Speaker 1: Hello. I am Cheryl here at the Made on Sunday studio. We talk all about branding, design, and creative entrepreneurship here, so if those are of any interest to you, then remember to subscribe to the channel to follow along. Now as some of you may know, I am a brand strategist and designer and I design intentional brand and websites for mindful entrepreneurs. Typically when I am working with a client for branding or website, they are usually working up towards a launch or a relaunch of their online business. Now in addition to creating their branding and their website, there are actually a few additional key touch points that I would always recommend to all of my clients to bring a little bit of a branded customized touch to it before they launch their business. So in today's video, I wanted to walk you through an overview of the eight key essential touch points that I think are very important to bring a customized branded touch into. This can really elevate the brand experience that you're providing to your customers or clients and really bring a lot of value to them. Now the amazing thing is a lot of these key touch points can be easily branded and customized by yourself using nearly free design platforms like Canva. And in fact, that is the topic of my newest Skillshare class, Canva Basics, to launch your creative business. So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed by the whole design part of things when you are launching your online business, especially if you're not a designer or you never intended to design for your business, but maybe you're not quite ready to hire out these services yet, this class is perfect for you. I am going to be linking in the description below the class link so you can check it out in your own time. But in the time being, I am going to be walking you through the eight key touch points that I think you should be branding and customizing in your business. All right, let's get to it. So number one touch point is probably kind of obvious, but business cards. Now I know what you're thinking. Business cards are dead. We're not meeting people in person anymore. I don't necessarily agree with that, or maybe half agree. For a lot of business, yes, that might not be, you know, relevant anymore. If you don't plan to meet people in person or your business is entirely online based, then, you know, business cards may never come in hand to be relevant for your business. But for a lot of business out there, it is still very, very relevant. I worked with mobile beverage companies and home builders and home designers, and for them, they see clients in person all the time and they meet people in person, whether it's a networking event or a wedding or, you know, wherever you might meet a potential client. It is still very, very relevant and the best way to kind of share a little glimpse into what your business is about, how to contact you, and also have a little branded touch there so that they can kind of get a sense of, you know, the vibe of your business. Alright, number two. So now that they have met you in person, they got a business card, they're about to email you and find out more about your business. They get an email back from you and there's no email signature. That area is such an easy way to bring a little branded, customized feel to it. I definitely recommend, you know, adding a little picture there just so to remind them of who they're talking to and the personality that they get from you, as well as your name, you know, a little bio and how they can maybe find you on your social media or wherever they can find you, even your website. I think it's a very easy way to add a little bit of a branded, customized feel into the emails that your potential clients will receive from you. Alright, next up, number three is on your social media. Probably one of the most important places to bring a customized feel into is on Instagram. Now, I think a lot of online business these days, that's probably the number one platform you get onto. And so I think it's incredibly important to make sure that your Instagram feed and the profile photo and the bio and all of your Instagram posts look cohesive. Now, it doesn't have to be exactly perfectly, you know, in the grid format or anything like that. I just think that everything you post within the Instagram area should feel cohesive. When someone sees a photo from you, it is edited, you know, in a similar fashion so that they know right away where this is, you know, coming from. And if you're making some sort of graphic for your Instagram profile that you are really paying attention to, whether you are using your brand fonts, your brand colors, to give them a more personalized, customized feel. And when they see that post come up, they know exactly who it's coming from. Alright, number four, it is Pinterest. I think Pinterest is an amazing platform. Not only is it a social media platform, it is actually one of the top search engines online. People are going on Pinterest to find out about different things that they want to purchase, inspiration, ideas of different companies that they might want to work with or hire. People are ready to look for resources for their business on that platform. So it's so important to, you know, show up on Pinterest and utilize that free kind of search engine space using beautiful graphics and photography that really represent your business, the services that you offer, the products that you offer on that space. So make sure to show up on Pinterest and add, you know, a little bit of your branding into the posts that you create in that space. Alright, number five is your email newsletter. Now, I think email newsletters are incredibly important to start right away when you are starting your business. Even if you don't plan to send out, you know, regular emails just yet in the beginning, it's so important to just have it set up so that, you know, people can start, you know, signing onto your newsletter and to find, you know, future updates from your business maybe later on. I