When Your Brand Feels Off: The Real Reason You’ve Stopped Showing Up

Ever looked at your brand and thought, “This just… doesn’t feel like me anymore”?

Yep, same. In this episode, I take you behind the scenes of my own rebranding wake-up call (hello five-year-old podcast cover 👋) and guide you through the emotional, visual, and strategic impact of being out of alignment with your brand.

Whether your product photos feel outdated, your Instagram bio makes you cringe, or you're attracting bargain hunters instead of dream customers—this one’s for you.

I’ll walk you through:

• The sneaky signs you’ve outgrown your brand (it’s not just a vibe—there’s strategy behind it)
• How small visual and voice tweaks can skyrocket your confidence and conversions
• The 4-step mini-brand audit to reconnect with your identity
• Why you don’t need a total rebrand to evolve - just a smart, soulful recalibration
• The journal prompt I use with clients to align their brand with their next-level business

This episode is part pep talk, part strategy, and 100% permission slip to grow.

🎧 Grab your notebook, your coffee (or in my case, your tea), and tune in. Let’s realign that brand energy and make sure it’s working for you, not against you.

👇 DM me @thelotco and tell me what brand shift you’re making this month!

Transcript

Reconnecting with Your Brand: Aligning Identity with Growth

 Hello and welcome to today's episode. My name's Melissa. Today what we're gonna be doing is talking  about are you still building a brand that you even like? Let's check in. Podcast, part therapy session, if you will. So here's the deal. You have maybe got your gorgeous logo, you've got dreamy product photos, and you're loving your products, but you're still asking yourself, is this brand really actually me anymore or worse, are you even attracting the right customers or just random?

You found you on TikTok? Today we're gonna unpack how your brand identity impacts your business visually, but also emotionally and strategically. So let's get into it how your brand impacts everything. So your brand identity isn't just your fonts and colors, it's the feeling people get when they interact with your business, and that feeling impacts how your website converts.

Whether your Instagram followers actually buy, whether you feel confident selling your product and whether people refer you, remember you and return again and again. When your brand feels off, you stop showing up with confidence. And this is something I've been going through lately, like my podcast cover is, needs, five years old, needs some rework.

I've been doing some rebranding, looking at new photos for my business as well, and just thinking, I need to show up differently. I need to be more me in how I show up. So this is exactly why I'm bringing you this episode today because it just feels like a perfect timing. As I said, when your brand feels off, you stop showing up with confidence.

You second guess your content. You don't pitch as much, you don't sell as much. You stop sending as many emails 'cause you're not feeling as good about it. You're in the business, but you're a little disconnected from the brand. And signs that you've outgrown your brand are things like your visuals feel a bit meh.

 Like they're not quite you. They're something you did made two years ago. Your product descriptions sound a bit stiff or generic.   You cringe at your old IG captains. Actually, I. That's probably everyone because it was very different even two years ago what we were showing up with on socials.

So probably ignore that one. You're attracting bargain hunters when you want quality buyers. You've evolved, but your website and messaging haven't caught up, and this mismatch creates confusion for you and your customers. And I see it often when there's a disconnect between. Your packaging or what your website colors are, or what your voice is on your social, and then you go to your website, it's like completely different.

It just doesn't match at all. And there's no, connection also between say your email and actually what your landing pages are. If you're sending people to your website, all that sort of stuff starts to get disconnected.

 what I have seen is that clients when they change, update their packaging or they update their photos or they do a new shoot, even the voice of their emails, you instantly start converting better because not just that the product has changed because you show up differently as well.

So here's the good news. You don't need a full 10 k rebrand or a full website overhaul to realign. You could just add in a new color,

instead of being a, bright, bold color for your packaging, you've gone to a more neutral tone so that it the aesthetically pleasing for your retail stores as well. And it really tapped into the new mood and feel of who you are. I've seen when a candle business changed their outer packaging and actually their sticker on their product,

they started adding a lot more storytelling to the, everything that they were talking about with their brand, with their product. And that had a huge impact on them. Another client, refined their visuals, tightened their range, really went through the data, looked at what was their best seller's best categories, and.

