What if I told you that you brand message could sell your product in one sentence? You would be sold right? When you get hyper focused on your customer and diligent in defining your business and what you stand for, your brand message will sell for you! It is the thread that keeps your business wound together. Being consistent is the behavior that builds brand loyalty. Here we will be discussing how to create a successful, compelling brand message that sells. We will discuss how to perform market research so that your message aligns with your audience, how to incorporate your message across your brand as well as how to maintain consistency over time.
How to Create a Brand Message
You may already think you have a brand message that resonates with your customer, however for the purposes of this blog I am going to assume you are either re-evaluating your brand message or creating a brand message for your business.
A brand message is your core business idea. It should provide a solution to your customer’s problems while providing a unique sense of who you are. It should make you stand out and speak to your target customer.
You need to be able to answer the following:
- Why did you start?
- What do you do?
- Who do you do it for?
- How do you offer value?
- What makes you unique?
- What are your values?
The first step to creating a brand message is to integrate ourselves into the brand vision.
Know your Why
How? We need to get real about our reasons for this business's existence.
It’s time to get intentional and real with ourselves as to WHY we want to start a business so that we can understand our motivations.
Your brand message should look like this:
What you stand for + What is the best way to achieve that?
= What do you believe to be true about your business and product.
Now let’s walk through the first piece: What you stand for. This encompasses both you and your business.
Example: Reinvent your hustle is all about authentically helping people grow their businesses.
In order to answer this for your business, you'll need to do a little self-digging.
Ask Yourself these Questions:
First write out your personal why.
- Why do you own your own business?
- What about this excites you?
- Why did you start?
- Who do you do it for?
- What is presently motivating you?
Once you are really clear on your why for YOU, you can then begin to formulate your why for the business.
Write out your business why.
- Why is this business so important?
- What key words resonate with you when you ask yourself this question?
Get really clear on what makes this business important and go back to your mission and vision statements as these will help you craft your why as well.
Also, make sure your also representing your important values at the heart of your organization to demonstrate what an important business you’ve created.
Take a look and see if there are any similarities across your personal and business reasons as to why this business is important.
Write down those similarities and incorporate those words or feelings as potential “additions” to your messaging in the future.
Identify What Makes you Unique
What are you all about + What is the best way to achieve that?
= What do you believe to be true about your business and product.
Example: Reinvent your Hustle: through streamlining processes and strategic planning.
Now you will need to determine what makes your business stand out.
Most likely your product or service is not the only one on earth like it and so therefore you have competition. That means that there needs to be something else that makes you unique.
How to define what makes my business unique?
Get really clear on your unique point of view and approach in business and you will define your difference.
You want to differentiate by being you: by unapologetically being yourself and amplifying your reason.
Having an opinion or a stance is what makes your business special. How you do things or how you think about things will make your business stand out.
Ask these questions:
- What makes you unique?
- What is your unfair advantage?
- Do you have a special approach to business? Customer Service? Sales? Packaging? etc.?
- What does your company do differently than others?
- Is it how you think? Is it how you create your products?
- Do you have a stance on a social or environmental issue?
- Take a look at the brands YOU are currently loyal to.
- Why are you loyal to them?
- What are they doing that their competition does not?
Keep in mind, altering your product may not be necessary. The variation may be the within the products’ or your marketing, price point, delivery, customer service, values, social or environmental conscious strategies etc.
Landing Your Message
Now, that you have defined What you stand for + What is the best way to achieve that?
You want to complete the last portion and craft your Core Brand Message Statement: Define what you believe to be true about your business/ product.
Take the "What you stand for" and combine it with the "What is the best way to achieve that" and your will have your core brand message.
Example: Reinvent Your Hustle is all about authentically helping people grow their businesses through streamlining processes and strategic planning.
- Determine your core theme behind your message in one or two words.
- For Reinvent Your Hustle I would choose the words "helping" and "authenticity" as core themes throughout my business, intertwining them throughout my brand messaging.
- What’s that concept that runs through your entire business and what is your way of providing it?
Once you have this statement completed you have crafted your brand message with one piece missing. Identify who your customer is.
In the Core Message Statement above I am missing my target customer. I may add the words, “retail entrepreneurs” and sub out “people” to complete my statement.
Identify Your Customer
This is a crucial step in your business that cannot be skipped. There are a few ways to determine who this ideal customer is and if you want more on how to identify your target market and how do you determine ideal customer for your business click here.
An ideal customer avatar or target customer represents a business’ perfect customer. This person will want or need your products and / or services.
Perform the ideal customer avatar exercise to dig deep into who this customer is, where they shop, what stage of life they are in etc.
By performing the ideal customer avatar exercise you will be able to more easily picture who this person is and in return more easily create a message to target them. You will also be able to narrow in on your target market.
Understand your customer’s perceived need. Start to ask yourself the following questions:
- What is my customer’s perceived need?
- Who will need my product?
- Who would benefit from my product?
- Why is my product important to this customer?
- If my product was non-existent what would my customer do?
- Are there substitutes for my product?
- Who is my ideal customer?
How to perform market research so that your message aligns with your audience
Now that you have identified who your customer is you, can do a bit of market research. I know this step sounds boring, but it is GOLD and will provide you with the keywords you should be using in your marketing.
Once you learn how to do market research for your biz, you will be able to reuse these tactics when launching new products, needing more intel, looking to expand...you get where I'm going with this!
