224 | The 4 Brand Mistakes I Made That Cost Me Clients

Let me guess....you've been in business for YEARS and you *think* you know what strategies will work to bring in new clients... but you're still not getting the leads and bookings you want?

I know this is a common trap that you're falling into...How? Because I fell into it too.

This morning, I had a discovery call with a client where I did zero selling. We talked, we laughed about how awkward it feels being in front of a camera for brand photos, I showed her my packages, and she immediately wanted to book the higher-tier option. No pressure, no convincing, no "selling" everything that's included in the package.... all because my website had already done all the selling for me.

But here's the thing....a few years ago, that same call would have gone completely differently. I would have been stressed, prepping exactly what I'd say, having multiple client galleries and examples ready to pull up live during the call....I would have spent so much time trying to figure out how to justify my prices, and I'd have left the call wondering if she'd actually book.

Here's what changed. I finally stopped making these 4 mistakes that were regularly costing me clients.

As I'm currently going through my own rebrand, I'm realizing just how much has changed over the years (and how simple it is for me to book clients now). These "small" things were holding my business back every single time I talked about my offers and services.

Inside this episode, we're covering:

• The strategy mistake that keeps you guessing instead of knowing what actually makes your clients say "yes"
• Why you're not promoting your services (and it has nothing to do with being "bad at sales")
• The copywriting trap that's making everything way harder than it needs to be
• How your pretty website is actually repelling your dream clients

If you're ready for your website and brand to start doing the heavy lifting and selling for you, these 4 shifts will change everything. I can't wait for you to listen in 🫶

Ways we can work together: 

• <<Website Design>> Create a website so strong that clients are sold on working with you as soon as they find you!
• <<Brand Photography>> Is it time to elevate your business with new brand photos?

I'D LOVE TO CONNECT WITH YOU!

• Say hello on Instagram 👋
• Join the email community ✍🏻
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 🎙

