Brand messaging is a method of communication done by a person, firm, or group.
Although it takes time to develop true brand messaging, itâs well worth the effort and investment. If you want to find out more about what brand messaging is, what it does, and how it can benefit you, keep reading.
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It can be tempting to think that the brand messaging is just a slogan. Yes, a slogan can and does get a lot of traction if itâs well chosen. To undertake brand messaging thoroughly, though, youâll need to dive deeper.Â
With any form of communication, you should consider who youâre talking to first. But before we revisit that, it makes sense to consider âwhereâ (metaphorically) the people weâre talking to actually are.Â
Marketers talk an awful lot about the âbuyerâs journey.â Essentially, this model says that people move more or less linearly from awareness of your brand to purchase. Thatâs also the marketing funnel written and talked about everywhere these days.Â
The thing is, people are not linear, nor are they algorithms. A buyer might be just about ready to buy from you one day, and then the next day, they could be further back on the funnel, perhaps wanting more information about who you are and what you do before forking over the cash. So caution is needed because you donât want to alienate people who, for example, are well aware of your company and your brand but want more information about what youâre selling.
One of the first forays needs to be into who exactly you are communicating with, i.e., prospective buyers and repeat customers. You donât speak in the same way to a single, 65-year-old former steelworker as you do to a 25-year-old married stay-at-home mother of two.
With that said, thereâs no substitute for research. If you donât know exactly whoâs buying (or who you expect to be buying) your product, then you need to research that. It will be worthwhile to take the time and effort to create a robustâif not somewhat fictionalâdescription of the âpersonâ youâre writing to as you develop your messaging.Â
Kenneth is a 55-year-old computer programmer working at a straight-laced southern USA university. Although his job and working environment are fairly conservative and traditional, Kenneth likes to feel that heâs open-minded and free. He enjoys video games, playing both MMORPG and first-person shooter games. Heâs not married and has no children.
He takes home a low six-figure salary. He votes Republican but only because they say theyâll lower taxes. He is not a social conservative.
Heâs looking for more online entertainment, and he doesnât like to have his content censored. Heâs looking to buy another source of movies to stream at home, and he wants something off the beaten path for the bragging rights. He wants to feel like heâs on the cutting edge of whatâs cool.
Weâre marketing to a mostly male audience over the age of 21. Our buyers will mostly be college educated and will make reasonably good money. âReasonably goodâ means above the median income level, so more than 50K a year.
To be more succinct, donât oversimplify, but donât overcomplicate. Easy, peasy.
A similar process is necessary for B2B businesses, as well. Crafting these personas can make the difference between a small-fry brand and a runaway success.
Here's a 4-step copywriting framework for consistently high conversion rates.
Although brand messaging frameworks come in many forms, they often include the following:
Defining the target audience and the tone of voice the messaging will use is also part of the framework. Thenâand only thenâwe get to the specifics, like writing a tagline.
Simple, no?
No. Otherwise, everyone would do it and do it well, and marketers would be worshiped as royalty and greeted with free bananas constantly.
So what is your vision or your brand's vision? If you sell floor mops, it might seem ridiculous at first glance to consider the âvisionâ that you have around mops. Consider the fact that one of the main brands of mops, âO-Cedar,â is a very strong part of the parent companyâs roughly 900 million dollars in profit in 2021.
Whatâs the vision that a mop brand may have had? Perhaps itâs a world where one can mop, and one's back doesnât keep them up all night because it has an ergonomic design. Or perhaps itâs a world where homeowners are happy that they donât have to replace a mop every few weeks because they bought a high-quality mop.
There isnât really an incorrect vision (except if you take the position that your company doesnât need to consider what their vision might be). Try a few visions on for size. Ask your customers what their visions are when theyâre thinking of purchasing your product.
Doan Consulting Groupâs mission is to help companies improve their bottom line by improving their copywriting. In the spirit of sharing expertise, this blog gives away tons of âtrade secrets.â
Doan Consulting Group stands firm in the belief that people are leaving money on the table by using a âspray and prayâ approach to messaging. And yet, it doesnât need to be that wayâyou just need to be inspired and taught to do better, or you need someone to handle it for you.
