Establishing a brand is essential to creating your coaching practice’s identity and a strong, recognizable presence. A brand is a collection of visual elements and core messages that define your coaching practice’s personality, values, and mission.
A branding kit is a handy way to keep your brand elements cohesive, clear, and easy to implement. A well-designed branding kit will make your coaching practice stand out, be more recognizable, attract clients, and help you build a great reputation. Even better, these days, you don’t necessarily need to hire a marketing firm to create a branding kit you can be proud of.
Not sure where to start? Here are some steps to help you create a memorable branding kit that will reflect you and your coaching practice.
1. Define Your Brand’s Personality and Focus
Your brand should align with your personality and area of focus as a coach. So, before you start designing, it’s important to understand how you can represent yourself as a coach with authenticity.
For example, perhaps your compassion and capacity to empower and inspire your clients sets you apart. These attributes should be reflected in every aspect of your branding kit, from the color scheme and the logo to the language you use.
This is all subjective, so consider: What colors, visuals, and keywords do you associate with these key traits? This is a great starting point to define your brand.
2. Define Your Brand Messaging
Developing one to three core messages is critical for any professional coaching business. These messages serve as a “North Star” to guide your brand and can be used to inform the language of your website, informational materials, social media, and all you do. It helps to establish a consistent and coherent brand voice across all communication channels. Messaging should reflect your expertise and focus as a professional coach.
To develop core messages, a professional coaching business should consider what unique value you bring to clients, who your target audience is, and any other key differentiators. Once defined, these important messages will be reflected across your social media, blogs, media interviews, and other channels. Doing so is an effective way to ensure consistency.
In addition, you and your brand should have standard company descriptions that provide a clear and concise summary of the company’s offerings, expertise, and values. You should have a short description for social media profiles and a longer one (about a paragraph long) for use in press releases, your website, speaking opportunities, and more.
By taking the time to develop core messages and standard descriptions, your coaching practice can establish a strong and consistent brand identity that resonates with the right potential clients — without having to reinvent the wheel every time a description is needed.
3. Create a Logo
Your logo is the most important visual element of your branding kit. It’s the symbol that represents your brand and should be easily recognizable (think the Nike swoosh or the Amazon arrow). It can bring your coaching practice to mind in an instant and helps potential clients recognize you in different contexts, such as at an event or on Instagram.
When designing your logo, consider your brand’s personality, values, and target audience. Then choose a font, color scheme, and design that reflects your brand’s unique identity. If you’re not a designer, you can use free online graphic design tools to create a logo that matches your brand’s identity.
4. Choose a Color Scheme
Your color scheme should be consistent across all branding materials, including your website, social media, and any marketing tools. Choose two to three colors that complement each other and reflect your brand’s personality.
For example, if your coaching company focuses on career development, you might choose colors like gold, orange, and red to symbolize success, growth, and confidence. If you are a wellness coach, you might choose calming colors like blue and green.
Whatever colors you select, be sure to note not just the visual but the actual CMYK or RGB codes for the exact colors. This information can be found in the color selection details in any graphics tool and is paramount to keeping your brand colors consistent from one use to the next.
5. Select Fonts
Selecting the right fonts is essential to creating a consistent brand identity. Choose one or two fonts that complement each other and reflect your brand’s personality.
For example, a coaching company focused on professional growth might choose serif fonts, which have little flourishes or embellishments at the end of each letter. Examples include Cambria, Georgia, and Times New Roman. Whereas a wellness coach might choose sans serif fonts like Open Sans, Calibri, or Century Gothic. If you select two fonts for your brand, a good approach is to choose one serif font and one sans serif font.
6. Create a Style Guide
Once you’ve selected your logo, color scheme, and fonts, create a style guide sheet to ensure consistency across all your branding materials. A style guide should include details about your logo, fonts, color palette, core messages, and your practice’s long and short descriptions. It may also include any other visual elements that make up your branding kit. The style guide could also link to templates for business cards, social media post graphic templates, or other handy references. This style guide will provide an easy collection of your company’s guidelines for yourself and any employees, contractors, ad partners, or media you work with who need to have a solid understanding of your brand.
7. Apply Your Branding Kit Across All Channels
Once you’ve created your branding kit and style guide, it’s time to apply it across all your channels. This includes your website, social media profiles, marketing materials, and any other touchpoints where clients interact with your brand. Remember, consistency is key to building a strong brand presence, so make sure your branding is used in everything you deliver.
A Branding Kit will Make Your Coaching Practice Memorable and Recognizable
Building a branding kit for your coaching practice is a helpful way to establish and maintain your brand identity. It helps you create a strong brand presence and makes you stand out from other coaching practices. By defining your brand’s personality and focus, creating a logo, choosing a color scheme and fonts, and creating a style guide, you can ensure consistency across all branding materials and build a recognizable reputation for your coaching company with potential clients that align with you and your brand’s values.