Removed the emotion and got into the data and started to, like stripping back what they actually offered to their customers. And it made it a lot more aligned, a lot more focused on their best sellers, the products that they love the most. And that had a huge impact on their conversion as well.

So sometimes it's about small brand shifts and that can give you big confidence boost.

So here's a few things just to realign with.

You might just need to review, you might just need a new theme for your website. Maybe you just need some new fonts that you haven't, you've had the same ones for three years now. Maybe you need to look at. All your lifestyle shots and really up the ante of where they're shot, what that looks like.

One of the brands that I love, that everyone, lots of people love is go to skincare. And the other day I noticed that they actually are changing their packaging because I had so many complaints about the contrast in their packaging, which those of you who know me well know, I carry on about that all the time.

And so I was so excited to see that because it's one of those things, it's yes, okay. Finally they're just having that little update, let's make it easier to read what our product is. And whilst it doesn't align with their original packaging and their original look, it's still the same product and they're just updating the visibility of the product and how to read it.

And the. The packaging that they're using. So a huge difference that's gonna make, so one thing to go to do when you are at this stage, you're like, oh, I'm just not sure if I outgrow my brand. I'm not sure if it's who I am anymore. A great little framework to go through is to step one ee your ideal customer.

Like who are you really selling to now, when you first started, you may have had a completely different idea about who your customer was, who your target customer was, and who your ideal customer was. . So , go back, dive into your data. Have a look at who your best customers are, what's unique about them, what's the same about all your top customers?

What's changed about them? Are they in a different stage of life? Are their values the same as what you originally had? Is their style and look and aesthetic the same? What's different, what's evolved? And really start to understand who your core customer is and your ideal customer.

Number two is to redefine your vibe., If I asked you what three words to describe your, any of your brand, what would they be? Now this is so hard to do. However, there's a distinction between, being a softer, nurturing brand, a bold and cheeky lux and minimal, whether you are natural and earthy,

whether you are fast and energetic, like what is the energy of your brand? Can you define it in three words? Number three is audit your touch points. Make sure that there's consistency in the look and feel of all of your touch points. And I'm gonna go into that in another episode talking about your customer journey and your buying journey as well.

But let's just cover, so your website, your emails, your packaging, your Instagram bio, your first pinned photos, your products pages, do they all align? Are they in line with who you are now and what your actual brand represents, or what your retail store represents? Do they still match your current brand vibe of who you are?

If not, is it a tweak of color? Is it a change of font? How can we update these things? And again, you don't have to do a full rebrand to do this. Step four is to choose one visual and one voice update this month. So is it the new font, is it that you are in the middle of about to get new product photography?

Is it that you have a new tagline or a new way to describe what you do or your, to describe your key values, your key point of difference. It isn't about perfection, like it's always something that you are always refining, always moving forward. You're always tweaking, you're always adjusting. And I've said this before, but I think the sooner you realize that

Business is a journey, and it's a journey that you should enjoy along the way. It shouldn't be about the end destination. It should be about how can you constantly fall in love with your business all the time and reinvent and reevaluate and adjust, and start to figure out, have it in time, become more and more you, and more and more what exactly what you want it to be.

You are always gonna evolve. You're always gonna transform. , You should always be editing and adjusting, as you move forward, as you grow and scale.

So something for you to do now and hopefully not driving, little journal prompt for you and wrap up. So what I want you to think about is something here, and this may be something you grab a notebook, put it on your notes, on your phone, whatever it might look like for you. What would my brand look like if it matched the business that I want next year?

 Would you be elevated? Who would you become? Would you be simpler? Would you be bolder? Would you be more you? What's the creative direction that you wanna take your brand in? So what would my brand look like if it matched the business that I want next year or this year?

You're allowed to evolve. Your brand can too. If you're feeling disconnected from your visuals, your voice, or your ILD customer, it's not a red flag. It's just a sign that you're growing and that's a good thing. Alright, so you don't need a full brand or you just need to reconnect with who your brand is and what you wanna become.

DM me on Instagram at the lot co. Tell me one thing. You're updating your brand this month, or head to www.thelotco.com.au to work with me inside my programs and get that alignment and profitability locked in.