Transcript

Welcome And Rebrand Context

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to Amplify Your Brand and Business, the podcast that helps you create a brand that sells out your offers 24-7 so you don't have to. Today I want to walk you through the four main things that I have been learning as I have been going through a website refresh and more or less an overall rebranding process for my own business. And as someone who does branding with clients as my job, it's really interesting to be both the website designer, brand strategist, and the client all at the same time. I actually just uh released a podcast episode two episodes ago talking about the brand rule that I'm breaking and why I've chosen to do things differently. And today I want to just elaborate a little bit more on that. So if you haven't listened to that episode, 10 out of 10 recommend you can still listen to this one first and then listen to that one after, but highly recommend going in and listening into that because that has been uh one of the biggest permission slips that I've given myself to like let myself do my website rebrand differently than all the experts tell you online to do. And so I think that's part of why this process has been so fulfilling and so uh insightful. Honestly, I've just learned so much from this. And that's what I want to walk you through today. I want to take you through everything that I'm learning in real time so that if you're thinking about going through a rebrand, if you're thinking about redesigning your website and you're in that spot where it feels too overwhelming to think about. Like you don't even know where to start, you don't know what to focus on, you don't know where to put your time and energy, where it's gonna be the most impactful. You don't even know what the heck having a brand is. That's something that so many of my clients are like, I don't even know, do I have a strong brand? Like, I don't know. So let's talk through today the four main things that I'm learning. And if you haven't, if we haven't met yet, I'm Krista Marie. I'm a website designer and a brand strategist and a brand photographer for women business owners. And over the last six years, I've coached hundreds of women inside of this podcast, inside programs, communities, and inside of my offers. And in each episode of the podcast, I'm here to help you create a brand that does the heavy lifting for you. A website that has the strategy built into it so that when people find you online and they will find you online because you have a strategy that allows you to be visible online. But when they find you online, they feel so compelled to reach out and book because your website does all of the selling for you. Like that is the goal around here. That is my mission. That is what I help clients achieve and do. And that's what I'm continuing to do for myself. So let's go ahead and dive in. So, first things first, guessing is not a very good strategy. And what I mean by that is guessing at your branding, guessing at what content makes people convert, guessing at your data, guessing at what makes people inquire. Like basically having a strategy that revolves around guessing is very stressful. And this is something that when I before I really understood SEO, before I understood what makes a good website, before I understood what makes clients reach out, before I understood the importance of impactful messaging and not just fluffy messaging, like before all of that, I spent a lot of time guessing. I was guessing at my copy, I was guessing at the data, I was guessing at my SEO and keywords. I I spent a lot of time guessing. And at the time, I had been in business for over 10 years. So I thought that I knew a lot. I mean, to be honest, I thought I knew what was working. I thought I knew what would convert. I thought I knew what my clients wanted. Like it was almost a dangerous place for me to be in because I had been in business long enough that I thought I knew. I thought I knew what would make clients reach out. I thought I knew what would convert. I thought I knew the keywords that I needed to use for my website. Like I thought that I knew enough of the strategy that I could guess and it would be okay. And I'm realizing now, now that I have built a business that helps other business owners create a strong brand, a strong website, an SEO strategy, helping them be found on Google. Once I've done that for them, and because I've done that for myself, I'm realizing how important the data is. And I used to get so overwhelmed by thinking about the data. Like logging into Google Analytics, I remember anytime I would log into anything that tracked stats or analytics or any sort of data, I would literally feel this like just clenched stomach. Like I would feel this anxiety rush because I had no idea what these numbers meant. And every time I would look at the numbers, I would always think like I don't know what these mean, but I feel like they're too low. Like, and that was a really scary place to be in of I feel like this isn't working, and I feel like I don't understand what to do in order to make it better. And part of what I did, which was not helpful at the time, was like instead of actually breaking it down or like getting help and support and helping me figure it out, I just wouldn't look at the data and I would just keep guessing. And that spiral is what kept me feeling stuck for so long because I just felt so overwhelmed. I felt so frustrated by it. And so I want to share today, like one of the things that I am so purposefully doing now is I am looking at the data. I'm looking at the numbers, I'm looking at what's making clients convert. I actually talked in my last podcast episode about how I've been on this visibility uh challenge, which has been so fun. Today I actually just realized I have hit one million views in my content in the last like three weeks, which is so mind-blowing to me to think that one million people have viewed my content for my trial reels. Um, but I'm looking at the data, right? I'm seeing which hooks are converting. I'm seeing which ones are getting the most engagement. I'm not just looking at the visibility and the numbers and being like, oh, cool, how fun. Look at all the people, look at all the visibility I'm getting. I'm actually tracking, but what does that mean? And to give you even more behind the scenes of that, I