Messaging is a critical part of any brand. Among many other benefits of branding, brand messaging helps set the tone for your brand and ensures that all stakeholders and marketing efforts are aligned. But, arguably, the biggest reason to ensure your brand messaging is thoughtful and purposeful is because it ensures future consumers are consistently hearing what you offer and why it is important to them. If this is done correctly and effectively, consumers will connect with your brand and see the value in your product or service.
Before you start creating your messaging, make sure to analyze your audience. Creating messaging without an understanding of your target consumers’ needs, wants, values, demographics, etc. will undoubtedly result in missing the mark. And, if you miss the mark, target consumers won’t hear you. And if by some crazy chance, they do happen to hear you, they definitely won’t connect with you.
Once you’re confident you have a solid understanding of your audience, you can start developing and refining your messaging. There are many pieces to messaging and many ways to develop and house it.
As a start, we recommend developing and sharing these points with your entire team:
Tone of Voice: How do you want to talk to your potential and existing customers? What do you want them to think of when your brand comes to mind? Identifying and committing to a brand personality is important in all of your communications. When you’re identifying your Tone of Voice be sure to consider your audience and what will make the most sense to them as well as your company values and culture. You want your tone to feel organic and considering these things will help ensure it does.
Target Audience: Define and learn as much as you can about your target audience and write it down for everyone on your team to see. These details can help at all levels of your business including product development, business development, marketing, and retaining customers.
Brand Promise: Think of a brand promise as a tagline. It should be customer-centric, and communicate what you actually do, and what you’re promising.
Positioning Statement: The goal of this statement is to summarize how you fit in your market. Are you positioning yourself as the lowest cost, fastest, best quality, etc.? Is it for every consumer or a highly targeted, specific audience? Answers to these questions and others will help develop your more detailed messaging.
Mission: What is your vision for your company and what are you hoping to accomplish? Articulate the answers to these questions through your Mission.
Brand Pillars: Brand pillars are the most important selling features of your business. Consider your target customer and what would make them purchase from you over a competitor. What important value points do you offer?
Brand Features: Brand features are points that support each brand pillar. For example, if you identify convenience as a brand pillar, one of your brand features may be explaining what makes your offering the easiest and simplest to use. Pro tip: Don't repeat the exact same message over and over, instead think of your brand pillar as your theme, and your brand features as additional information about that theme that you can customize.
Elevator Pitch: How would you describe your business to someone in just 30-60 seconds? What is important to share and what can you leave out? Be sure your most important brand pillars are included in your elevator pitch and, at the very least, make the person you’re talking to interested and engaged enough to ask more.
At the end of this process, you’ll have a solid tool that you can reference and utilize anytime you’re developing communications or materials to market your company and products or services. We also recommend you share this document with your entire team. It creates buy-in and consistency when every employee at every level understands what you’re about and what you’re working towards.
Looking to revamp your Brand Messaging, we specialize in Brand identity and ensuring your business shines bright. Contact us today at hello@lumstudio.com to learn more.
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