Adam Force: How Has Branding Helped Millions of Businesses Skyrocket Their Revenue?

43% of consumers have reported that they would love nothing more than to spend their top dollars on brands that they feel connected to. In today’s crowded market, if there’s one thing that consumers desire the most – it’s a brand that they can feel emotionally connected to.

Upon implementing the right set of tactics and strategies, you can not only build an emotional connection with your audience but also skyrocket your revenue and profit margins efficiently.

However, the big problem is – most businesses misunderstand branding and don’t have a rock-solid brand strategy in place. Eventually, they end up leaving a ton of money on the table. In this episode, the Change Creator founder, Adam G. Force, explains what branding really is and how it actually generates revenue for businesses.

As a father and entrepreneur with 20 years of professional business experience, Adam is an expert in branding, storytelling, and online sales. After working 10 years at WebMD as Director of Strategic Marketing Adam started his second business, Change Creator, supporting social entrepreneurs with premium branding & high-converting websites, the Change Creator Podcast with 230+ expert interviews, and 30+ editions of Change Creator Magazine reaching over 140+ countries including exclusive interviews from the most impactful entrepreneurs on the planet such as Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington, and Richard Branson.

During This Episode, Adam Shared His Thoughts On:

Brand Studio – How to turn your website into a conversion machine?
Branding – The Misconceptions
What Branding actually is?
Lucidpress’ Report on Branding – How consistent branding helps businesses increase their revenue by 33%?
Brand strategy – What it is and why it’s super-important to create a blueprint prior to kickstarting your branding efforts?
The different elements you should consider while building your brand strategy
Why do you need to be cautious in today’s saturated market?
The importance of building a great first impression
Attention vs. trust – What matters the most?
The Butterfly Effect
How can a brand strategy help you build a rock-solid foundation for your brand?
How important it is to build a brand strategy and conduct a brand audit prior to building your website?

Final Thoughts:

We live in a saturated market – where marketers and agencies are simply trying to upsell their marketing and advertising services. Businesses are so rock-focused on catching their audience’s attention that they are neglecting the importance of building long-lasting relationships.

From creating a great first impression to building an emotional connection, you can increase your revenue and profit margins upon building and systematically implementing a fool-proof brand strategy.

Grow Your Brand Today!

We are the branding experts. And we can help you turn your website into a heavy-loaded conversion machine. Most importantly, we’ll have your back at each step of the way and help you build real connections.

Schedule a strategy call with us today.

Episode Transcript (unedited, will likely have typos):

Adam G. Force 0:00

How do social entrepreneurs and small businesses create an authentic brand people love so they can get the edge they need to stand out, create Predictable Revenue and compete against the big guys. That’s what we’re here to discuss. I’m Adam forest, the founder of change creator and this is the authentic brand mastery podcast.

All right, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the authentic brand mastery podcast brought to you by change creator, this is your host, Adam force. You know, if you missed the last episode, it was with Chris Nealon. He’s the founder of a company called Colt, we get into all kinds of good stuff. It’s all about creating engaging audiences. Alright, a lot of good perspective shifts there, I’ve had some really interesting feedback from people. So if you missed that one, I would definitely go back and check it out, I think you’re gonna love it. Um, so right now we have some, we have a number of projects getting ready to get off the ground. So that’s really exciting. And it’s been really fun working through these projects with some of our clients. For those of you who are not up to speed that our Brand Studio is a new division of the company that we started this year. And we’ve been really excited because people were knocking on our door from our course and asking for, you know, support with developing their brands, and really like turning their website into a sales tool that stuck tells a story and stuff like that. So it’s, it’s an approach that we take is very authentic, and creates an emotional connection with customers, right. But most importantly, we want to get results, which means leads sales, things like that. This is a valuable piece of real estate. So we have, I think three client projects coming to an end. And we’re going to be opening the doors for some new people. And right now, we have two spots opening up. So if you’re in that place where you’re ready to, you know, reimagine your brand or upgrade your brand, and you know, bring the identity to life and set up your website to really, you know, get results for you. You know, reach out, you can go to studio dot change creator.com. Again, that’s studio dot change creator.com. And you can book a call, and you’ll learn a little bit more on that page, see some testimonials, all that good stuff, of course. And then just blue calling, you’ll talk with me, and we’ll dive into a conversation to kind of figure out where you’re at. And if it makes sense. It’s really a process of applying, and we got to see if you’re a good fit. Alright, so yeah, you guys could do that. And don’t forget to stop by iTunes, leave us a review, we always appreciate it. And you know what we’re going to dive right in, I got no other announcements that I’m going to share this morning was dive right into one month of that, that we might bring some people on to do a workshop on your brand voice, I think that’ll be a lot of fun, too. So that could be really cool. So keep an eye out for that we’re gonna we’re gonna test the waters and see if everybody’s into it. Alright, and today, I want to take some time to talk about how you can increase your monthly revenues, predictably, by setting up your branding and the role that branding plays in driving revenue. Okay, show me the heat on No, you go.

