Why Your Brand Messaging Is The Key To A Successful Marketing Strategy
As a business owner, you know you need to develop your offerings, build a website, create social media content, build your email list, and any and all other marketing efforts to build and grow your business. But if you don’t spend time developing your overall brand messaging, the rest of these efforts are going to fall flat. That’s because your brand messaging is the foundation of your brand and marketing strategy, and it plays a vital role in not only communicating with your target market, but also ultimately, the success of your business.
Brand messaging may seem like one of those pieces that’s easy enough to figure out on your own but I often notice that it’s a critical piece that’s missing from most small business’ marketing strategies. So let’s dig in to:
What brand messaging is
Why it’s essential for effective marketing
How you can use it in your marketing strategy
Signs to know if your messaging is working or not
What is Brand Messaging?
Brand messaging refers to the words, phrases, and themes that communicate your brand's value proposition, purpose, and personality. It includes your brand's tagline, mission statement, elevator pitch, and other messaging in your marketing that helps your audience understand what your brand is all about.
I like to say that your brand messaging is larger buckets that you pull from, especially for your content marketing. For example, one of my brand messaging themes is that your business is supposed to support your life, not be your life. I wanted to help small businesses intentionally and sustainably build businesses in a way that feels good to them, plays to their strengths, and allows them to actually have the freedom they want as business owners. This is a broader theme that I can speak on in a variety of ways whether it’s marketing related or not.
The key is that your messaging should be consistent across all your marketing channels to create a cohesive brand identity… But the nice part of this is that having brand messaging actually helps provide a guide to keep this cohesion in your communications. You don’t have to guess about what to write and share. You can refer back to your key messaging and then draw different examples and stories from that.
Bottom line: Your brand messaging should communicate your value proposition and brand values in a way that truly connects with your target market.
Why Your Brand Messaging is Essential for Success
Your brand messaging is the key to creating an emotional connection with your audience. It helps them understand your brand's unique value proposition and why they should choose your brand over your competitors. It helps provide that gut check with your target market because your messaging will instantly make them feel like you are speaking directly to them as well as make them feel like you understand them and their needs on a deeper level.
It also helps you position your brand correctly in the market and when you make adjustments to your business, like targeting a different niche or raising your prices, for example. You often need to make adjustments to your messaging as well to reposition yourself and start connecting with your new audience.
And that right there leads to increased conversions and brand loyalty.
How to Use Your Brand Messaging in Your Strategy
Your brand messaging is the foundation of all the rest of your marketing and communications efforts. Again, these are the broader themes that you can pull specific stories, examples, tips, and information from to communicate your brand’s value proposition with your target market. You’ll want to infuse this messaging throughout every single touchpoint your target market has with your brand including:
Your website copy
Social media content
Email marketing
Ads
Public relations strategy
And any other marketing strategy you use
Infusing your messaging throughout each of these touchpoints means that you will be consistently communicating your brand message and that helps build brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty!
Pro tip: Use storytelling to make your brand messaging much more potent as it will help create a stronger emotional connection with your audience and make you brand more memorable. That’s because stories are much easier to remember than facts and other information. (Learn more about integrating storytelling into your content here. And learn more about making your brand memorable here.)
Signs Your Brand Messaging is Working:
You know your brand messaging is working when:
Your audience regularly comments on how your messaging resonates with them.
Your prospective clients comment on how your content caught their eye and got them excited.
Your audience engages with your brand on social media and other marketing channels.
Your brand loyalty and customer retention rates increase.
Signs Your Brand Messaging Isn't Working:
Your brand messaging may not be working if:
Your audience often doesn’t know which of your offers is the right fit for them (aka they’re confused about what your brand offers).
Your audience does not engage with your brand on social media and other marketing channels.
Your prospective clients regularly ask how you’re different than your competitors.
You’re struggling to make sales.
As you can see, your brand messaging helps you differentiate your brand from the competition, create brand loyalty, and increase brand awareness. By defining your target audience, crafting your brand message, consistently communicating your brand message, and using storytelling techniques, you can use your brand messaging to effectively attract and retain clients.
As always, make sure you’re monitoring your brand messaging’s effectiveness by keeping an eye on your audience's understanding, emotional connection, and engagement with your brand. If it’s not, dig deeper into your target market and/or your competitors so you can understand them better, what makes you different, and make adjustments to your brand messaging to effectively communicate that.
Want help with your marketing?
My Strategy Intensives provide you with a complete brand and marketing strategy based on market research and analysis and your own business metrics.
The CMO Partnership is perfect if you need ongoing support whether that’s my team managing your marketing efforts or you need someone to lead your marketing team to success.
Not sure what you need but know you could use some support? Reach out and I’ll help guide you in the right direction (whether that’s working with me or not!)
