Maintaining your brand can feel like a really big project. I’ve heard this far too many times in the last 6 months… “I’m overwhelmed by my branding!”. I often hear business owners discuss the overwhelming feeling they endure when they think about maintaining their brand. It’s completely understandable. Most of us are not professional brand strategists and managing all the moving parts of a brand can feel like a second job. Often business owners who experience branding overwhelm describe the feelings of maintaining their brand as “feeling lost,” “stuck,” or even as being “dread”. They often feel like while they have a sense of clarity about their business, when it comes to maintaining their branding suddenly they feel discouraged. Don’t fret friends, I have 5 tips for eliminating brand overwhelm.

5 tips for eliminating brand overwhelm:

1. Maintaining your brand is a process

First off I would like you to stop thinking about your brand as one and done. Maintaining your brand is a process. You need to understand that brand building and maintaining a brand is a journey that will last through the entire life cycle of your business.

Your brand will endure different stages during your business lifecycle. Once you stop thinking about branding as a one-time project and start seeing it as an ongoing process it becomes a natural function of your business.

The evolution of your brand is inevitable just like your business will evolve, so will your brand. It’s your job to intentionally make the changes in a strategic manner.

2. If your branding is done right, it can actually save you time and money.

If you don’t have clarity or professional branding you might be facing more overwhelm than you need to be. When you have no idea what you’re doing, or a guide to follow you keep spinning your wheels, trying to make it happen. Professional branding serves you not only with a strategic brand but also a tailored set of brand guidelines that outlines everything about your brand’s look & feel. This means you should be able to hand off your brand guidelines to another designer and they should be able to design accurately for your brand. How does branding save you time and money? When your brand strategy and messaging are clear (and when your brand guidelines are well documented) you, your designers, and the VAs you hire have a much easier time creating marketing assets in line with your branding.

This means fewer revisions, less hourly work you need to pay for, less time you need to spend directing and guiding them, and best of all less energy wasted in frustration. 

3. You already have everything you need to manage your brand strategy.

What if I told you that you already have everything you need to manage your brand? The industry might not want you to know, but it’s true. As brand strategists we take your brand magic and make it a visual representation, you are the one that brings the magic to the table. I’ve witnessed it many times when I hand over all the assets to our incredible clients and the excitement settles and panic sets in. “What do I do now?!” You have all the information you need. You just need to learn how to extract it from your heart and brain — and get to work. Grab hold of your brand guidelines, and goals, and get to it. You hold the power.

4. Trust the process

If there was one thing I wish I could help all entrepreneurs understand about branding is this: doing it brings clarity. Don’t let it hold you back!

With the mistaken idea that you need 100% clarity before you can make branding decisions, many business owners remain stagnant and end up not only feeling overwhelmed but also defeated.

Give it a try: doing it brings clarity. Warning, this doesn’t mean that you mindlessly run in any direction hastily.

Instead, it means that when done right, the brand maintenance process can be broken down into clear bite-size steps that build on each other. When you follow the process, you don’t always need to have clarity of all the steps ahead of you. Trust you have what it takes to make the next step. 

5. There is no perfect formula.

I mentioned step-by-step processes in the last paragraph, and this tip follows a similar pattern. You might think your logo and visual identity are your masterpieces that bring your business together, and while you’re not completely wrong it’s only one of many elements to making your brand successful. 

Think of your visual identity as one piece of the system consisting of multiple building blocks. While they all work together seamlessly, you don’t need to have them all in perfect line to thrive. This type of thinking allows you to prioritize your needs and intentionally work on your first block without overwhelming you. 

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There you have it, friends! I hope this blog post helps you in eliminating brand overwhelm. Maintaining your brand doesn’t need to feel like a big task. I aim for this blog post to arm you with what you need eliminating brand overwhelm. Know a fellow business owner who would benefit from this post? Please share it with them, I would appreciate it.