had reels that absolutely took off. Obviously, I've had one million views, but I haven't gotten as many followers as I thought that I would get. And here's the thing most people miss, right? Is they see the numbers, they see the villa, the visibility, and the things that they start to track from their data is just the visibility, like how many people am I reaching? But visibility doesn't matter if there's no conversions. It's the same for trial reels, it's the same for normal reels, it's the same for your website, it's the same for anywhere that you show up online. And so it's so important to not be afraid of the data and not be afraid to like start to understand what that means. And I know how overwhelming it can feel if you are not a data girl. Like I never considered myself a data person. Fun fact, I actually went to school. Um, my degree, I started off with a degree in accounting, and I realized real fast after I started getting into like the actual accounting classes, like accounting is not for me. And I had always told myself this story of like, I'm not a data data person. I'm not a numbers person, like I'm not that. But here's the thing is when you're growing a business, it actually is so helpful to understand the data because then you can uh double down on what's actually working, right? You're no longer guessing, you're no longer trying to figure it out. But I also understand some people are just not into data. And if that's you, that's totally okay. That's why I'm here to help. I love looking at the data and I love looking at the numbers and I love trying and experimenting new things and thinking about the actual strategy behind what you're doing. So that's first and foremost. That's lesson number one. Lesson number two is it sounds so obvious, but when you're excited about your website and about your strategy, you're going to get more leads and more inquiries. Here's something that I see time and time and time again. When someone comes to me for uh website design, when someone comes to me for brand photos, but I would say, especially with website design, they're typically in a bit of a slower season. A lot of my clients that come to me for website design, they're not, it depends. I would say 70% of them are in slower seasons and they they're having slower bookings and slower leads and inquiries, which is why they're coming to me for website design and strategy because what they're doing isn't working. And so our goal is to create the new website, create a new strategy, get more visibility, like create more conversions. Like we have this holistic approach of what we're gonna do in order to get them out of their slower season. Sometimes people come to me for website design and they're busy, but they're busy with um clients who are at their old price points. So, like if they're in the middle of going through um creating new offers, launching new things, targeting people at a higher price point, I will have clients come to me and say, like, I am so burnt out right now. I have so many clients. I need to create this like next level of website so that I can kind of stop attracting the lower price clients to get higher priced clients finding me. And so that is definitely something that happens. But there's kind of a common factor on all of these is that usually when someone comes to me for website design and strategy, it's because they are no longer, they no longer feel aligned with and they no longer feel excited about their current website. And I don't just mean excited, like, ooh, look how pretty it is, look how nice it is. I mean their website isn't bringing in leads. They're frustrated because they're not getting the right clients, they're attracting price shoppers, they're getting people that are inquiring and then ghosting them, like they're not excited about their website because they they can feel that it's not doing its job. And when you can feel like your website isn't doing its job, you're less excited to talk about and promote your offers. And this is actually something that as I'm going through this rebrand, I'm actually feeling this in real time, if I'm being honest with you, because I had, I'm completely revamping my website design package, which I am so excited about. Like it is, oh my gosh, like there's so much more included now, and there's so much more design and strategy and copywriting and like SEO strategy. Like, there's so much more that's going into it. But I found that I wasn't really talking about it and I haven't really talked about it a ton, like online on Instagram, because my sales page, like my page that I had about it on my website, is out of date. And I need you to hear this, right? It's not because I'm lazy. It's not because I don't want to sell it, it's not because I am like procrastinating or I'm bad at selling or I'm bad at being a business owner. Like, that's not I, it's not any of those things. I have hesitated to promote it because it feels out of integrity to send people to a website page that has out-of-date information. It has nothing to do with me being lazy, being bad at business, being bad at selling. Like, I just don't want to confuse people by sending them to this website page that feels out of date. And this is where so many people come to me with their where they are with their website uh strategy or like with their website itself, is that it doesn't actually feel like it reflects their current offers, who they are, the service they provide. Like, especially if it's something that you created multiple years ago, like it's a website with copy and everything from three plus years ago. It's normal for you to feel disconnected from that. And when you feel disconnected from that, you're likely not promoting and talking about and sending people to your website that often. And I need you to hear it's not because you're bad at business, it's not because you're bad at selling, it's not because you're lazy, it's because it feels out of integrity to send someone to a website that feels out of date. But I need us to remove this shame factor because this is what holds so many people back, is they tell themselves this story of I'm not promoting my services, I'm not talking about my offers enough, and then they automatically make it mean something about them. Babe, it means nothing about you. It means you don't want to send people to an out-of-date website, and that makes perfect