Alright, let’s talk branding, and how that actually contributes to our monthly revenues. This is so important. And people do have a misconception of branding, guys. I mean, it happens all the time, I talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs. And you know, we quickly assume it’s just the identity, the visual aspect, that’s your branding, it’s the colors, the logos. This happens more and more in the online entrepreneur world today as that continues to boom. And and it’s a very big mistake to make, because what branding really is let’s just set the stage before we get into money and all that kind of stuff. Branding is about how we make people feel and I think that a John Sox he made a really great testimonial. Let me just pull that up. So what he said was your corporate or personal brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints. That’s exactly right. Because it’s it’s and that across all customer touchpoints is a very important part of that. And the story unfolding, the story unfolds, not just contextually meaning the words that we use the messages, but also the visual. The visual is part of the story, right? We’ve heard, we’ve heard people say a picture is worth 1000 words. So having visual as part of the expression of your brand branding is your story right? And now as far as it goes as far as Across all customer touchpoints, we need that consistency. Let me give you a quick stat from Lucidpress. So Lucidpress did a report on branding. And what they found is that when all of this stuff is done right, right, brand consistency is appreciated by customers so much that it’s consistent presentation across all those touch points has been seen to increase revenue by 33%. Alone, right? So when companies got their shit together, and they had in a consistent presentation of good branding, that was seen to increase revenue by 33%. Right? I mean that that right, there is just a mind blowing statistic, right? I have other statistics, too, that are really cool about how a brand story will increase sales. One of the number one factors from usa.gov, that people said was most important to trust a brand and buy from them was good design. Now, early in the early 2000s, and when the internet started booming, ugly design converted, and I gotta be honest, I will tell you now ugly design can still convert. But it’s not about that. It’s because they have a very good message. And now, as we get into branding, and how we make people feel you have to start wondering, well, what how does that make me more money? So I have this, like, what is how do we make feeling? Okay, so let me explain, you have to understand that there are components that we have to get really good at, and that is your brand strategy. A brand strategy is made up of different things, right? So I’ll break it into sections, because there’s lots of little things from promise, vision, all these different things, right. So the first thing is the soul of the business, I like to call it and that is going to be you know, why are we here? What’s the promise we’re making? What’s the vision and mission? Where are we going with all this and that kind of starts creating the soul of like, what you stand for. And that’s really important, right? We have to really pin that down. And all of a sudden, when you do that, right, you get some like directional clarity. So that’s part of it. And I And remember this, this brand strategy, just so you’re, you’re clear with like, maybe a quick little metaphor here, it’s kind of like you, you wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, right? This is your blueprint or a North Star for everything you’re doing to make your marketing marketing successful. So when you’re creating a consistent presentation, and you want to have create a feeling that attracts the right customers and resonates with them, we have to first go through this brand strategy process to to really, like think through it and create our blueprint, right? So that first section was the soul of the business. And now the the other another section that’s really important is going to be the operating system. It’s like, well, what is the culture, the values and all these things that we have to get really clear on? So that we know as that as we operate as a business, right? Think of it as like a person, right? Your brand is like a person? What is that? How do they function, what kind of a person are they what and so when you create culture and values, it starts determining how you actually do things, like the operating system of a computer, the computer will function a certain way, according to however, that operating system is set up, right. And, you know, the next thing that’s going to be really important is understanding the, what I call the perfect customer. I mean, we really this is this is like, beyond important. And I’m gonna get into why and I’m gonna tie this into how this is making you money. And you probably start getting an inkling here, but we have to go through really important steps to understand not only who the customer is, like where they’re from, and how old and all that basic stuff, but you know, dreams, hopes, fears, frustrations, language, they use, you know, pains that they have in their lives, like, and it’s it’s funny, because I get ecommerce clients and it’s like, selling, you know, some kind of snack food or something. And we’re talking about hopes and dreams for people. Right? And yeah, it’s, it’s actually really important because this plays a role in our marketing messages, right? And it makes them very, very powerful. So really getting clear on that. And you know, a lot of times we can dig into a lot of different areas to kind of map that stuff out whether it’s From past clients, and there’s ways to think through it, like, where to put your energy, because a lot of times people will say, Well, I can my product is good for many, many people I can I can help different segments of people. And that’s great. So I always refine that when I work with people. And I’m like, But who do you help the most that we add those two words on the most, and you start prioritizing. A great example was a you know, with pure Aveda, I think it was a pure pure Vita, and no vitamin water pure Vita, I think

