Is Your Brand Messaging Ruining Your Brand?
Which comes first: the chicken or the egg?
Put otherwise, which is more important: messaging or marketing?
To channel a little Frank Sinatra, “you can’t have one without the other.” Or, to be more accurate, you can’t have marketing without effective messaging.
Yet the number of people who try is endless.
Let’s take a look at why having a brand copywriter – or at least effective brand messaging – is critical, and more importantly, how to do it right (even without copywriting online courses).
Why is Brand Copywriting So Critical?
Over the past decade, I have helped hundreds of business owners develop powerful, conversion-worthy messaging. And the reason savvy coaches and therapists will fork out thousands of dollars for a page of website copy or blog article is this: The return on investment is magnificent.
Consider this – it takes 5 to 7 impressions before a person recognizes your brand. That means they must see your company’s branding and messaging via social media posts, blogging, presentations, and elsewhere at least a handful of times before they will even remember you.
And if you present yourself differently each time, it’s as though they haven’t seen your company at all, which is partly why consistent brand messaging is shown to increase revenue by 20%.
Effective messaging allows you to prove thought leadership, connect with prospects, communicate your values, and convert eyeballs into revenue.
What isn’t there to love?
How Can I Create Jaw-Dropping Brand Messaging?
While having a brand copywriter is ideal, it isn’t necessary. Same goes for attending copywriting online courses.
More important is to follow the 5 brand messaging pillars to build trust with your audience and form a strong brand strategy. Here’s a look at how to do so.
There are five core brand pillars: purpose, position, personality, perception, and promotion.
1.Purpose
This pillar of messaging is all about revisiting your roots. Why did you form your company in the first place? What causes you to get up in the morning and put in the hours each day?
Identifying your brand’s purpose is vital to connecting with your target audience, defining your company culture, and bringing the right people onboard to deliver on your purpose.
For my clients, we use this messaging often. It goes on their website. It is also threaded throughout their onboarding process, in sales conversations, within their coaching membership, and in any presentation they offer.
Questions to ask for this pillar:
Why did you start this business?
What is your spiritual vision? Your life vision?
What do you want to accomplish?
What problem/s does your company solve?
What value are you offering to your clients, employees, and community?
What do you want your legacy to be?
2. Position
The process of building your brand position answers the question of how you are different from your competition or other providers.
You’ll want to consider your specific audience and how they perceive themselves as different from other people. What values and behaviors do they exhibit that allows them to separate themselves from others? What elements do they pride themselves on as being different?
Once you’ve identified those characteristics, it becomes easier to differentiate yourself as a coaching membership, online community, or service provider.
In the Concept to Profit program, we look at who else is promising the same results that we promise. This may include books, coaches, therapists, tools, apps, and even groups.
Then, we consider where those resources fall short. What do people complain about as it relates to those tools? What would they like to see done differently?
Combined, those elements offer a keen perspective on where we might want to direct attention.
Questions to ask for this pillar:
Who is our target audience?
What do those people want?
What are the strengths and limitations of your brand?
What niche is your brand competing in?
Who else promises what you promise?
Who and what else do your prospects turn to when looking for information?
How are other providers positioning their brands?
How are you different from them?
What gaps does your coaching membership or program fill?
3. Personality
Your brand’s messaging personality refers to everything designed to leave a positive first impression and remain memorable.
This means you aren’t using a branding name generator, for instance, but rather carving out a unique identity for your brand within the marketplace.
Here, you’ll consider the obvious elements, such as your logo, typography, and color palette. You’ll also reflect on the more nuanced brand persona, including your brand messaging tone, voice, and archetype.
How will you create a connection with your audience, form familiarity, and inspire brand loyalty?
When determining your brand personality, it’s important to remember that people are emotional buyers. Through your unique personality, you can evoke emotion so that you aren’t merely “another salesperson hawking your stuff,” but are instead a caring, thoughtful human who sincerely wants to help.
Questions to ask for this pillar:
What are your brand’s quirks and bits of uniqueness?
What is your brand archetype?
What is the mood of the brand?
What tone of voice do you use to communicate?
What visual elements (colors, fonts) accurately represent your brand?
What behaviors define your brand? Are you whimsical, dark-humored, straight-laced, friendly? Do you want to be seen as an authority, a partner, or a chum?
4. Perception
Jeff Bezos once famously said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
In a nutshell, this is what I mean when referring to brand perception.
As any brand copywriter will tell you, the process of forming perceptions of your brand can be strategically designed. Crafting thoughtful imagery, copywriting, advertising, and of course, delivering on your promises, is integral to building your brand’s messaging perception.
It’s also important to remember to continuously align your internal image with your external image. The way you communicate with your team and clients is integral to managing the perception people have of your company.
In a coaching membership, this may include the email sequences sent out, the banners used to communicate sections of your program, the content delivered, and the interactions you have during group calls.
Questions to ask for this pillar:
How do your clients perceive your brand? How do they describe you to others?
What do others say are your greatest strengths?
Is this how you want to be perceived?
If you were to write your brand obituary, what would you want it to say?
Where do any client misperceptions stem from?
How do you want to change any misperceptions of your brand?
5. Promotion
Contrary to how this may sound, brand messaging promotion isn’t about advertising. Rather, it refers to your clients’ journey and everything you do to introduce, encourage, inspire, and engage with your audience.
For this, you’re looking at all of the communication channels you use, the touchpoints your clients have with you, and how you make yourself visible in the marketplace.
The goal of the promotion pillar is to place yourself in the right place at the right time in front of the right people.
Questions to ask for this pillar:
How aware are people of you and your company?
How are you currently promoting your brand?
What are your communication channels?
Where do your clients find you?
At what point in their journey do clients need you?
What experiences do you provide to your clients?
What makes your coaching membership or program better than others?
How do prospects interact with you online and offline?
How do you handle bad client responses?
Recognizing your brand messaging pillars is to recognize the heart and soul of your company.
While it doesn’t take copywriting online courses or a brand copywriter to form these elements of your messaging strategy, having someone to partner with as you develop your copy is extremely helpful. If you’d like support to form your entire brand messaging strategy, I’d love to chat. Schedule a call so we can determine if the Concept to Profit program is right for you.
