Unpopular opinion: There’s no one way of building a successful brand. Depending on your company’s core values and services, you may need to put a spotlight on certain branding strategies to help share your brand’s message to your consumers.
When you’re creating (or brushing up) your brand’s message, unique elements work together to create a compelling and individual brand strategy. When you identify this, you get to create a unified plan that will help improve your brand’s position in the market and create a message that will resonate with your target audience.
Of course you can DIY it! You can also DIY replacing the engine in your car but there’s a reason why professionals are well…professionals. Seeing as brand messaging and strategy is no walk in the park (maybe only slightly easier than replacing your car’s engine) and that there are a bunch of complex concepts you need to focus on, working with an experienced branding agency can help. Their guidance can streamline your approach and formulate effective marketing solutions to produce effective brand messaging.
Why Does Brand Messaging Matter?
Brand messaging puts a spotlight on your content, which shares your brand story, which connects to your ideal customer or client. The best way to get consistent results is by articulating your brand through your content — who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
Secondly, an effective brand messaging strategy utilizes effective channels to help share your messages and purpose to the right audience. And with a clear message, you get to build a community filled with trust and support that would ultimately promote growth within your non-profit organization or business. Hive five!
The Different Elements of An Effective Brand Message
Element 1: Unique Value Proposition aka a One-Liner
Your brand messaging’s unique value propositions should be simple — it should clearly explain the functions and emotional benefits your services and products can give to your audience. Basically, you need to share what values people get from your brand and WHY it’s for them!
Check out the example below that use’s Steve Blank’s formatting to get you started:
Ex: Marie’s Engine Repair Shop UVP: We help cost-conscious car owners get back on the road by providing honest and quick engine repair.
A good value proposition communicates your brand’s what and why by creating engaging content that speaks to your audience in clear and concise terms and in a voice that they can relate to.
Element 2: An Effective Tagline
A tagline can seem pretty harmless, but when you create a powerful copy, you get to capture your company’s UVP, positioning, and personality, allowing you to stand out in a competitive marketplace. Think Dunkin Donuts “America Runs on Dunkin” or Disney “Happiest Place on Earth.” These taglines make you feel something while differentiating them from their competition.
To write an effective tagline, you need to know your brand by heart. This means that you have a solid company vision and purpose, understand your market, and have goals you need to hit. After that, you can start brainstorming with your team and branding agency and create a pool of ideas, leading up to the final, strong tagline.
Element 3: Messaging Pillars
Another important element you shouldn’t forget is your messaging pillars, which embrace your brand’s major themes, benefits, or selling points. For example, the engine repair shop (that you ended up taking your car to after YouTubing for hours) might have the following three pillars to focus on: one-day turnaround, transparent pricing, and high quality customer service.
*Pro tip: Messaging pillars are different from core values in that they articulate what your audience gains from your service or organization versus what you believe in (although sometimes there’s some overlap)
As you flesh out your pillars, you need to identify your selling points and support them by utilizing key phrases and keywords and infusing them into your content. This will help your brand stand out and encourage brand recall in your market.
Element 4: Strong Brand Goals
Every non-profit organization and small business has goals they’re working towards, and when you have solid goals, you’re able to create strong brand messaging that will spread awareness to your target market.
You can plant the seeds and water your goals by conducting thorough market research and compiling data that will help you create effective strategies to market your services and purpose. Of course, a branding company would be a huge help with this, especially when you need to compare your statistics with other competitors in the market.
The Bottom Line: Every Element Can Help Boost Your Brand Messaging, Allowing You to Stand Out From a Sea of Competitors
In our many years of working with countless entrepreneurs, we’ve learned that the importance of brand messaging is lost on most business owners within their organization.
So many times we’ve heard the question, “Can you design me a logo?”, yet never in our career have we heard the question, “Can you help craft our brand messaging?”
Brand messaging plays such a pivotal role in the end game of “branding”. After all, your branding is meant to influence perceptions about your brand in order to persuade potential customers to choose your brand over competitors. While the logo may catch the eye, it’s the brand message that penetrates the mind and shapes perceptions.
How Can Honey Creative Help Your Hive?
Every hive needs a well thought out brand strategy to create an influential brand message that will set them up for success. An effective brand message will make you easy to recognize and give you the ability to slowly build a relationship with your customers. It’s no wonder that many businesses decide to let professionals handle such an essential factor in their success.
This is where a branding agency can step in. Honey Creative is a branding agency that provides creative resources that make non-profit organizations’ stories easier to tell by fulfilling their mission.
Learn more about our services and how we can help you today!