vitamin water will be a good example. So I was talking to Bernard Schroeder. He’s like a brand brand branding legacy this guy. And so he did like Amazon, and Yahoo, and vitamin water, all that stuff. And so essentially, they were first, when they came out, it was kind of this unique concept. And they’re like, oh, shit, like, you know, nobody. Everyone’s like, What the hell is vitamin water? Like, right now it sounds normal, because we’ve been normalized, it’s the thing that we’re familiar with. But in the beginning, it’s like, what the heck is that, but they they could have, it’s, it’s relevant for moms, kids, anybody that wants to drink, right, a soft drink. But their first segment, they could help the most were people who were more in the health conscious category, right. So they didn’t waste their time, energy, money, resources, trying to create marketing strategies, and messages, and all that stuff for all these other segments. Because you have to realize your whole message, everything changes for each segment. So you don’t have the resources, most likely for several different segments. And I’m not saying you can’t cast a wider net, you can. And that’s a whole other conversation about where people are on the journey to buy, but you do want to know who you’re helping the most, right? So that’s a very important part of this process to pin down. And then you got to really understand your positioning in the marketplace, like how are we being different. And as you start building all of this information out, there’s one more section, there’s also our identity. So it’s like, the personality, the feel, and all these things, you know, you you would you would hear someone talk about, like, you can take a couple approaches, like it’s like, well, if you were going to describe a celebrity person who has a personality, like your brand, what would it be or an animal and people do all kinds of wacky ways of getting their minds wrapped around this stuff. But that is going to start being the the visual identity. And you know, when we talk about feel, and tone and all that stuff, it is creating the personality of this, this brand, right? It’s the personality and how they, how it interacts with people and what it feels like with people. So now we’re mapping out all this stuff in the brand strategy, which becomes this blueprint for your business. And once you have it, you’re like, Oh, God, it’s like, it’s like a Bible. And does it ever change? Yeah, like, you know, you know, businesses have to adapt to the market, what’s going on, and we and so that stuff you revisit every so often, and you can refine and modify. But that gives you a lot of clarity. And when you have that in your brand book, we usually give people a brand book, you know, you hand that to third parties and things like that. So where does the money come in Adam? Okay, so now that we understand that, let me just talk about the money. You know, you have, you know, people will say things like, I don’t need a website. No, you don’t need a website, I don’t need a brand strategy. Note, you don’t need a brand strategy. I agree with you. 100%.

Right. And that’s fine, you don’t need it need is a very specific word that says you don’t, you know, like, you can go without it, it doesn’t mean that running your business will be better or easier, it’s actually going to be a lot harder. But no, you don’t need it. If I had to go cut down 100 trees, I don’t need a chainsaw, I can use an axe and I can fumble my way through for months trying to do that while I rip my hands apart. Or I can get the chainsaw and I can cut down all the trees, right? So no, we don’t need these things. And we have to be very careful about where we’re getting our information. Because if we have doubts, desperation, we start listening to all these gurus you have, I literally was just reading an ad I save ads all the time. I love them. I’m reading somebody like, you should never do paid advertising until you reach 30,000 or $50,000 a month in organic. Oh, by the way, we can show you organic strategies and how to do that and Facebook groups. So you know, it’s like everyone’s setting up these rules and laws and all these things. And then I have other people who make like $40 million, one of my mentors and you know, they will say after you have three to five customers, you know, you can replicate the process and if you know there if you know the customer really well from your brand strategy. Yeah, start running ads and scale Alright, so you got very different perspectives, both can probably bring you some kind of success. But there’s a lot of garbage tactics out there people are trying to sell and the market is pretty saturated. So you got to be careful with that stuff. Now, if you are, if you are going to be smart, you realize that all a website is his real estate online. Right? So if you’re like, if you’re like, looking at it as Whoa, I have this domain, all this stuff. No, it’s just pages of real estate that are very valuable because you own them, you’re not renting it out, like on Wix or anything else. That’s why I don’t like I’m not a fan of things like Wix and Squarespace and all that crap. Okay. I like to have full ownership, I like to have control, flexibility, customization, and I want to be able to grow into something the way I want to, without requiring a lot of custom development to work around a platform that is closed.

