Is your brand looking unprofessional? There’s a good chance your branding is not performing well.

Starting your business might have required you to create your own brand identity. Perhaps you purchased a premade theme and are now wondering if that was a good idea. Or the designer you worked with did not capture the essence of your brand in their design.

It doesn’t matter what it is, this post will cover 5 factors that have an impact on the perception of your brand. It’s easy to become stuck on a hamster wheel if you get them wrong., making little progress in growing your business.

You can attract your ideal audience if you get them right. Keep your offer at the forefront of their minds by making a connection with them.

Here are five things that make your brand look unprofessional

1. Inconsistent branding

Do you feel like your brand isn’t there yet? Are you always tweaking and changing colours, fonts, and graphics? Did you purchase a pre-made brand and piece it together yourself? Feeling lost and having trouble creating a cohesive brand?

Finding inspiration on Pinterest and Creative Market is time-consuming, but how do you know which one to choose? Are you a follower of your own personal style? Are you choosing colours that will appeal to your audience? How do you know what colours your audience will love?

One simple reason for inconsistent results is a lack of a clear strategy. Probably, you haven’t established a strong brand foundation and your visuals are simply a reflection of that.

In order to build a strong brand, you must first do your homework:

  • Clarify your brand’s values, mission, and vision
  • Tell your brand’s story
  • Discover the personality and vibe of your brand
  • Decide who your ideal client is

You can then develop a brand identity (the visuals) that reflects that strategy.

A good visual can:

  • Subconsciously communicate your brand message within a fraction of a second to make a lasting impression on your ideal customers
  • Build the like and trust factor that you must have to sell anything
  • Build a natural relationship with your target market

It’s easy to sell when your audience chooses you.

2. Brand clarity is lacking

Having trouble presenting your brand correctly? Feeling like you’re going round in circles? Struggling to appeal to your ideal audience? Wondering who your audience is, apart from their sex and age?

This will show when it comes to marketing. It will be difficult for you to connect with your ideal clients, or even attract them at all.

Without a clear idea of who you are trying to attract and why, you’ll end up sending out a message that won’t resonate with anyone.

This clarity is essential to creating a strong brand or even a strong brand identity. There is no design that can fix this for you, no matter how beautiful it is.

3. Design and branding of the website are unprofessional (no strategy).

Did you agree with the first two points? You probably didn’t have the chance to work with a professional brand identity designer who understands strategy.

In fact, design is a commodity, which might seem controversial at first. Buying beautiful designs is cheap and easy.

Brand identity designs can be found everywhere. You can find countless beautiful logos at Creative Market or Etsy.

There’s only one problem – these logos and websites were not designed to reflect YOUR brand.

Your brand personality and values were not taken into account when creating them.

They were not designed with your ideal client and customer in mind.

Even though beautiful, they eventually leave you struggling with the first two points of this blog post and back at square one – the unprofessional design issue. To fix it (again), you need to spend even more money.

This is how the branding process should be done:

  • Discovering your brand’s mission, vision, values, vibe, and ideal customer.
  • Diagnose problems that need to be fixed (especially when you’re rebranding an existing business),
  • Choosing the perfect colours, fonts, photography, etc., to represent your brand’s strategy
  • Cohesive, consistent design across all brand touch-points (where customers interact with your brand).
  • Brand designers who understand the importance of strategy won’t begin designing anything before they walk you through this process. Your mood board and brand colours will also not be required from you, this is the designers job.

In order to reach your customers’ subconscious minds, you need to pick the right shades.

Don’t spend any more money on the design portion of a project if you didn’t have a chance to go through that process.

4. Your brand voice and personality are misaligned with your visuals

On a sales call, have you ever thought to yourself, “This person is totally different from what I expected”?

Are you having trouble attracting the right type of audience? Is there anyone who is not ready or willing to buy any of your products?

All the points we discussed above may have contributed to this.

Consistency is impossible without a strategy.

There is no clarity and no connection with your ideal audience. Despite the beauty of your logo and website, they do not accurately represent your brand.

If it happens, it’s a huge problem. As a result, you are losing customers, trust, and like factor. Sales are declining. The place is very dangerous.

5. Unfulfilled brand promises

When the perception of your brand differs from the essence of your brand, what happens?

There is an unfulfilled promise.

There is a lot of confusion and disappointment among people.

People are disappointed if your brand promises cruelty-free products and claims to care for the environment, but then compromises those promises.

People are disappointed when a brand promises premium and luxe, but provides a poor user experience.

People are confused (and disappointed) if you promise high-quality products but charge low prices.

People are disappointed if your website offers a really poor user experience while your products are beautiful. Premium products and services and dissatisfying experiences do not mix together.

People won’t trust you when you’re promoting luxe beauty treatments, but your branding comes from Creative Market and makes it appear like you don’t own your brand.

Professional design, or even just a logo, are just the beginnings of your brand.

Build a strong foundation from the start. By investing time, energy, and money into creating a great experience for your audience, you’ll finally be able to do your awesome work justice. By doing so, you’ll create a brand that’s memorable, professional, and makes people fall in love with it.