Building brand awareness is so important for your small business to survive! Let’s say you’ve had this dream for a while now, and all of the stars have aligned. You’ve launched your business, your branding is on point, you have all the resources to be successful, but you’re missing one thing - brand awareness. Without brand awareness, how well can your small business really do? Stick around to find out the answer, as this blog will touch on 

Why Building a Framework helps Build Brand Awareness

What is Brand Awareness? 

Brand awareness is how familiar an audience is with a specific brand. The audience should be able to instantly recognize the brand by looking at the brand's spokesperson, colors, themes, strategies,etc. Brand awareness is crucial for helping keep a company afloat because it is often the differentiator in a crowded market. If two businesses are selling a similar product or offer, often brand awareness will be the deciding factor for a consumer's choice for a note or the other, even over price; meaning, often consumers would prefer to buy from a business or person with whom they are familiar even if the familiar product/offer is more expensive.  The more your small business is recognized, the more it will succeed. 

When a business is just getting started and its spokesperson, colors, themes, etc. have not become recognizable it is sometimes its unique framework that consumers might start to recognize first thus giving businesses that adopt and communicate a framework early on in their life an edge over their competition. So...

What is a Framework? 

According to Whatis.com s a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure literally or figuratively by generating more value (I added that italicized portion in to better explains how this concept can apply to small business owners.

A framework identifies patterns for success and business owners should articulate their own frameworks to help facilitate that success for others.  A business owner can use a framework they create in their marketing efforts, so potential buyers understand how the product or value will be created for them OR a framework can be taught, so their community can use this framework to create value for themselves.

How to Create a Framework

Just like with most things, setting up your framework can sometimes be the hardest part. You have to think about yourself as the consumer, and think when I purchased from my business  “Did I get to my intended result?”. If you didn’t, think about what steps need changing. Follow these simple steps outlined by Russel Brunson in his book  Expert Secrets:

• 1. Create your framework hypothesis: make a bullet list that you would want to teach yourself before you began this journey. Organize it into an outline in an order that makes sense
• 2. Test your framework hypothesis on yourself
• 3. Give your framework a proprietary name: give it an easy name so people can remember the process by the name itself
• 4. Create a description: “(Framework name) My X-step framework/system/process) for (result).”

Communicating Your Framework

 Russel Brunson gives a great example of explaining his framework to his audience. Instead of going in chronological steps of just explaining his framework, he shares stories along the way to paint a better picture of it. He explains it as telling a story, building the value and then giving the audience that piece of the framework. 

His process looks like this: 

1. Build your framework. 
2. Teach a strategy. 
3. Teach a tactic. 
4. Show examples. 

Listen to Russel’s full podcast on his secret framework steps here. 

Your Framework Helps Build Brand Awareness

 People will start associating you with what they’ve learned from you, or how you have your framework laid out. You will develop a way of teaching and interacting with your ideal customer avatar (ICA), and people will remember this. Your teaching thought process and actions will resonate with those interested in your small business. 

Stay consistent, test out frameworks and keep your audience interested! If your framework stands out from others, your brand will be recognized before someone else's. I hope you start researching more frameworks, and determine what strategies work best for you!