Wondering if your branding looks professional and resonates with your dream clients? If you are, chances are it isn’t performing to its full potential. Here are 5 signs your brand looks unprofessional.

You might have created your brand yourself when you first started, purchased a pre-made theme or worked with a designer, but you’re unsure if these options captured the essence of your brand in the designs.

However you started your branding journey, below I’m going to talk about 5 things that affect the way your audience will perceive your brand. Getting these important aspects wrong can be the difference to attracting or repelling your dream clients. To make a genuine connection with your audience, let’s get the essentials right. Here are 5 signs your brand looks unprofessional:

1 – No brand consistency

Are you feeling overwhelmed with your current brand elements? You keep tweaking and changing it, from colours to fonts and styled images. If you purchased a pre-made brand you’re probably putting everything together yourself? You’re trying to keep everything cohesive, but you’re feeling lost?

You’re probably spent countless hours gathering inspiration, but even though you’ve found amazing designs, you probably don’t know which one is best for you and your business. Do you follow your own personal preference or consider your audience? How do you know what your audience will love?

All of these problems are caused by one simple thing: no clear strategy. Most likely, you’ve created everything yourself, and haven’t gone through the process of creating a strong brand foundation so this confusion comes through in your visual elements.

To create a strong foundation for your brand you need to identify:

1. Your purpose and authenticity behind what lights you up and what you do.
2. Who is your audience, what matters to them and what problems you solve for them.
3. How your business, services or product helps your audience.
4. Where you are in your industry and how you want to make people feel.

Helpful Blog: How to keep your Brand consistent

2 – No brand clarity

If you haven’t addressed the 4 points from before it will show in your design. Without this clarity you won’t be able to create a strong brand identity. Your message will be too vague for anyone to understand and no-one will resonate with your business. Create strong brand clarity to fix this problem.

Freebie: Claim your FREE Brand Roadmap to establish a clear direction for your Brand.

3 – Unprofessional brand identity (no strategy)

If you said yes to the first two points it probably means you didn’t get a chance to work with a professional brand identity designer who understands the importance of strategy.

There are plenty of resources to purchase cheap and easy designs such as Etsy, Creative Market, with logos ready to go. The problem with pre-made designs is – they were created to look beautiful, there is no strategy, and weren’t created specifically for your business and brand.

As a strategic brand designer I will not jump into the design phase straight away. We dive deep into your business, to establish a strong foundation and strategy first. I then create a visual mood board with all the homework completed first for a clear visual direction for your brand.

From colours to font choice, every design decision should serve a purpose in order to send the right message to your ideal clients. If you didn’t have a chance to work on this process, consider strategy as part of your brand identity before spending more money on design alone.

Helpful Blog: What is Brand Strategy?

4 – Your brand voice, personality & visuals are disjointed

Do you struggle attracting your ideal audience? This could be because of the point we talked about above.

No strategy = no consistency

No clarity = no connection

Beautiful design isn’t enough to represent your brand well, it needs to be crafted from the points above. If you feel your brand is disjointed, you could be losing potential clients and sales.

Helpful Blog: 5 Brand Essentials your business needs

5 – Undelivered brand promises

If you have conflict between how people perceive your brand and what your brand is actually about, there is an undelivered promise. Your audience will be disappointed and in turn will lose a bit of trust.

Ensure all touch-points of your business allow an easy user experience, from your socials to your website and marketing materials.

Helpful Blog: Define your Brand purpose with 5 questions

In summary:

Your brand is so much more than your logo! Start with a strong foundation and strategy. Create a high-end brand experience for all touch-points of your business. If you address these 5 areas you’ll be on your way to creating a brand that’s memorable, professional and invites people to engage on their terms.

If you’d like more free branding advice, or have additional questions about branding, or are interested in booking a project with me, fill out our contact form to book a free discovery call.

BONUS:

Claim your FREE Brand Checklist, our guide to creating a consistent and cohesive Brand to grow your business!