Telling your brand story in a way that is captivating to your audience isn’t easy, let’s be honest. Businesses need to have their entire brand identity all figured out before they can even begin to clearly communicate to their audience what their brand stands for. Nevermind that it needs to resonate with your audience and reinforce your business’ values and reputation.
With so many goals in mind, let’s review the different aspects of brand messaging and look at how we can use them to craft great brand messages that your audience will love.
Brand messaging
Brand messaging relies heavily on your business’ personality and communicates a unique value proposition through both verbal and non-verbal messaging. It’s how your clients relate and build a relationship with your brand. It’s the amalgamation of language usage, design, events and altruistic efforts that all help to tell your brand’s story.
In order to craft brand messaging that your audience will love, you need to first know two very important things. Your target audience and your unique value proposition. These things are key factors that will separate your services from the competition.
Once you know what these are, you can use them to craft a brand identity which will inform all your business’ marketing decisions going forward. You can also use it to inform your business’s behaviour by looking at why your brand is important, what it stands for and why it’s different from other brands.
A good brand identity relates to your audience and talks to you like a friend. Having a good brand identity is how you will remain relevant to your clients and create loyalty.
Where to begin?
Start by figuring out who your business is. You can use the following questions to guide you.
- How is your business different from competitors?
- What is your business’ unique selling point?
- What style of messaging will your audience love?
- Who is your target audience?
- What do they love?
- Does your brand message tell a story? (people love stories)
- What are some goals for your business?
- What values does your business encompass?
- Why should your target audience care about your brand?
Know and understand your audience
The next step is to know and understand your audience on a more personal level. In order to do this, you need to create buyer personas. Established buyer personas a highly valuable to you and your team because they help to represent (in a concise and easy to understand format) who your ideal target audience is. They also help you to find alignment between your brand message and your business’ ideal clients.
Have a brand messaging document
Having a document that you and your team can refer back to for guidance on how to write your brand messages can be extremely helpful.
Once you have answered the above questions and figured out your buyer personas, start creating a document using the information that you have gathered to explain what your brand message is. Include your unique selling point and key themes that are central to your brand identity.
Then start to figure out how your brand identity connects to your buyer personas. Look for patterns that overlap. Doing this will allow you to craft brand messaging that aligns with your business values and speaks directly to what your audience cares about.
Spot brand messaging opportunities
Using your brand messaging document, start to spot brand messaging opportunities. Look at how you can relate your current marketing campaigns to your brand message. Ask questions like “how can I use this content to convey my business’ values?”. Once you have some idea, create a helpful tagline that will help to express your unique value proposition along with who you are as a brand.
Developing your brand messaging must be done in a strategic way and if you do it right, you will stand out from the competition and relate to your clients on a deeper level.
Having the correct brand messaging makes all the difference in how you are perceived by prospects and will mean the difference between them doing business with you or not. So make sure you get it right and have fun doing it!