personally love to use Flowdesk for that. They have amazing templates that you can start off with and I think it makes the email experience not only for you but for your clients a lot easier, a lot more aesthetically pleasing. They make it incredibly easy by like setting up your brand colors and your profile so that you can just easily click on your brand colors when you are designing your email newsletter. So again, another incredible touch point that I think is essential to launching your business and marking your business, especially the beginning stages of your entrepreneurship journey. Alright, number six is a lead generation freebie. So you might have your branding all set up, you might have your website all set up. Now, how do you actually get people to sign up for your newsletter and to, you know, subscribe to you? A lead generation freebie is a great way to get people to learn more about you, to subscribe to your newsletter. So in exchange of an email address, you provide them with some sort of valuable freebie of some sort. Now, this can be a workbook or a pdf or an ebook or anything like that. It's so easy to design on Canva. Just head on to Canva, find, you know, a template of some sort and just create a freebie, something that will bring value to your customers or your clients so that it makes sense for them to exchange their email address for that valuable freebie of some sort. Number seven, now that they have been on your email newsletter for a few weeks now, they're super interested. They're seeing your Instagram posts and your Pinterest posts and they want to work with you. They reach out and now you have to send them a proposal. Now, this proposal is super important to make sure it looks beautiful, it's professional and branded and customized to your business. This is a key critical point where they actually get a proposal from you and decide yes or no, whether they want to work with you or not. Now, you really want to take it to the next level. At this point of your customer's journey, they may be shopping around with other professionals in your industry just like you to see who they want to go with. Maybe they hopped on a couple of discovery calls with a few different people, they've received a couple different proposals. Now, you may all be offering very similar things. Maybe, you know, the price difference might be a little bit different, but what will really take it to the next level is adding those little customized, you know, elements into the proposal area. So, if I were to receive one that's like a Word document that's just plain white with some black text on it versus something that is very beautiful and aesthetic to look at, it has, you know, elements on it that really reminds me of that discovery call that I had with you. I would most likely go with the one that looks professional and really gives me that customized experience from the very beginning. They haven't even worked with you yet and they're already getting a lot of value through looking at your proposal. So, remember not to forget your proposal. Alright, the last key touch point is your invoice. So, now that they went with your proposal, you sent them a contract and you signed it all, now you want to make sure that you are sending them an invoice. Now, if you are doing this manually or even on, you know, one of the automatically generated invoice CRM platforms, you want to make sure that that invoice is also branded very beautifully. You want kind of an all-around experience where every step of the way of working with you all the way to paying you, they're having a very customized and white glove kind of experience working with you and you want them to feel your brand, the vibe and aesthetic that you're trying to portray, the, you know, the overall feeling that you're trying to give to your clients should all be wrapped around all of these key touch points as they get to work with you. So, don't forget to brand and customize your invoice. Alright, and that is it. That is the eight most essential key touch points that I recommend making sure to bring a branded and customized feel into. By paying just a little bit more attention to each of these key touch points, you can really further elevate the service and experience that you are providing to your clients or your customers. Now, I've said this before, if you need some help with the design side of things to kind of brand each of these key touch points, I am actually going to be going over all of these key touch points in my newest Skillshare class, Canva Basics to launch your creative business. It is a design course that is created specifically for non-designers who are ready to launch their creative business, their online business, like yesterday. I'm going to be teaching you my step-by-step process of how I brand and design all of these key essential marketing materials and launch graphics that you need to finally launch your business into the world. I'm going to be including a ton of Canva templates as part of this course, so once you start it, you're going to get a PDF ready to download and you're going to get access to all of my Canva templates for these essential touch points to launch your business. So to sign up for the class, be sure to head to the link in the description below. If you already have a Skillshare membership, good news, it's already included so it's practically free for you to take the course now. If you don't have Skillshare yet, I'm going to be providing you with a free 30-day Skillshare membership down below and you can basically take my course for free and after the 30 days, you can decide whether you want to continue your subscription or not to take other amazing design courses, mindset courses, business courses, I don't know, all the creative courses that you can think of to help you in this journey of being an entrepreneur. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did, remember to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more videos like this. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.