How to Cut Through the Noise and Craft a Compelling Brand Message
It isn’t enough to offer amazing products in a business. You don’t have much trust when you first start out. And when other reputable companies probably offer something similar to you that works, why wouldn’t customers stick with what they know?
That’s why having a great brand and messaging is so important. When 46% of customers are willing to pay more for trusted brands, investing in excellent brand messaging makes sense.
Are you struggling to land your brand messaging and create a compelling vision for your customers? The guide below covers why it’s so important to get your brand message right and how to build the perfect brand messaging for your business.
Why Is Brand Messaging So Important?
A brand message is critical for companies that want to be more than a faceless business. If you want to connect to your audience, you need to connect to them emotionally. Your brand message is what helps you do this.
When people connect with your brand, they immediately think of your business when they need to buy something. Your customers trust what your company offers and what it stands for, so they don’t need additional research to confirm that you have quality products.
Here are a few benefits you’ll see with a great brand message.
Reduce Lost Sales
Customers who aren’t familiar with your brand may not buy immediately. People in the consideration stage spend much more time researching companies and products.
But this won’t happen as much if you have an established brand and message. People know and trust your company, so they will spend less time researching and be more likely to buy immediately.
Better Customer Retention
Another big benefit of good brand messaging is customer retention. It’s hard to keep getting new customers over and over again. You have to market to people again, and if you have a high customer acquisition cost, you’ll spend a lot of marketing dollars.
Things are much easier when people already know about your brand. People will return to your business on their own — which means you don’t need to pay to reach them again.
More Referrals
Another problem businesses without a brand message have is the lack of referrals. People who know and love your brand are much more willing to recommend your products to friends and family.
This is much less advertising that you need to do. It will lead to a lower customer acquisition cost and increase your company’s brand awareness.
Attract Talent
You need the best team if you want to grow a successful business. However, it’s challenging to attract top talent if you don’t have a company message telling potential employees what your business is about.
Great brand messaging tells potential employees what they can expect if they join your company. Will employees have a great vision to work towards, or will the job be for a nameless corporation that makes no difference in the world?
How to Create a Brand Messaging Strategy
Now that you understand why brand messaging is so important, the question is, how do you do it right? Read the points below to learn how to create a brand messaging strategy that works.
Learn About Your Audience
The first step to creating an effective brand strategy is learning about the people who will buy your products. It’s hard to resonate with people when you know nothing about them. You’ll use general messaging without considering what your target audience wants to hear.
Start by learning the following things about your target market:
- General demographics
- Occupations
- Parental status
- Interest
This information will help you determine your customer’s needs and what products they need to solve problems. You can use what you learn to design messaging that appeals to those desires and better resonate with potential customers.
Of course, you may have more than one type of customer interested in what you have to offer. Create as many customer personas as you need during this process. You may not be able to personalize your messaging in every format, but it can make a difference in the formats where it matters.
Create a Cohesive Image
The next part of creating a great brand message is to create a brand image and stick to it through all your marketing channels. Some businesses operate by creating unique experiences on their marketing channels. While nothing is wrong with this, it doesn’t help you build your brand and can lead to a lower conversion rate.
You want to build a cohesive experience across every marketing channel. This means using the same logos, colors, images, language, and other materials everywhere.
Here are some areas to think about when creating a brand image:
- Website
- Paid ads
- Banner ads
- Email copywriting
- Print material
Remember that your brand material will need to look great in multiple formats. Test your branding ideas and material in different formats to see how they look.
Find Your Value Proposition
Another essential part of the brand-building process is understanding where your products and services fit in the market. Most products are out there to solve specific problems. It’s on you to convey that message to your customers and let them know that what your company offers is the best in the market.
Since you already know what problems your customers have because of your customer personas, you can use that information to position your product as the solution. What about your offering solves problems and makes life easier for your audience?
Once you understand how your product helps, your next goal is to formulate a way to tell people about your solution. Don’t just talk about the features of your product. Tell a story about what benefits a customer will see when buying and relate it to their problems.
Create Brand Guidelines
Now that you have a baseline for what you want to convey with your brand messaging, your next goal is to keep things consistent throughout your brand.
Although everything may be cohesive today, as time goes on and you create new marketing material, your brand development may lead you to message that doesn’t align with the brand you built. You must avoid this at all costs.
Brand guidelines will help you avoid this problem. Your guidelines are a document that lists everything that your brand includes. It contains your tone of voice, audience personas, image specifications, and everything else with your brand.
You’ll refer to these guidelines every time you create new brand materials. Doing so will help you stay on track and keep your brand consistent.
Establish Your Experience
If you’re just starting in the business world, other people may not know who you are or your experience. This may not be a big deal in consumer spaces where people don’t consider this as much. But this isn’t the case when it comes to products that require specialized experience.
In these situations, you must establish your experience in your industry. This means creating content to let people know who you are and your experience.
You can do this in a few ways. One of the most common is creating a blog. Look at the questions people ask Google in your industry and write content targeting those topics.
You may need to work with an experienced branding agency like Avenue 25 to build a great brand experience to handle this task.
Another popular way to go about this is with video. You can create a branded video channel that covers the problems and solutions in your industry. Your videos will redirect viewers to your website, where you can sell them products.
Audit Your Messaging
As time passes, you may find that your brand messaging doesn’t impact people as much. This can happen over time as your products shift focus and consumer demands change.
In cases like this, your brand message may not be as effective at resonating with potential customers. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t switch things up to account for these changes.
Regularly look at your brand messaging and audit your results to check for this. If you see problems with your messaging, start making minor changes to see if you can do anything to improve your messaging results.
Build the Perfect Brand Message
If you want to succeed in business, you need a memorable brand. Even though you can get by with a nameless company that doesn’t connect with customers, you can do so much more when you have a brand that people remember and trust.
But you can’t do this without a great brand message. Your branding tells your customers who you are and why they should buy your products. Use the information you learned in this post to create amazing brand messaging for your company.
Did you find this post helpful and want to learn more business advice that will help when growing your business? Check out more guides on the blog to learn more.
