How does your brand communicate with your customers? Successful brand messaging strategies inspire and motivate them to make a purchase and stick by your brand’s side. On the other hand, a poorly designed brand message can turn potential customers away more quickly than you could imagine. Don’t worry; we’ll help you develop a brand messaging strategy for success!
Related: Building Brand Loyalty
Elements of an Effective Brand Messaging Strategy
These tips about your unique selling proposition, target audience, and brand identity will get your brand messaging strategy up to speed in no time:
1. Your Unique Selling Proposition
Your unique selling proposition, or USP, is how you show your customers what sets you apart and gives them a reason to choose your products and services over a competing company. A quality USP is what sets brands up for success, and it is a huge part of every successful brand messaging strategy. When choosing a USP, you can ask these questions to help establish it:
- What makes your brand different?
- What problem does your product/service aim to solve?
- What reasons are there for a customer to choose you over a competitor?
Your USP should be:
- Assertive. Take on a specific position that makes a case against your competitor’s products. It should be pretty specific, not a generic phrase.
- Focused on your customers. Your customers don’t care about “uniqueness” unless it’s relevant to their wants and needs. Your USP should focus on what they care about.
- More than a catchphrase. Your catchphrase is the main way that you’ll communicate your USP, but you can incorporate it into other areas of your company as well.
What does a USP look like? Check out these examples of effective brand messaging through unique selling propositions:
- The company Death Wish Coffee takes a different approach with their USP. While many coffee companies claim rich or smooth tastes, Death Wish caters to those who want a little more with a simple, effective USP: “The world’s strongest coffee.”
- Beardbrand — a, well, beard brand — sets itself apart from other cosmetic companies by addressing the cause of the problems rather than covering up the symptoms. They state that their products work with the natural chemistry of your body rather than change or disguise it.
2. Understanding Your Audience
Without a deep understanding of the customers you’re marketing your products and services to, it’s impossible to form a successful brand messaging strategy. You need to know:
- What customers you want to focus on
- What their values are
- The language that they use/expect to see from you
How do you get this deeper understanding of your audience? Try out these tips:
- Watch your competitors; this is simply a different form of market research. Look at your competitors that have a similar audience as you, and check out the brand voice, messaging, and marketing strategies that are working for them. The most important thing to ask yourself is why these strategies work; don’t just copy their brand messaging and expect it to work.
- Use a customer persona; this is a popular way for many businesses to get more insight into their customers. It involves creating an outline of your customer base. Basically, you form a fictional character and fill in the blanks (income, values, personality traits, etc.), and use that character as a tool to get to know your customers better.
- Take your time with your clients. If you have the chance to work one-on-one with your customers, take the time to know them personally. What are their concerns? What are their likes/dislikes? How do they talk? What’s their body language like? These qualities will often overlap with a large portion of your audience; use them to help you understand what it is your customers want from you.
- Monitor your engagements. Your business is probably on at least one social media platform; pay attention to how your customers interact. Who’s talking about your brand? How do they respond to others? How often are they posting? More social media engagements are typically a good thing for your brand. Monitoring their activity can help you learn about what they value and what type of messages appeal to them.
Related: Measuring Brand Loyalty
3.Stay True to Your Brand Identity
Once you’ve developed a strong UPS and have more insights into your target audience, the main focus is on getting your brand message out there. When creating content for your brand, keep these tips in mind:
- Stay true to your brand positioning. Anytime you’re creating your brand’s content, make sure that it holds true to your brand’s values. You want to gain the trust of your audience, not reel them in with false information.
- Really relate to your audience. Remember the customer persona we mentioned earlier? Now’s the time to use it. Go over your messaging with that persona; how would they react to it?
- No brand is perfect. Your customers aren’t perfect, and neither is your brand. That’s okay. Don’t make promises to your audience that you can’t keep, and don’t try to market your products or services as perfect. Trust us; it’ll come off as disingenuous.
- Communicate your brand message everywhere. No matter what content you’re creating or what marketing decision you’re going over, keep your brand message in mind. Your copy needs to always communicate and stick to your brand message.
- Keep it simple. Your audience doesn’t want to have to think too hard when discerning your brand’s message, value, and personality. Try to keep it simple; it makes it more likely for your customers to be able to relate with your brand. You don’t want a brand message that confuses them.
Enhance Your Brand Messaging Strategy With 1338Tryon
So, you’ve crafted an amazing brand messaging strategy; now what? It’s time to get your brand message out to the world! That sounds exciting, but what’s the best way to do it? Up your promotional marketing game with 1338Tryon — get your brand message across to your audience with uniquely branded merchandise and marketing asset programs. Are you ready to see how promotional marketing is an effective tool for growing your brand? Get in touch with us today to enhance your brand messaging strategy!
