We live in an era that never runs out of options, from as little as a toothbrush to buying a laptop. Technology has paved its way so that consumers can run out of choices but not out of options. In this article we share the Steps You Should Take to Create a Powerful Brand Message.
“Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.”
— Sir Richard Branson
In this world of unreasonable demands, not every “seller” can make its way through. At the same time, some fail to convey their value proposition and make consumers believe how they are different. Some successfully hooked their customers with their ideas for decades.
Why do you think we as customers are more inclined towards a single commodity or brand with so many choices available?
There lies the power of “branding.”
The single largest attribute that separates “brands” and other “companies.”
Let’s dive in together to understand what makes a “brand message?”
Table of Contents
What Do We Mean by Brand Message?
The brand message conveys the idea of your organization.
It ties together your product and your communication message and aligns everything to your value proposition.
The brand message is your brand’s value proposition, which you communicate to your target audience through your brand personality that sets your brand positioning.
Understand this in simple terms,
You communicate your brand message to your target audience through your products/services and verbal or non-verbal communication messages that elaborate what you do and how you’re different from others in the market.
How Do We Limit Brand Messages to Taglines?
Taglines are curated with the idea of giving voice to your brand message, but the brand message isn’t confined to taglines.
However, your tagline will not hold credibility and value if your services are not delivering the promise or resonate with your engagement.
Taglines are just the words and sentences which people use to recognize you.
A brand message resonates with the consumer requirements and wants of your audience base.
The brand message is why people choose your brand.
How To Create A Brand Message That Resonates?
A brand message is a short and easy-to-understand message that communicates a story.
It focuses on a pre-determined market segment and reflects what consumers want to learn, what the brand serves and provides, and what other competitors are already providing.
Let’s dive into understanding all the steps that build a powerful “brand message” and how you stand different from others.
1. Establish Your Brand Strategy
Your brand strategy should be comprehensive and consist of a long-term vision for growing a successful brand message.
It outlines your specific intentions and goals explicitly as a business and how you are going to achieve them.
The brand strategy affects your company’s overall aspects related to customers’ expectations, sentiments, requirements, and how you set yourself different from your competitors.
Before diving into creating your brand message, make sure you achieve all the preparatory work involving brand strategy creation.
This can be your brand heart (visionaries, values), brand message (brand voice and personality), and brand identity (logo and color).
This paves your path to a successful brand establishment.
Establish your goals:
Always plan goals using the SMART goal format.
- S-specific
- M-measurable
- A-attainable
- R-relevant
- T-time based
2. Establish Your Tone of Voice
Conveying your brand’s message first requires you to understand what tone of voice to use. This is similar to how people interact with others and adjust their style according to whom they are communicating with.
This is equally crucial for brands as well.
Changing your tone or not aligning with the rest of your brand will confuse your customers.
Your tone reflects the personality of your brand.
It represents your company’s values and devotion. You will require adjusting your tone according to your target audience and to whom you intend to deliver your message.
However, the key is to remain consistent with whatever you choose to deliver.
Consistency develops trust and helps in retaining your customers.
Here are some other tips to help you strike the right tone in your brand messaging strategy:
- Know your target audience– Without knowing whom you are serving, you won’t be able to serve in their best interest.
- Focus on conveying the brand’s values through your messages– What you serve is the larger part of what attracts customers to your brand, and your values help in retaining them. Studies have shown that 64% of customers say shared values are why they stick with a company.
- Revaluate your communication content– When it comes to content, you can’t settle for one- keep testing what communication form drives the best results for you after few intervals.
- Define your brand’s tone of voice– is your tone friendly? Is it fun? Is it serious? Settle on what your tone is and stick to it in your messaging.
- Implementing that tone into your communications– your messaging needs to match your brand, so take that tone and apply it across all channels and content.
3. Identify Your Personas
Your brand design should be focused on how well it communicates your identity in the market. It should not only concentrate on what you want to represent as a brand. Instead, it should also focus well on what your consumers want.
This includes making them accustomed to your presence and establishing communication with the brand.
If the brand message doesn’t resonate with your audience, you are probably headed in the wrong direction.
Creating Personas is vital for identifying what you want to achieve. Personas confine your work and illustrate all aspects of your target audience.
This contributes to understanding your consumers’ psychological characteristics and demographic information so that you serve them better with what they want to hear.
4. Know Your Competitors Well
Before getting into the ocean, know the fish well!
Before owning the market, study your competition well, that is- their location, style, what they offer, and how well your customers resonate with them, so you can differentiate your style and present something new.
The critical aspect is to keep the process truly healthy and business-oriented without making it personal.
Competitor research is an integral part of market research.
To get an accurate knowledge of your competitors and distinguish their strengths and weaknesses, you should conduct competitive research well.
It helps you understand what other brands are serving, how it’s working for them, and how you can enhance your business better by learning from them.
Also, how they represent themselves in brand personality and visual elements.
Moving further in your market research, you’ll find many organizations resonate with each other in terms of design or colour. Yet, they express out complete individual brand image and message.
