Meet Elizabeth Doerr of Branding By Elizabeth

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Doerr.

Elizabeth, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin? 
My name is Elizabeth Doerr, and I am the heart behind Branding By Elizabeth, an independent multimedia management service based in Michigan but available everywhere. How did it all start? It’s tough to say. I was homeschooled in mid-Michigan with the only outlet I had being the internet & my own creativity to pass the days. Growing up on the internet had its’ challenges and drawbacks, but I feel as though it also gave me a major market advantage, looking back. 

As soon as I was able to graduate at 17, I packed my bags and moved across the country to pursue interior design and photography. I landed myself Interior Design Showroom jobs in my late teens, which allowed me to build a portfolio learning of architecture, symmetry & color theory, which allowed me to obtain a grasp on my own personal style development and online passion. It wasn’t long into my first interior design job out west when I was asked to start taking over product photography and social media management for the firms I was working for at the time. Pretty soon, I was able to be part-time in media management wherever I worked and even began traveling across The USA to build my own professional portfolio with the kind of work I loved to produce. I spent years behind closed doors quietly taking in and researching internet trends & waves, demographics, platform languages, and everything in between as these platforms grew up with me with a hope that one day, I could be doing this kind of work by myself, for myself, to build my own brand and my own little empire of success. Anything from staging, photographing & promoting department store windows to being the photographer and media manager at interior design firms help to build the style and portfolio I’m able to showcase today. 

At 22, I moved back to my hometown in Bay City, Michigan, to be closer with my family and take a step back in my career. I landed myself a job in a dive-bar restaurant as their Branding Manager and bartender on weekends. It felt like my dream job, I had full control over creative projects and their media overhaul with the goal to educate, empower, and establish a new demographic to get new people through the door and our regulars excited for new stories and opportunities. I spent hours and hours building an interactive online menu, prioritizing product photography of their food and cocktails, planning new cocktail menu releases, and creating my own graphic design for menus corresponding with themed menu releases, then to be able to plan, coordinate, and publish on our social media and interact and engage with our online community there about our own release, it felt like a branding nerd’s dream. Working every single weekend from 2 pm to 2 am being the barback of a tiny hometown bar, learning and picking the brains of local regulars to learn more of the area, and the bar itself, and its history then, once Monday morning hit, it was back to promoting and taking all the information I had learned over the weekend to continue perfecting and producing their brand to the city that loved them so dearly. It was the first job I had where I could dump over 70 hours a week into it and not bat an eye, simply because I loved the work so much that it didn’t matter to me how much time I put into the job to make it perfect. 

By autumn of 2023, it was time to me to part ways with the job I loved so dearly and begin my freelance journey; I took an entire month to put together my portfolio and website to portray everything I had built in the last 10 years of graphic design and photography, and, by September of 2023, I had fully launched my brand and services as Branding By Elizabeth; offering graphic design and logo services, social media management, branding revamping and consulting, web design, calligraphy & anything in between. It started as just freelance art commissions for individual drawing or graphic design projects, and now I’m able to take on accounts of all sizes for media management, overhaul, and consulting while still taking on fun freelance projects in between! 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There’s no such thing as smooth sailing in starting your own business by yourself, but the key is to find the little joys and victories even in the tough patches. There are little hurdles we face every day, not just as small business owners but as individual freelance artists. The first day on your own, wondering in the beginning if this work and stress is worth it and if you’ll be able to make it long term on your own, down to the legal aspects of starting your own company and the daily drive to promote and keep the business afloat. The freelance artistry field gets more and more complicated and competitive by the day, therefore making it harder and more overwhelming to get the word out about yourself and your business. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about Branding By Elizabeth?
Branding By Elizabeth is a personalized, individually owned multimedia branding management service specializing in the perfecting and promoting of your brand and business. Offering services of all levels for social media management for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, & Google Business Front, Graphic Design for anything from event flier design to full logo revamps, to Website Design and Storefront UI Building, to Branding Consultations and ReBranding Overhauls. My favorite services I love working on are product and/or project staging & photography. Anything your small business needs to succeed in the internet world is something I specialize in and am passionate about managing and pursuing. What sets me apart from other alike businesses is the personalized drive and passion I put into each individual project and account that I have. Countless hours into researching your brand, its history & beginnings, present and future to then discuss and dream of what it has been and could be, then formulating and structuring how to make it happen in an efficient and easily consumable way is precisely what I love about what I’ve chosen to do. I’ve dedicated my life to helping brands advertise and show the world how their team and creators see themselves, showing themselves to the world how their imagination sees themself. I’m most proud of the qualifications I’ve been able to achieve on my own as a freelance artist and media specialist, being self-taught and keeping an independent business afloat for 6 months now is a huge achievement I am greatly proud of and beyond grateful to have! 

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Communal Creativity makes me happy; creating with other creators. Seeing the sparkle in business owners’ eyes when they discuss where they see the future of their company and beginning to formulate a structure of how to make that happen lights a spark in me that never goes out. Bouncing ideas off of each other, sharing mockups & fine-tuned sketches, even just powwows about something they were inspired by that they wanted to share. Being the home of a community that is passionate about a project is what makes my heart happy. 

Pricing:

• Branding Consultations start at $100
• Social Media Management ranges from $100-500/week
• Freelance Photography & Graphic Design starts at $25/hr
• Logo Packages start at $250
• Custom Drawings or Paintings start at $100

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brandingbyelizabeth.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/elizabeth.doerr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.doerr.925/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-doerr-74186a186/

Image Credits
Branding By Elizabeth