sense. Like literally, it makes perfect sense. And so when you feel excited about your website because you know it has up-to-date information, it conveys the value, you know that there's strategy built in and baked into it to make people actually feel compelled to reach out when they're reading through the copy and they're reading and scrolling through the pages. Like when you have that level of trust in your website, it becomes so much easier to talk about and sell and promote your services because you have a place to send people to. When someone asks you, this sounds great, where can I learn more? You don't feel that pang of like shame of, oh, I have to send them to this website that, and then I have to caveat it and like give them all these things, like, well, like this is different and this is, and all of a sudden now you don't you're like, ugh, like they're not gonna hire me. Why would they hire me? And so when you feel excited and you have confidence in and trust in your website, you're naturally gonna be making more sales because you're naturally talking about your offers and your services more. So that's the second lesson. The third lesson, writing copy is so much easier for me now that I have invested in the trainings, the tools, the many, many years of writing copy for myself and now writing copy for my clients. But let me tell you this. I mentioned this at the beginning. Being the brand strategist, copywriter, website designer, and the client right now for myself is really opening my eyes to why I'm so excited about my website design offer. Because every single client that comes to me is like, they don't like writing copy. And I get it. That was me for many years of my business. I didn't understand, like copywriting just felt like this thing that was like, I'm just gonna write a bunch of stuff and hope that it connects. That was again like a lot of guesswork, a lot of just like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna just mimic what I see other people doing. Like that was my copywriting strategy. And being on the other side of it now, having a process that I've not only built for clients, but that I'm now taking myself through, it felt so good. When I tell you my copywriting process for my entire new website design page, I did it for myself, like as a client and as a copywriter. So literally from start to end as a client, like inputting copy things, and then as a copywriter finishing the copy in like a day and a half. And it's like a 15-section website. It is a well, not a 15-section, it's a 15-second, it's a 15-section website page. So this one page has a lot of copy on it. And I was able to do it so quickly. And when I was in my client seat, I was able to voice note, just like brain dump, literally just word vomit, everything, all of the answers, all of the questions, all of the things that felt super easy for me to answer from a client perspective. And then when I switched hats and I put on my copywriter uh hat, I then was able to just take all of the information that I had submitted to myself and then write copy from it. And I realized, like, wow, this actually does feel so streamlined. And not many copywriters have this type of a process. I can also tell you there are very few web designers that offer copy as a part of their services. 90% of the time, when you reach out to a website designer, probably 95% of the time, they tell you to find someone to write your copy if you don't want to do it yourself. And that's fair. Like, not all people like writing copy, and I totally get it. But it feels so good to have landed on a process that not only feels good from a client perspective because you don't have the pressure of like, I need to write all of this out. I need to like answer all of these questions in this Google Doc and write up multiple paragraphs and try to explain myself and try to make sure it sounds like me. Like, all of that pressure is removed. You get to literally voice note, brain dump, voice, like word vomit, a whole bunch of just like simple answers and responses. Like it's not like hard questions you need to think about. It's like literally questions about you, your business, your passion, your approach. Like it's you just talking about your business, and then I then take the strategy part of it of like, okay, now let's turn that into finished and refined copy. But all of that to say, uh, writing copy for most people is hard. And I will tell you, any time I've had to write copy for myself for my website prior to this year, I struggled, like really, really struggled. And I've talked about this in a previous episode, I think. But I even hired a copywriter at one point a few years back in my business. I think that was now like four years ago. And I did so much guessing. They sent me this um questionnaire with all of these questions. And and some of the questions were easy to answer. It was like, tell me about your offers, you know, tell me about your approach. But then some of the questions were hard to answer because it was like, what makes your uh like what makes your dream buyers like buy? Like what content makes them reach out? Like some of it was strategy questions that I had no idea of the answer to. And so all that to say, like I have been through this process in many different forms and ways, and I'm so grateful now to offer something to clients that doesn't feel so overwhelming, and that's just like oh, it's just a huge weight. And being a client right now and doing it for myself, I'm like, oh, this feels so much better. So that's the third lesson. The fourth thing that I have learned is strategy, like putting strategy behind your brand, your business, the things that you're implementing and doing is how you win in all aspects. Let me just tell you. So I had a discovery call today for a brand photo shoot for a woman business owner. We're doing her brand photos in New York City in August. And part of what I told her is from being a photographer for 15 years for working with brands for the last five, six years, the thing that separates my process from every other photographer is the strategy behind it because I don't just show up with my camera and shoot. Like I don't just like on the fly figure out what we're doing. There's so much strategy that gets baked into it. I have a client questionnaire that I'm sending over. Like I'm also doing more extensive research around