I’ve seen a lot of brand disasters out there from a lack of trying to set goals. And I want to do my best to try to help you avoid the situation. Especially when starting out, I know it’s tempting to do the fast, cheap, and easy route.

Most people just want a logo from someone who can do it fairly quickly while they’re doing their DIY website and setting up other channels.

I’m sure you’ve seen the image that shows that something fast and easy and cheap isn’t really very good at all.

If you want something amazing, you’ll either have to invest time or money into it. I can help you with setting this really solid foundation starting with your goals.

Without brand goals then you don’t really have a guide to help you bring everything back to what you planned in the beginning. This will help you out when you see something pretty or have some sort of shiny object syndrome. There are a lot of things that you can do that are super tempting but may not be the right idea or the smartest idea for your brand.

I get this all the time even as a designer – I constantly have shiny object syndrome. When someone has amazing designs, an amazing website, amazing fonts, whatever it is, I have all heart eyes for it.

And sometimes even for a second I’ll imagine my brand as theirs. Luckily I have my goals and my brand set up where I don’t get to wishy-washy.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s a time to pivot your brand. There’s a time where you will be making changes, but I’m talking about the big stuff. I’m talking about the brand strategy. Changing the font here and there or a color here and there isn’t a huge deal. But if you’re messaging and your strategy is all wrong, then you’ll be wasting a lot of time.

So what you need today our brand goals.

Why do you need to set goals for your brand?

Have you ever started a big project and it’s so big and tedious that you’re regretting doing it?

This is usually super common.

What you have to do is remind yourself that this is worth it in the end. (I promise!)

Maybe you have this goal of having a massive garden in your backyard. Takes time to plan and landscape and pick out what you want to plant. It takes time for all of it to grow, and to keep the pests out and to make sure that the weather is good for these things to grow.

It’s definitely not an overnight thing and it takes time.

Sometimes there are annoying things that happen, like your dog might dig up some of the plants, or you find pests that are destroying your plants. Then you’ll get really stressed out and wonder why you’re even doing in the first place.

Maybe that’s when you go back to your inspiration board of these beautiful gardens or articles of people eating tomatoes that are grown and their backyard and suddenly you remember why.

It’s really the same with anything that is a Goliath of a project.

And remember, branding is no small feat. So make sure you’re setting yourself up for success even if you do pivot later or if you just have a small hill to climb that’s taking a little longer than you thought.

What do you need to set goals?

So what exactly do you have to do? It’s pretty simple. Just open up a document or Excel sheet (if you’re really fancy) to brainstorm and answer some questions. If your visual like me, you might also have a mood board to help tie it all in together (Pinterest for everything!).

Are scrapbooks still a thing? Because that would be pretty cool too!

Use this as a roadmap or a business plan that you can look at later.

If it’s thorough enough but also not too long that it’s overwhelming to look at, it’ll be a great guide.

Vision boards

Before we get to the nitty-gritty, it’s a great idea to create vision boards at the start of every year or even every quarter.

It’s basically a visual representation of your goals. The reason why this is effective is because photos are often a great motivator.

Imagery helps you to feel more emotions than simply reading text. If you combine vision boards with goal setting, you have a powerful method to start off each season.

It’s pretty simple. Here’s what you do.

First, write down the answers to these questions:

• Where would you like to be at the end of 12 months?
• How much income will you be bringing in?
• How will you be making your money?
• What kind of clients/customers will you have?
• What will they be saying about you?
• Where will you be working?
• When and how long will you be working?
• Who’s part of your business?
• What’s your ideal workday look like?

Once you’ve answered these, create a physical vision board by making a collage of what represents your answers. Or you can create a digital one and print it out!

How do you organize these brand goals?

So let’s get started and asking yourself how to get to these brand goals!

Personal goals

Where do you want to be in a year? how about in 5 years? How about in 10 years? You can get really creative with your answers. Talk about where you’re living what kind of house what city, if you have kids, if you’re married, even what clothes you’re wearing or what you look like. You can talk about your social life and the type of friends you have. Just think big and don’t cut yourself short of anything that you really want. This is all about what you’re striving for.

Financial goals

We can talk about both personal and business finance is.

Where do you want to be? What do you want to have?

This could be something like you have enough money to contribute to your 401k, have 6 to 12 months of emergency savings, you have the money for a down payment or maybe you have money for an entire house.

You can afford the car you want, put your kids in school and anything else in between. We can talk about your entertainment money and how you can afford to take vacations twice a year.

Whatever you want to think of financial goals and then start getting really specific. We can talk more about this in your business goals to but it’s always good to have numbers that way you can see where you’re at now and what you need to do to get to your end goal.

Business goals

You see how I didn’t make this the first one? It’s because you have to design your business around your personal life.

I’m guessing you’re reading this as an entrepreneur or a small business owner. So really, you’re business is your life and will probably affect your personal life in a big way. And hopefully that way is a positive way!

So anyway, think about your business model if you’re going to be a service-based business or product based business or a little bit of both.

What are your offerings? What is your unique value proposition? Where are you found?

Do you have Marketing in place or what are you planning to do to get yourself out there?

What are your Revenue goals and how are you making this?

If you can break it down even further that would be really good. For example 50% can be from clients, 40% can be from physical products, and 10% can be from affiliates.

Who are you attracting and what are they saying?

When we talk about the “who”, we’re talking about the people who are going to impact your business.

I have an entire article about how to find your target market and another one about how to find a niche that’s profitable. You can take a look at those if you aren’t so sure about have find it.

Research it

Did you do research on this person?

Make sure you know that this is the type of person who’s going to buy whatever you’re offering. You really need to have this down in order to get through of the first steps of brand strategy.

Your brand overview

So what do you want this person to say about you and your business?

How do you want them to feel after working with you or purchasing one of your products?

Think also about the visual aesthetics of your business.

What adjectives do you want associated with your visuals?

What about the copy?

How are you addressing your readers? What’s your tone like, and how will it make them feel?

I’m using the word feel a lot because a lot of this is very psychological but can also be very subjective to the person. That’s why it’s super important to know who your marketing to.

Use this as a guide to set goals before you do anything else.

Try not to stray from this too much unless it’s crucial to set goals.

Overall, this is going to be changing once you have more experience and have the people to back up your research.

Research is super important to make sure that you have something in place, but there is nothing better than being able to talk to you the people you want to work with.

So really, this most likely won’t be totally set in stone until you’ve been in business for a little while and have tested the waters.

But there you have it, you know how some brand goals to work with to help you to grow your business!