First, figure out where your customers are conversing.
You should know where your customers hang out online and on social.
- Search Facebook groups that align with you core brand messages keywords.
- Scroll through your Instagram feed. See what your followers are posting about.
- ASK YOUR AUDIENCE, this is the perfect place to get some intel. Your followers are already interested in your product or services so ask them what they think either as a question or pose it as a poll.
- If you have a Facebook group, use the pending Facebook group membership space to ask questions for market research.
- You can also look online and Google what people are saying about your message.
How to Perform Market Research
Once you have identified the spaces to perform market research, you can ask qualifies candidates questions about their needs so that you can better create the right content for your customers.
First, you need to ensure wherever you are asking for market research the space or the question qualifies the individual.
An easy way to do is is creating a problem statement. Then Say, if this describes you, I would love two minutes of your time...
I always like to preface that THIS IS NOT A PITCH. ETC. when creating my ask for their responses.
Then you can create your survey in Google forms. In google forms you can share your link. Copy this link and paste it wherever you are doing market research.
Writing Your Market Research Questions
Things you want to consider asking and considering when writing your market research questions:
- Try to understand your customers short or long-term goals associated with your product.
- For example, if you are working to promote an eco-conscious cleaning product you may want to ask questions relative to how they feel about their long-term commitment to the environment, what makes it difficult to commit, what objections they have when they go to purchase.
- You may also want to know how they feel about keeping a clean home, what are their reason and how does that promote a short term or long-term goal.
- For example, if you are working to promote an eco-conscious cleaning product you may want to ask questions relative to how they feel about their long-term commitment to the environment, what makes it difficult to commit, what objections they have when they go to purchase.
- Try to fulfill the emotional desires of your customers
- Take it a step further and find out how they feel when they do achieve these goals or when they buy a product that meets that need?
- For example, how do you feel when you buy the eco cleaning product, provide me with an adjective.
- In the long run how do you feel about using this product. What makes you loyal to an eco-product?
- Take it a step further and find out how they feel when they do achieve these goals or when they buy a product that meets that need?
Once you have created a survey and sent it out in Facebook groups, on your personal or business wall you may see an influx of responses in the first day, but then it will most likely settle down.
Steps after Posting Your Survey
- Send the survey to specific people via email or messenger.
- Post individual questions in groups
- Refine and ask again
After you have received feedback, you can then take some of the words, adjectives and expressions that your ideal customer uses in your messaging. Take note of these and keep them handy for when creating marketing materials.
How to incorporate your message across your brand
As you begin to think about how and where you will incorporate your message…NEWSFLASH.
It will be everywhere. So, before we jump into how to integrate your messaging I wanna give you the 411 on ensuring you have guidelines on how your brand message is used.
If you have not created a brand style guide for your brand, be sure check out my blog that walks through exactly how to create these guidelines for your brand, click here.
Where Should your Brand Message Live?
EVERYWHERE!
There will be different forms of your messaging dependent on your purpose. The following are examples of how I use my message.
- About page
- Sales page
- Contact page
- Footer of home page
- Introduction in emails to new clients
- Instagram bio
- Facebook Description
- Facebook Group description
- Pitch
You get the point. Your brand message should be intertwined throughout each channel your brand has a presence.
Adjust Your Message Based on Context & Channel
The goal is to make small tweaks based on channel and variation in audience.
For example, you only may have a certain word count available. You may decide you only want a portion in your bio.
You need to meld and frame your message throughout your branding where it makes sense.
It may also be present on a page without actually writing the exact words down, it may be implied by a slogan or a hook.
You need to be the judge of how your message should be interpreted by your audience.
For example, when you are pitching yourself or your business, it may change based on the context or the person, but the underlying essence of the message will stay the same.
Dependent on the person I am talking to I may say:
- I help retailers get their shit together and create a plan to grow their businesses.
or it may be more appropriate to say it differently based on the context or person:
- I help retail entrepreneurs find the time, processes and strategy to grow their businesses.
Always read your customer or your audience and put yourself in the eyes of the consumer when integrating your message across platforms or mediums.
How to Maintain Consistency Over Time.
It is so important across all mediums to stay consistent with regular postings, marketing, and content creation in order to grow and attract your audience.
However, you can post all you want, but if your brand is not consistent, you will NOT create brand recognition nor will you attract your ideal customer as your message will be confusing.
Again, I am going to go back to having a brand style guide as this will ensure ALL YOUR BRANDING IS CONSISTENT! Download your free template here and read my blog!
Here is the Consistency Algorithm:
- In order for people to trust you, they have to feel like they know you.
- In order for people to feel like they know you they have to recognize you
- To ensure they recognize you, you have to be consistent in your branding and messaging.
Knowing your brand message off the top of your head breeds confidence and shows your authority in your space.
When you know you what, who, and why and your consistent in this messaging people will start to recognize your brand voice and begin to trust you.
Final Thoughts
I hope this exercise helped you with writing your brand message!
That was a lot of information, but if you use this to your advantage you will be way ahead of the marketing game! This is a great starting point for writing the “about” section of your website, or practicing an elevator pitch to explain what you do.
If your still on the struggle bus and you want some help, I got your back. I work with retail entrepreneurs to help them find the time, streamline their process, create their foundations and a strategy to grow their business.
If this is you and you want to get serious about your next steps then let's chat. Click here to schedule a free, no pressure, no b.s. consult. I would love to chat with you and help you get to your next!