like, okay, who is your dream client? Like, how can we have photos that convey not only photos that feel like you and your brand, but photos that are gonna connect with your dream client, right? Because if you're, for example, targeting um like firms and larger companies and CEOs of larger companies, if that's your client, we're gonna take very different photos for that than we would if you were targeting small women business owners. Like those photos are inherently gonna have to feel different. And we have to figure out okay, how do we make them uh feel connected to your dream client, but also feel like they represent you and still have your personality in it, right? And so we had this conversation around the strategy behind the photos and why it's so important. And it's the same thing with website design. If you have a pretty website design that doesn't have conversion strategy built into it, if you haven't thought about the user journey of like when they first see your first header on your homepage, as they scroll, the sections that come after it matter so much. Like you can't just haphazardly throw pretty looking sections with random copy throughout the webpage because it might look nice visually, but from your potential client's perspective, like as they scroll, there are certain questions that need to be answered. There needs to be headers that are literally speaking so clearly to them that they're like, oh my God, this is literally a thought I had yesterday, and you're addressing it here on your website. Like, there's so much strategy that has to be baked in. It's not just about pretty visuals. It's the same for your brand photos, it's the same for your website. Like, it can't just be pretty. You have to have something that's built to convert, and conversion is backed on research. It's backed on data. And so many business owners, again, have this aversion to figuring out the data and the research. And I totally get it because I've been there. But my job as your brand strategist, as your designer, as your brand photographer, is to help you understand the research, to help you understand the data so that you have visuals and a website and a brand that actually is intentional and converts. Like that is my job. And so I'm just realizing more and more, especially as I'm doing this rebrand for myself, it's really forcing me to practice what I preach, which to be honest, for anyone who's a business owner, you know how hard that is. It's so hard to take our own advice. It's so easy for me to do this for clients. It's so easy for me to help other people do this. And then we have to turn it around and be like, oh, I'm also the client in this situation. I'm also the one who has to take my own advice. I'm also the one who has to do the uncomfortable work of like, you know, answering these questions about myself and my approach and what makes me different. And like, it's so interesting to flip the tables and to be your own client. Like anyone who's a business owner knows it's just kind of an uncomfortable place to be. But that's what we do, right? We put ourselves in the uncomfortable situations for a bit because we know it's gonna grow, it's gonna stretch us, and that's gonna be the thing that helps bring us to that next level. And so that's where I'm at right now. This rebrand process has been so helpful. Um, it's also just so exciting to see. See it working in real time. Like having the just this discovery call this morning with my client for the brand photos, like literally, I did zero selling on it. I literally did not sell. We had a whole conversation. We were laughing. We were joking. We were talking about like, you know, just like the ins and outs of like brand photo shoots. And then I told her, I showed her my two packages. And then she literally was like, yep, I want the higher package. Like, this is what I want. Like, save the date. This is when I want to book you. And it was like, there was no pressure. I didn't have this long sales script. I didn't have to like justify all of the things that were in the process because my website already did that. It's not just about having the pretty photos. It's not just about having people look and go, oh wow, you take really pretty pictures. My website sold the details, it sold the strategy. I got to show up and have a conversation with this really amazing woman and like talk about how cool her brand session is going to be. And then like she's booking. And it's the same thing with website design. When I have website design inquiries come in, they literally will tell me I have to communicate really difficult and like heavy things on my website. Like I have to try to explain things to my clients. And they tell me, you've done such a good job of cleanly, thoroughly explaining things on your website. Like that's what I want. I want my website to feel as clean and clear and like easy to read as yours. Like my website does that job for me. And that's the goal. That is the whole goal is to have the website, to have the brand, does all the selling for you so you get to hop on discovery calls. You don't have to justify your prices. You don't have to like cringe before you say the price point. Like you already know they're here and they're in. I hope that you remember. I am just so, so grateful to be a part of your journey. For if you've been listening in for a while, like thank you so much for being here. If we're not connected yet on Instagram, please uh follow along at Hey Krista Marie, send me a DM, introduce yourself, just say hi. I love connecting with all of you, like in real life, like even though it's virtually, because right now I'm just like awkwardly talking to my microphone. My dogs are here and like nobody's around. So please come say hi. Let me know that you're listening in. I would love to hear your takeaways or like your favorite episode or like anything you want me to talk about next on the podcast. If this is your first time listening in, thank you so much for being here. I am just so honored for you to take the time. I know that it is um it's a big ask to dedicate 25 minutes of your time to listen to something and just know that I don't take that lightly. And I hope that this gave you some little nuggets to be able to walk away with. I hope you remember you deserve to have a brand that does all of the selling for you. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.