It is not a it’s closed, like where you know, it’s not open and open source. So, you know, things like WordPress are very flexible, powerful platform, you can pretty much customize it until you’re blue in the face. And if you realize that, hey, this real estate is super valuable. It’s a sales opportunity. This is sales, real estate, it is foolish to make your life more difficult in trying to operate your business. Without it today, when someone learns about your business, what’s the first thing they’re going to do, they’re going to look you up, and they do a spot check. Like if you drove up to if you’re like, Hey, I heard about this dentist, and we have this guy go work on my teeth, and you go and you drive up and you’re like, oh, and you pull up to this building that’s like, you know, falling apart and stuff. And it’s like terrible, you know, you’re gonna run away. So that’s like the first impression. If you don’t even have a website, and you just have some like Instagram channel or something. I’m not saying you can’t get customers, I’m just saying it doesn’t help you. Okay, you know, people have expectations today that if you are doing well, not only are you online, but you are going to be presented in a way that feels good. It’s professional, it’s clear, you really resonate with them, right. The more you hammer, those connections, the more trust you build, which means the more customers you get, the more loyalty and long term reoccurring sales you get. Now, the brand strategy because we get so clear about everything, especially our perfect customer, we understand what we call hot buttons, right? We understand the hot buttons, and we start creating this online identity that represents who we are, it’s authentic, it’s genuine, it tells our story we have our story is unfolding, like we talked about in the beginning. And it makes connections with people emotionally. And so when we’re making those connections, we need the information to hit the hot buttons. And so like an example for me would be I was looking for pool vacuums. Because I live in South Florida, and my pool is surrounded by like a rainforest. And you know, they had in there was a pullback and company who I went to their website, some of them are just God awful, and I will I leave websites if they’re terrible, like I can’t even deal with this terrible company. And I don’t trust that the rest of the business is actually going to be functioning in a way that I want to do business with them. Like if they can’t even get the website right. What does that say about the rest of their operations and, and how successful whatever solution or product I’m going to buy is going to be right. There’s no care right? And but I found a company that actually did really well and they specifically said everything I needed to hear picks up sand and dirt small things picks up large leaves and other things and everything that was a pain point for me. It hammered it it was like they were they were here interviewing me in South Florida and they made this pool vacuum for people with pools in South Florida because it was very specific. And that is what captured me. But I would never have gotten to reading all that and getting that far if they didn’t make a good first impression. So, that trust factor is huge. Remember what I said about that stat from us.gov? They their usability.gov. They they people prioritize design as one of the most important factors when making a buying decision. And that is because of trust. Everyone will say oh attention is a scarce resource today. And I completely disagree. I think attention anyone can buy attention. That’s called advertising, no big deal. But you know, and yeah, they say people have three second attention spans. However, the people that are most interested in buying, they read long form sales letters, they watch to our webinars, right. So attention is not a problem. But trust is. And if we’re not building trust into our marketing, we have an even bigger issue. So you know, when we have the brand strategy pin down, all of a sudden, we can start creating the building our real estate online in a way that is like, magnetic to our perfect customer. Because it visually appeals to them, it builds the trust, and then our messages, resignate, they hit the hot buttons, they sign up, they get to know you personally, I love like watching shows like the voice because it’s a great example of two things. One, you have an example of when people hear the backstories of the artist, and they have relatable, live instances, like if someone’s like, Oh, I’ve this is just I don’t know why always comes to my booth, like, Oh, if I had cancer, and I overcame it, and then everyone in the audience is like, Oh, my God, like, I’ve been there, or I had a hard childhood doing X, Y, and Z. And then they get all these letters of people saying I know exactly how you feel. And so they fall in love with that person. And they have a deeper connection, beyond just liking their music. So now they really like that person, which makes them love their music. And this is how we start building super fans, right? All these touch points to our brand of great experience good products, how we speak to them, how we do things, it all starts coming together and all these touch points. And this is how we start building super fans. All right. And the other interesting part about the voice, I call this the butterfly effect, okay, so in the butterfly effect, you know, people start at the voice and they’re gonna be like trying out. And if, if the judges see potential, they are invited to come back. And they’re going to be on the show and get this whole process started. But in the in the first you know, run, you have people who are coming in, and they are, you know, they’ve been gigging around town they barely getting by financially and all this stuff. As the show goes on. They have a coach who’s saying, Oh, you put more emotion here emphasize this, do that. And as the show goes on, they start evolving, which is really fun to watch, right? Not only are they getting better as singers and becoming more refined, but they are even finding their identity. And by the end of the show, they’re dressed way differently than they ever were in the beginning. And you’ll hear coaches say things like, I feel like you’re really finding like yourself, like the kind of artists you are not only how you sing, and the type of music you sing, but in how you present yourself visually, right. And that is no different than what you’re doing with your business as we grow, right. And that’s why most companies who are rebranding and upgrading their brands and doing these things, updating their websites properly, it’s because they want to grow and they’re being refined, and it’s, it’s the same thing. So people on the voice, they start changing, they start, they step into the role, right, they become that next version of themselves. And it’s a it’s a beautiful thing to watch, right. And so all of a sudden, they’re their rep, they’re kind of like they’re showing up differently, I should say. And so if there’s one thing I’ve learned in business is my second business, and I was director of strategic marketing over at WebMD. For many years, I have found that, you know, if you want more clients, you need clarity on what that looks like. And you have to be able to show up ready for that, that’s when the universe will throw it back at you. But if you’re not taking these steps, if you’re not willing to put in the work to have a professional brand strategy to set up your website correctly to to have sales funnels and all the proper language and identity and all these things. You’re not setting yourself up to do what you need to do. You’re just making you know what I mean? Like you’re holding yourself back with limiting beliefs saying, I don’t need this, I don’t need that. I’m gonna do it this way. Because why do we do that? Because we’re uncomfortable with the idea of investing in ourselves and pushing forward to new boundaries and the uncertainty of it all right. You know, I’ve been there we all have that’s part of being an entrepreneur. But at some point, it’s so at some point, we have to start to evolve to grow, and we got to step into that role. So I hope that gives a better sense and, you know, as far as that money goes, it’s we’re building trust. We are going to have more successful sales funnels because we can really pull customers in, we can create more lead generation. And then we also are set up in a way to nurture them and close deals. Right? So closing deals is really big. And and whether it’s ecommerce or it’s a service company like coaches, course creators, whatever it might be, there are sales funnels and brand strategies that you have to kind of think through and, and that’s what I love to do. And I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I’m passionate about it. So that’s a process that I go through with people is really setting up the brand strategies. And then because I know there’s a lot of designers out there, they won’t tell you this. It’s like, why would you ever hand off such an important piece of your business,

