find out.
A strong, consistent brand is what gets people to stop and actually pay attention to what you’re saying.
The myth around DIY branding for small business
Most of the women I talk to assume their only options are hiring a full brand team (designer, strategist, photographer, website builder, easily ten grand or more) or a dodgy DIY logo that looks like it was slapped together on a lunch break. There isn’t just those two options. You can build a business brand properly yourself now, then outsource it properly later if and when you want to.
What people skip when creating a DIY brand isn’t the design, it’s strategy. And strategy is genuinely learnable. In my free Canva Masterclass: Design Tools to $100k, I cover the strategy behind how to make your graphics sell for you.
4 essentials a strong brand actually needs
Once you’ve got the strategy sorted, there are four things you need for branding your business:
Your logo: one that actually attracts your audience and captures your business’s essence, not just a couple of shapes slapped together
Your colour palette: a consistent set of colours you use across your business
Your fonts: used consistently, because fonts carry a vibe whether you mean them to or not
An overall visual style: minimal and clean, or scrapbook and textured, whatever fits, but consistent
Consistency across these four things is what tells your audience you’re worth trusting and here for the long run.
I cover how to create these 4 essential branding assets in my DIY Design My Biz course. Inside you’ll find everything you need to actually build a DIY brand that works.
The two branding assets you can skip for now
A professional photoshoot isn’t essential yet. Set your phone up on a windowsill, use natural daylight, pop the timer on, stand back a metre or so, and take a handful of photos with your full width in frame. Cut the background out in Canva and you’ve got images you can use straight away.
A professional website can wait too. A Canva website, a Wix or Squarespace template, or even just a strong social presence with somewhere to book or find information can hold the fort for a good while.
Both of these branding assets are worth investing in eventually, but they don’t need to be the first thing you invest in for a DIY brand.
Want to see how I apply these design principles in real time?
I run through the exact mistakes making your brand look unprofessional, plus a live design demo and some Canva shortcuts, inside my free masterclass, Design Tools to Get to 100K.
Sign up here: whitedeer.com.au/designmasterclass
WORK WITH JACQUI:
// DIY Design My Biz: The best course for business owners DIYing their own brand and graphics in Canva. Learn more: https://whitedeer.com.au/diy-dmb
// The Co+Creation Design Club: Design WITH the help of a professional designer in this high-touch coaching space: https://whitedeer.com.au/designclub
// Design Studio: If you’re after fully done-for-you design services my studio team can help! https://whitedeer.com.au/designstudio