For example, YouTube and Netflix, both in red, are video streaming, but both have completely different brand values and identity.
It provides room to create a brand new style, differentiate yourself, and build an engaging brand message.
5. Consistency in Brand Message Across All Platforms
It goes without saying – your message tone should be consistent and the same across all platforms.
It is possibly overwhelming and challenging for brands to handle all social media platforms on the web to share their message.
With so many social media platforms to keep on track, not all of them speak to the same audience base.
Your website, social channels, newsletters, the articles you write, or blog posts should all sound like the same person handling the customers on all platforms.
Regardless of which channel you are targeting, the message should sound like coming from the same person.
Now, what is that important?
Because it sends a clear and confusion-free idea to your customers about your identity and services.
This also adds up to your responsibilities as you are supposed to be aware of which social channels you are targeting.
Snapchat and LinkedIn serve different purposes and comprise a very diverse audience base and feel when you post on these networks.
It also depends on your brand- But if your brand is more serious, then your posts should exhibit that no matter where it is being published or shared.
Going off message with your brand can build a confusing and poor reputation.
Mixed messages contribute to confusion among customers,.
Lack of consistency and confusion can also build distrust in your brand and its image, thus refraining the customers from committing to you or making a purchase with you.
Maintaining consistency in your messages can grow sales, build reputation, increase recognition, and ultimately increase sales.
6. What’s Your Brand Story?
As kids, we all were attracted to stories more and understood the concepts better when understood in the forms of stories!
Same work for the audience. It helps in forming an emotional connection.
Every brand starts with a story. Every organization begins with a vision.
Not just what you sell, but rather how you evolved as a company, the vision behind your existence, and especially why you started making the products you carry?
Every aspect has the capacity to bind your customers if shared out in the best manner. Brand employee engagement, reviews, customer experience, testimonials, etc., All strike that emotional chord with the prospective customers.
Your journey and your values should speak for themselves when you carry that message outside, and making these a part of your messaging strategy can do wonders.
Emotions originate from a powerful messaging tool.
If you have never pulled together a combined brand story, you should get started with it quickly.
Emotions are critical for customers. Emotional connections can heavily drive purchases and brand loyalty.
- your business’s obstacles and challenges faced as a company and overcoming them to reach where you are today.
- Examples and stories that set you different from others in the market. Saying it won’t be enough, showing it has to be!
- Why does your brand’s existence make a change?
- Narrate your story in a way that buyers are also buying that story, not just your product.
● Did You Design Your Brand Identity Well?
When we said “show it” it wasn’t limited to the story. Instead, it is everything about you!
Building a powerful brand message requires a compelling brand identity design. From the logo to the colour or the typography or the short message, everything influences your identity and how people know you.
These key points can help you in the early stages.
● Logo
An appropriate logo design comes from hours of research into the industry and a good understanding of the brand’s goals and purpose.
The logo is probably one of the first things that customers notice. And because the logo communicates with your brand, be professional about it with your professionals as well.
Brainstorm those powerful words or adjectives that define your company and then turn them into vectors.
Make sure your logo mark should be clear in different applications.
● Colour
When you get done with your logo, choosing your colour palette also comes along.
Your brand colour works wonders to set you apart from other brands.
Be creative with the colours, but not overwhelming. Colours trigger emotional responses and psychological definitions as well that require you to settle with them carefully.
● Typography
This can be tricky but makes a significant change.
Not necessarily one typography will work for all or many brands; it can do wonders for one and outdated.
Choose a typography that identifies you apart from your competitors. Be flexible and adaptable to many applications.
Final Thoughts?
Creating that ideal brand messaging strategy doesn’t necessarily require an overwhelming task.
With the process of creating that suitable brand message, you understand your organization more, which will help in the later challenges.
Some planning and research can craft that perfect message that aligns best and stays true to your brand.
Make sure you conduct extensive market research, understand your customers well, target audience well, and mostly your competitors.
Focus on creating that message that resonates with your customers.
Know your audience and stay in touch through social media and emails. Make them aware of your existence and communicate with them.
The initial stages can be daunting and many trials required, but the journey will be worth it as it will serve you all the later ages.
Keep your messages consistent through all your channels.
Focus on connecting with your customers on a more profound level with their trust intact.
Serve them well, and they will stay loyal to you!
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If you’re looking to learn more about brand strategy, we highly recommend eRESONAID with our friend and acclaimed brand strategist and author Fabian Geyrhalter, it’s packed full of knowledge and insights you will need to learn to become a brand strategist or apply what you learn within your own business.
Author Bio
James Wilson is a seasoned Content Writer at Net Solutions, New York, for ten years with expertise in blogging, writing creative and technical copy for direct response markets, and B2B and B2C industries. Born and brought up in New York, James holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He has worked in industries like IT, software product design and development, Lifestyle, and written some great insights on technologies like user experience design, mobile app development, eCommerce, etc. Besides his technical background, he is not very disconnected from the digital in his free time – he loves to binge-watch Netflix.