The Reality About Brand Perception

When I first started, I went around building my brand with my iPhone. That was all great when I started, but with technology and AI, you can build your brand and take yourself to the next level. It's really all about how your clients perceive you.

If I've never worked with you, I don't like you, I don't trust you, and I'm not ready to trust you with my business, then I'm not signing up. I'm not even reaching out. I'm not even following your social media.

This is why I'm going to break down exactly how we build a brand by using professional photography, videos, and the words that we say to get more clients. I'll break it down in my eight simple steps so you can take it and grow your brand as well.

Step 1: How to Improve Brand Visuals for Better Trust

The first thing that I actually made a huge mistake on when I first started was my look. I never invested in a good profile picture and any good images for my thumbnails, and quite frankly had a different profile picture on every social media channel.

Since people don't like you and trust you yet, they're not going to remember you on different channels. So I want to highly encourage you - something that took our brand to the next level is hiring a local photographer to come in and take strategic pictures. Whether it's just one head shot or it's a ton of images you can use for B-roll or thumbnails.

• Key Point: Consistency across all platforms is crucial for brand recognition.
• How It Works: Use the same professional photo across YouTube, X, LinkedIn, and all channels.
• Tools Needed: Local photographer, consistent fonts, strategic imagery

What you want to do is keep that consistent across all channels. So if somebody visits my YouTube channel, they're going to see this exact same profile picture of myself. They're going to go to X, they're going to see the same one. LinkedIn, they're going to see the same one.

When it comes to branding, you not only want to look great and look professional, you also want to be consistent so you show up and people remember and relate to you on every platform. I also want to encourage you to use nice big text and different actions that you can use to where they remember that same font across all the channels.

For more comprehensive branding strategies, see our Business Brand Builder service.

Step 2: How to Optimize Social Media Profiles

You want to focus on your pages so that you look professional and you're not trying to sell. In all my profile pages, I used to say, "Sign up with me to do this or click on the link to do this." Well, quite frankly, your leads don't care. They're not ready to sign up when they first learn about you.

What I've seen make a huge difference is putting something relational, helpful, or maybe something even relatable. If you like to golf, put yourself up in your banner. If you have a family, put something about having a family in your bio.

Quick tip that I've seen a huge increase in conversions on: Put my YouTube link instead of my website link. Because when people know that they're going to go to YouTube to watch and learn something, they still don't think you're trying to sell them on something. You're trying to provide value and education.

If you are going to put a link in there, put something helpful and educational, not salesy, because you have to remember these people haven't heard of you yet. The goal is to just get them to follow you and start remembering your brand.

Step 3: How to Build Trust Using Testimonials and Reviews

You want to start showing people that you've helped or that you've worked with across all your channels. I personally take Tuesdays and make them testimonial Tuesdays. I'm going to share a review or testimonial every Tuesday of somebody that I've helped and that I've worked with. This will help people start seeing brand trust.

I posted a post about somebody that I work with and his Google review and also his results. I posted this on my X profile so that people can see that I am getting five star reviews and also we're getting results.

Trust-Building Strategy:

• Dedicate specific days to testimonial sharing
• Show both reviews AND results
• Display across all social channels
• Create dedicated review pages on your website

Additionally, go to your website and add a really strong review page. This has been beneficial for us because anyone that sees my profile, watches my videos or learns about AutomationLinks, they immediately go to the reviews or the case studies and they start looking at everything there.

On your profiles, you want to try to be as professional and helpful as possible. People also even look at what you repost. I was about to work with a business and I went and followed them on LinkedIn. I scrolled down to their recent activity and saw a comment that they left on someone else's post that was not helpful. It was actually discouraging and was cutting the other person down. So I ultimately decided not to work with this business because I saw their personality in their comments.

You want to find multiple ways for people to trust you by reviews and also what you even say on your social media channels.

Step 4: How to Simplify Your Brand Messaging

Your words need to identify your ideal customer profile - they call that your ICP. If you're only talking about yourself and the benefits you think people want, they're not going to resonate and they're going to keep on scrolling. You need to break it down and simplify.

For my business, we're super complicated. We do ads, we do marketing, we do emails, we do CRM. So that's just overwhelming to someone. When I broke it down and say we are a fractional CMO, we actually will take over your whole marketing department and save you money and get you more clients, it made more sense to people.

Simplification Formula:

• Break down complex services into simple concepts
• Use fifth, sixth, or seventh grade level language
• Focus on the exact solution to their specific problem
• Make the offer immediately understandable

You have to break it down almost to a fifth, sixth or seventh grade level. When somebody first hits your landing page or first visits your website, do they understand what you offer? And is it exactly what they want?

You need to put a lot of time into making your offer the exact solution to the problem your ideal customer has. When they first hit your website or see your social media channels, they're going to instantly see that you're the brand that has the solution for the problem that they have.

Learn more about targeting your ideal customer in our marketing strategy guide.

Step 5: How to Build a Lead-Generating Offer

A lot of people and a lot of businesses just send their traffic to their homepage. Well, when somebody goes to your homepage, they have to actually go find your offer and they have to even see if it's a good fit for them.

I want to encourage you to make a landing page that gives something free and valuable away to anyone that's new in your ecosystem. That way, when a new lead sees you and they see that you're giving away something of value for free for them, they're more likely to go grab it and see that you're the one that's going to help them with this cheat sheet.

High-Value Offer Strategy:

• Create dedicated landing pages instead of homepage traffic
• Offer guides, cheat sheets, or video tutorials
• Provide actual implementation value
• Make it industry-specific but universally applicable

You can use guides, cheat sheets, videos, whatever you want, but give something of high value. On my landing page, I give them my free marketing system with three simple steps that they can actually go copy and paste into their business.

