Tips to Grow your Business: Branding and Marketing 101 with Chelly Ontis

We know that many of you have started creative businesses with your resin art and that others are thinking about taking that plunge. Since we are community of small business owners, we wanted to help our artists start or grow their business. Today we are beginning at the beginning by covering the basics of branding and marketing!  

We know that most of our artists don’t have any background in business. And, as creatives, you’d much rather make beautiful things than focus on learning how to run a business. We also know that running a creative business can seem overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be! We want to help make it as easy as possible for all of you so that you can have the confidence to take that next step. Luckily for us, Chelly Ontis of We Can Make That has given her time and talent to help us with that mission! Chelly is designs SVGs and has been a freelance graphic designer for 20 years. She also helps others learn and implement branding and marketing. And the best part is that you can start right now, with no experience, wherever you are on your business building journey! Chelly is going to help you define your brand and market yourself. 

Branding and Marketing 101 with Chelly Ontis

Some of you may have caught Chelly when she went live on our Counter Culture DIY Artist Support Facebook page to teach us about branding and marketing. If you missed it you can watch the video below to get all of her pearls of wisdom. We also wanted to sum them up for you here so that you can easily refer back to some of the highlights of what she covered. First things first, let’s do some definitions so we are all on the same page! 

What is a Brand?

The way that Chelly explains it, your brand is the image that is assigned to your name. She told us to think of Joanna Gains. What is her brand? It’s farmhouse. Whether you follow her or not, if you know who she is, your mind automatically brings up an image of farmhouse. If you are a tumbler artist, your brand will have a lot to do with your tumbler specialty. Do you mostly make cute cups for kids and moms? That’s your brand. Are you more into making cups with skulls and motorcycles? That’s your brand. Your brand also has to do with who you are as a person. Your passions, your identity, and your journey are all important parts of your brand. 

What is Marketing?

Simply put, marketing is how you use your brand. It’s how you build trust, build relationships, and ultimately build a genuine following and customer base. People want to buy from other people which means that they want to know who you are. Marketing is how you show them what your brand is and your brand is who you are. Even if you have never learned a thing about marketing before, you can start now. And you should! Chelly says that the day you should start marketing is the day before you start you business. But it’s never too late to get going and Chelly is telling us how!

How to Start Branding and Marketing

In the video below, Chelly goes into great detail about how to get started. But here are some of the key points…The first thing you need to do is establish your brand. To do that there are three steps:

1. Define your business. What is the passion behind your product? Who are you speaking to? What is your style?
2. Define your ideal client. Who do your products appeal to?
3. Establish your buzz words. This is similar to SEO, they are the words that your customers would type into google to find you. For example, “glitter tumbler”.
4. Once you have all three of these things, you put them together to to make a logo for you company. Choose colors and fonts that you will use across all medias and stick with them. All of these things together form your branding foundation

You don’t need to know everything about branding and marketing to be able to define your brand and begin marketing yourself. You just need to know about you!

Once you’ve established your brand it’s time to start marketing! In today’s world of business, most of our marketing happens online. This is done through the social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest are the main areas to focus on. But you don’t need to jump into all of them at once if you are just starting out. Stick with what you are comfortable with at first and start branching out from there. We will be publishing a post soon all about how to make social media work for your business so stay tuned!

For now, just make sure that your brand is consistent on all platforms including your website, if you have one. Also, make sure that your brand speaks to the problem that your solving for your customers. For instance, a beach tumbler can mean calm for a mom who is chasing after littles!

More on Marketing…

Chelly says that, when it comes to marketing, we should “stop selling and start adding value”. Tell your customers stories about your products and explain how they will add value to their lives instead of offering a coupon. Tell them how your tumbler brought joy to that tired mom chasing her kids through the park. Explain how you make your cups and why you are passionate about them.

Marketing can seem kind of scary when you are first starting out but Chelly helps break it down into simple steps for you! She also has a Marketing Planner that is an amazing tool you can use. It breaks marketing down for you day by day so you always know the next steps to take! And she has a free Facebook group that you can join with marketing tutorials and tutorials that show you exactly how to use the planner. It’s a great way to get started and to easily keep yourself on track!

Watch Chelly’s full presentation here!

And that’s your mini lesson in branding and marketing! A big thanks to Chelly for sharing her knowledge and experience with us. You can find Chelly on Facebook, Instagram, and on her website. We hope this information helps you to build relationships with your customers and take your business to the next level. No matter where you are on your business journey, you can start implementing these steps today! 

You can find more awesome video tutorials like this one on our YouTube channel!

Be sure to follow us on Pinterest so you can stay on top of everything that’s new and never miss a blog post!

If you want more inspiration and information we have a Facebook group for that. Join us in Counter Culture DIY Artist Support where we, and other artists, offer ideas, answer questions, and support each other!

Do you have an art project using any of our products that you want to share? Send it to us at support@counterculturediy.com, and we can feature them here!