Building a brand from scratch was something that I was always intrigued and interested in. When I started to think and develop my brand Milieu early education and care there was a lot of factors that went into the thought process such as defining my values, establishing the audience, deciding on the target market, networking, and feedback.
First things first, defining my values played a big part in considering my personal brand. After being in the childcare field for over 10 years, I knew it was important to portray a brand that children, families and the community could relate, feel comfortable with and attracted to. During the values stage of the brand building, vision, mission and philosophy statements were developed to begin the road of a successful brand.
Next came establishing the audience, who was I trying to target. I take this step of the brand creation very seriously as it involved creating an effective marketing strategy that would be a continuous representation of the milieu brand. This step of the brand creation allowed me to tailor the messaging I was portraying, choose the right marketing channels and ultimately reach the families I am most likely trying to target, in this case, families with children aged 0-5 looking for a premium childcare centre.
After this, came the most crucial part, deciding how to brand the brand which was more than just the colour palette or logo that was used, it involved ensuring I had other things such as solid content, website, and social media channels. Essentially, I invested a lot time into researching different brands, brand content and what makes a brand stand out. Networking and connecting with other professionals were crucial to developing, managing, and widening my influence on the brand. I was active in sharing my journey right from the start of the brand creation which included promoting and creating content. The networking phase of the brand development helped me to understand better brand awareness across the target audiences.
As the years have gone on, the brand has developed over time and become a unique premium childcare brand that is well known across both western Sydney and the Illawarra regions of Sydney. The brand over time has continued to build, and this is due to the consistency and the continuation of telling the story of the milieu brand to the wider community.