If somebody grabs this, they actually get the exact system that we will go and implement. You want to give something high value so they remember that you're the brand that has the solution that's giving them the cheat sheet to allow them to go implement this easily if they want.

They don't have time or they're not ready to do it yet, they'll just call you and hire you to do this. Doesn't matter what industry you're in - provide something of high value, push all your traffic there, and give them something as your offer before you try to sell them.

For landing page optimization strategies, check out our landing pages guide.

Step 6: How to Follow Up Without Sounding Salesy

That is a huge thing that a lot of businesses don't even do. Maybe you have systems that aren't organized, not even connected. Maybe you don't even follow up with your leads. The businesses that do follow up with their leads instantly see an increase in conversions and sales.

But here's the problem: they could do even better if they didn't make it so salesy. Are you the brand that's trying to sell, sell, sell, or are you the brand that's helpful in making it simplified for your ideal customer?

Your follow-up's going to do multiple things:

• Send emails that are clear, concise, and helpful, not salesy
• Show retargeting ads with the same relatable images, videos, and pictures of your brand
• Provide helpful educational content in both channels

Follow-Up Framework:

• How It Works: Personal emails + educational retargeting ads
• Time to See Results: Immediate improvement in lead engagement
• Tools Needed: Email automation system, retargeting pixel setup

Because if they see your retargeting ad - sale, sales, sale - and your email - sales, sales, sale - they're going to go work with somebody else or they're going to unsubscribe and ignore it.

When you do your follow-up, what you want to do is personal style emails and helpful educational content on those retargeting ads. Because if I see the brand that's helpful over and over and over and I'm ready to pay, I'm clicking that link, responding to that email, and I'm buying.

Here's a simple email that you can send to anyone new that visits your website where you're basically just saying, "If you respond back with my name, this is a personal interaction. I'm going to personally send you something of value."

You also want to show things on Instagram and Facebook of your family, your relationships, your values, your hobbies - different things that people can relate to so they see that, hey, I trust this person. This is a real person that I want to work with.

For comprehensive follow-up systems, explore our CRM setup services.

Step 7: How to Showcase Your Work for Credibility

This is where you actually want to show success and the results of your work visually. If you're only talking about reviews, that's great. If you're following up with images and videos about you and your brand, that's great. But if you can start showing results and the clients that you've helped with numbers and pictures, that's going to be key. That's what's going to take your brand to the next level.

We post these case studies and images of results on our website and on our social media channels so people can easily go through and see how much traffic we increased, how much conversion rate we increased, and exactly the review from that person that landed on that page.

Results Showcase Strategy:

• Post visual case studies with actual numbers
• Show before/after dashboards and analytics
• Include client testimonials with results
• Display work samples and implementations

We also want to identify the type of person you're helping. I'm actually creating our brand to be more like this where we're going to be able to show the branding, the exact ads, the exact dashboards, the exact websites, and even the landing pages that we've created for our clients and start showing off that work.

That way, people remember us as the brand. And that's what you want to think about for your business: do people remember you as the brand that's just showing the branding, or are they also showing the results of the clients that they're working with?

Quick tip: If you're brand new and you don't have anyone yet, start doing some work for free. You could easily rebrand something or build something for somebody to start posting on your social media without getting paid for it.

Step 8: How to Get High-Quality Referrals

Do people refer people to you? If you work with people and they don't go and refer somebody after, it means you're not doing high quality work.

What we made a mistake on is we tried going for quantity - working with as many people as we could for the lowest cost - and then we weren't able to actually build the team and provide super high quality work, which then did not result in referrals.

Quality-First Referral System:

• Work with fewer people and focus on exceptional results
• Charge appropriately for high-quality work
• Follow up systematically to request referrals
• Ask specifically for reviews and referrals after project completion

If you're building a brand from scratch or starting over or trying to get it to the next level, you're going to look good, you're going to follow up, you're going to be remembered, you're going to show results, you're going to show case studies, you're going to follow up.

Now work with less people and focus on the referral by offering high-quality work and even charging for that high-quality work. Now you're the brand that people remember that brings real results and gets things done in a timely manner.

The first thing they're going to do is refer somebody. The average client usually can refer up to three other people. And that's the key for doing quality work. But the secret trick is actually following up and asking for it.

After you work with somebody, you hopefully have your follow-up in place. Now set up one more follow-up to ask them for a review and ask them for more referrals.

Implementation Roadmap

Week 1-2: Professional Photography & Visual Consistency

• Hire local photographer for strategic shots
• Update all profile pictures across platforms
• Create consistent font and design elements

Week 3: Profile Optimization & Trust Building

• Rewrite all social media bios to be helpful, not salesy
• Link to educational content instead of sales pages
• Set up testimonial Tuesday posting schedule

Week 4: Messaging & Offer Creation

• Simplify your core message to 5th-grade level
• Create high-value free offer (guide, cheat sheet, system)
• Build dedicated landing page for the offer

Month 2: Follow-Up Systems & Work Display

• Set up email automation for new leads with educational content
• Create retargeting ad campaigns with helpful messaging
• Document and display case studies with visual results

Ongoing: Quality Focus & Referral Requests

• Prioritize fewer, higher-quality client relationships
• Systematically request reviews and referrals after project completion
• Continue showcasing work and results across all channels
  

Transform Your Brand Into a Client Magnet

Your brand is either attracting quality clients or driving them away - there's no middle ground. These eight steps will transform how potential clients perceive your business and dramatically improve your lead quality.

Remember: people don't buy from brands they don't trust. By investing in professional visuals, providing genuine value, and consistently demonstrating results, you become the brand that prospects remember and refer to others.

Key Takeaway: Quality over quantity in everything - from your visual presentation to your client work - creates the compound effect that turns your brand into a sustainable client-generation machine.

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