The 10 Minute Guide to Brand Messaging
What makes customers relate to your brand, what inspires, motivates and persuades them to buy your product? Two words: Brand messaging.
Remember this? “Just do it.” or “Impossible is nothing.” Where this brings you? We can just guess.
Brand messaging is a lot more than putting a few words together and making them sound catchy and memorable. I surely thought that at the beginning of my journey as a digital marketer. Many marketers get confused during the messaging development process. Product positioning, key benefits, value proposition, and audience – all of that needs to be taken into consideration. Bringing these elements together in the right way creates a framework that guides your marketing message across every piece of content and every channel. Everything you create must bring you back to your brand message.
In order to find the brand message of a business, there are a few fundamental questions to ask. Here are some questions that will help in finding the right message for your particular audience.
1. Who is your ideal customer?
Have you recently asked clients this question? What is their usual answer? Everyone interested? No one in particular? These answers usually give you little information to go on when it comes to creating a brand message.
By creating your ideal customer profile, you can adapt your content to their special needs and preferences. It helps you find appropriate channels and making your marketing messages always relevant and fresh. These models are a constant reminder of whom we’re selling to, and how we help them overcome obstacles and improve their quality of life.
We usually begin with basic information and then dive deeper into available data in order to complete our ideal customer profile.
2. Name five things about your service or product that makes it so unique?
You can do a thousand things, but you cannot BE five things. Sorry, that is just how marketing works. If you are more than ONE thing, you are saying that you are nothing. And if your competitors already said those five or three things, you are making some serious damage to your brand.
To avoid these pitfalls, name one thing that makes you stand out from your competition. Even if they have highly similar service or products, focus on things that set you apart.
So whatever this might be, acknowledging that one thing helps you attract the kind of audience that is driven by your unique offer.
The first step will be a having a good sense of what matters to your customers. This can be managed by interviewing customers, surveys, analyzing social media feedback, etc. You will gather lots of data about what your customers value most. Working with this data might help in creating future strategies, content, and SEO. Keep track of keywords you hear repeatedly from them, this is an important direction.
3. What real value do you bring to your customers or clients?
We are coming to the point when it’s more important to think beyond things such as money or offering products. Our main task is to answer what value your business offers to the world.
It might be a “true friend in a digital world”, a client-oriented agency that has your back or something else. You may offer a different type of baby soap and try to think beyond safe and “organic” – you need to make them feel safe and willing to buy your organic soap.
A lot of times you will find that your audience isn’t a money-saving oriented and that their wishes and expectations include more emotional aspects. It is likely that your competitors are attracting more sales with bigger discounts or better offers – so why wouldn’t you sweeten the deal? Offer them what they like, let them find out that you really care. This might be a breakthrough!