So if you donât know what your mission is, who do you think knows? This isnât negotiable. Give it some thought, and if you need help figuring it out, consult someone thatâs familiar with your business.
If youâve been reading this blog for long, you probably know that one thing Doan Consulting Group has is a money-back guarantee. So in other words, theyâll convert more prospects into buyers.
Years of directly attributable sales increases prove Doan Consulting Group does exactly that. So itâs not founded in wishful thinkingâthe metrics speak for themselves.
Thatâs Doan Copywritingâs brand promise: copy that connects with the audience and provides real, measurable results.
It is "the whole mix of benefits or economic value it promises to offer to the existing and future clients" (i.e., a market segment) who will purchase their goods and services, according to Wikipedia.
Doan Consulting Groupâs value proposition is that clients will enjoy increased sales, a better public profile and brand position, and the knowledge that their language represents their company in the most enchanting way possible.
Another format for your value proposition might be: âWe help X do Y by using/doing Zâ.
So the mop people might say, âWe help everyone have happier, cleaner homes by making mops that donât hurt your body, products that last a long time, clean effectively, and are a pleasure to useâ.
Note that the language in your value proposition may or may not appear in customer-facing messaging. But thinking such things through and writing them out is crucial.
To be succinct in developing this messaging, companies need to figure out whatâs so great about you/your brand, anyway. Thatâs what needs to be communicated here.
Again, this framework is fairly simple, but âsimpleâ doesnât mean easy or obvious.
No one jumps face-first into creating excellent brand messaging before they understand the brand as thoroughly as it is possible to do. Thereâs no substitute for thinking this through, talking it through, and iterating various visions, missions, and so on.
There are a lot of resources available to help flesh out a company brand, including those on this blog.
To clarify, itâs important to realize that the process takes time and that many companies find it more efficient when outside help is brought in to assist them.
One thing that we need to be mindful of is that we arenât just talking about words. Itâs the thought behind the words that matters.Â
What do you believe? What are your ethical positions as a company? Google famously used to claim that they would âDo No Evil.â If you were going to claim a moral position, what would yours be?Â
The next step would be to consider your brandâs âpillars,â e.g., the major themes, benefits, or selling points that make your brand unique. âPillarsâ are generally defined as being: the brandâs purpose, the brandâs perception, the brandâs positioning, personality, and promotion.Â
If youâre going to make an effort required to build a communications strategy, it makes sense to do it well. Nobody sits down and starts by writing a tagline and creates a resonant, stand-the-test-of-time type tagline or copy that will move the needle in a large way for sales and brand identity.Â
Itâs important to note that mega multinational corporations and âMom and Popâ shops can accomplish this. Itâs just a matter of giving the processing time, focused attention, and thought.
Learn how to build a powerful personal brand through copywriting here.
The subheading is a quotation from a poem written in the 1920s by the well-known E. E. Cummings. It resonates because itâs often true; feelings step up far quicker than logic on many occasions.
Put another way, this time, quoting Maya Angelou:Â
âI've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but never forget how you made them feel.â
Consider the famous tagline âYou Can Do It, We Can Help.â How does that message make you feel about yourself? About the company offering to âhelp?â
Marketers keep hammering on about feelings because they must be part of the equation. If youâre going to craft powerful brand messaging, you must also work with, and evoke, peopleâs feelings.Â
In recent years, two huge brands who have been household names for many decades used their messaging in a somewhat âpersonalizedâ fashionâdid you see those bottles of Coca-Cola with peopleâs names on them? How about the Snickers bars with âfeelingâ words right on the label, e.g., âSleepy,â and âGrouchy,â and so forth?Â
What did personalizing the sodas and the candy do for the brand? How do you think it made people feel? Making someone feel like your brand is FOR them⌠means youâre halfway into a purchase. But this is something that we feel, not something that is intellectual.Â
Consider the Alfa Romeo brandâa luxury Italian car and SUV maker, if youâre unfamiliar. No matter your income level, if youâre not interested in high-performance luxury cars, that brand isnât going to speak to you, and you wonât feel connected to them. No matter how good their messaging is.Â
Know the strategies on how to trigger powerful emotions in your copywriting here.