this real estate, that’s a Sales Machine, you hand it off to a designer that’s going to design a site, and they’re like, Yeah, I’ll design your site for $2,000 Bing, and they put up a site, they’re not, they have no growth marketing experience, they don’t know how to do high ROI return on investment strategies, they don’t know how to get leads and sales because they haven’t done it. They’re just designers. You know, so you want someone that this is what I am excited to bring to the table is because I have tons of experience as a growth marketer and digital strategist creating, you know, strategies for big brands and small brands. And I bring that to the table to set up your business the right way. That that is you got to approach this stuff with the right skill sets and things like that. So it’s a really fun process, it shocks me that designers will create a website without doing a brand strategy first. Even if someone has a brand strategy now I have worked with clients who make good money, and we will go through and we do an audit, it’s I call it an audit because Sure, you might have a brand strategy, but I need to make sure I understand it. And I need to make sure that it’s airtight, right to do what we need to do. And so we do an audit and we can go through and refine those things. And that’s important. So you know, it can’t just shocking people are building websites without going through these steps and it’s part of the whole process and you have to do it so that’s that I hope that gives you guys some clarity on what branding is really about and how it plays a role in driving revenue. So when you start putting all these pieces together your business gets exciting and it starts to you’re setting yourself up with the right tools to scale business and I think that’s something that we all want so yeah guys if you have any feedback let me know you can always reach me at Adam at change creator.com I hope this was helpful. And you know what if you do reach out let me know if you want to hear about the brand boys that workshop as well that I mentioned before we got into this conversation and if you have questions just fire them off. And yeah guys, we’ll catch you on the next one. Thanks for tuning into the authentic brand mastery podcast. Don’t forget to stop by change creator calm for more information, fresh articles, content, and our services if you’re looking to build a brand that people love, and please stop by iTunes us a five-star review. We appreciate your support