One of the most powerful things you have is the power of stories. Before the dawn of recorded history, humans told stories to each other. Stories have changed the world. The stories that Charles Dickens wrote directly helped develop homeless shelters for women, the first pediatric hospital in Britain, and the development of orthopedics. His stories still reverberate today.Â
But Dickens didnât change the world all at once. He did so by changing the mind of individuals, and that, bit by bit, changed the opinions and the moral stances in the world. Likewise, marketers donât change everyone exposed to their messaging in one fell swoop. It snowballs. So, you want your story to get out there. We arenât playing games here, even if youâre selling games. Story is important.Â
It should be simple to see that all messaging is storytelling, particularly regarding branding. Whatâs the story of your brand? What is your brandâs promise?Â
Some people define the concept of âbrandâ as simply the promise that your company is making to the world. So what does that promise look and sound like? The âYou Can Do It, We Can Helpâ people promise that their customers can do âitâ (whatever it is theyâre thinking of tackling) and also promise that their employees and their businesses are competent, available, and eager to help.
The sentence I just wrote isnât in the same universe as strong a messageâor storyâas âYou Can Do It, We Can Help.â So what that company and any other needs to do is to distill, distill, and distill some more until the messaging is as it needs to be.Â
Storytellers don't have to explain why some stories are important. This âYou Can Do ItâŚâ message is pretty self-explanatory. But consider any sort of ârags to richesâ story, such as Virgin Groupâs Richard Branson, who left school at age 16 and became a multi-millionaire businessman, serial entrepreneur, and now altruist. The nugget of those stories is that itâs possible to improve your life.
What could be more powerful than that? What powerful story can your brand evoke? Donât be lazy; if you sell car floor mats, donât tell yourself thereâs no story there. Get us thinking about the story that all my journeys and my passengerâs floor mats might tellâand again, you could be halfway to moving me to purchase.
Here's a complete storytelling guide to help you write better copy.
There are a lot of marketers out there who arenât that good. Thatâs part of why it might feel like we get painted with the brush of being manipulative people pretending to be things weâre not. A comic strip called Dilbert may have furthered this, but âmarketing and advertising work has been skewered since the fields began. See Mad Magazine, for example. Or the movie âCrazy People,â
Essentially, thereâs no doubt that good messaging drives conversions and bad messaging lowers them. Clear and consistent messaging takes time and money but is worth the investment.
Simple tweaks can mean thousands or even millions in revenue:Â there have even been cases where a mismatch between advertising messaging and a landing page interfered with conversions. Fixing just that led to a considerable uptick.
The work you did was meaningful. Now, make it stick.Â
Take the time to write up your brand messaging guidelines. Things you never want to say as part of your branding also need to be part of the guidelines.
Many firms also formalize logos, brand style/typography, taglines, etc. It needs to be in written, tangible format, not a post-it or in someoneâs head.Â
Once you have that âcodifiedâ in a way, it is repeatable and will support your brand.
Whoâs your target audience? Who buys your product or service? Who do you WANT to work with?Â
I want to work with intelligent people who are thoughtful and have a sense of humor, and who have the financial means to pay me what Iâm worth. This is part of why my love for bananas is a visible part of my messaging and toneâitâs playful, and if you canât handle âcalling me up on the banana phone,â then I probably am not the right marketer to help you.Â
If my target audience is 65-year-old multinational CEOs who are super traditional and conservative, they might roll their eyes at a âbanana phoneâ and head in the other direction.Â
Thatâs fine. Iâm not for everyoneâbut neither are you or your brand. If you need outdoorsy people, you donât take the tone of someone whoâs never been in the country. At the same time, you donât talk down to them as though theyâre uneducated. Right now, more than a handful of savvy PhDs are sleeping in tents (most of them by choice). Tone matters.Â
Well, we are, and you are, or you wouldnât be reading this far. Good messaging is challenging to create. Marketing is often dismissed, which is hard to believe in this day and age.Â
Case in point: âIf you build it, they will comeâ is a movie line, not reality. You can build it, make them aware of it, and if they are intrigued by your messaging and like your products, they will come and keep coming. Work with these frameworks, and your market share will improve.Â
How we say these things is at least as important as WHAT we say. Show your audience how youâre adding value. Show it with strong messaging. Do that work and tell them about it, and if your product and service are strong, youâll be looking at a bigger market share.
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