How to Develop Your Brand Message
Your brand message is the mechanism you will use to communicate to your audience.
Developing that message with intention is the key to creating a positive narrative and direction for your brand.
Our primary goal when developing a brand message is MARKET-MESSAGE CONGRUENCE.
This means you're sending the right message to the right audience.
Market-message incongruence is when you're either sending the:
- right message to the wrong audience
- the wrong message to the right audience
- or the wrong message to the wrong audience.
This makes it impossible to build an effective marketing campaign because your branding efforts are not facilitating progress in the business cycle.
- Branding is what creates the opportunity for marketing to do its job.
- Marketing is what creates the opportunity for sales to do its job.
- Sales is what creates the opportunity for the product/service to do its job.
- The product/service is what creates the opportunity for the customer to be fulfilled.
- The customer being fulfilled is what creates the opportunity for the brand identity to be reinforced and strengthened.
Then the cycle repeats itself.
But when there is incongruence at the onset, it disrupts the flow of all these aspects of business working together.
Having the wrong brand message means you're going to try to market, sell, and service the wrong people or worse - the right people under the wrong mental framework.
This is what creates business stagnancy.
I need you to understand this element because branding is what most business owners overlook when attempting to diagnose a lack of sales growth.
The thing is, you can hustle your way to a certain amount of revenue without strong brand recognition.
But at some point, the brand has to be addressed if you want the business to have more flow and scale.
Your brand even impacts the people you hire.
So it's important to get to the root as early as possible.
Exclusion = Attraction
Part of what makes a brand message attractive is that it naturally excludes people who are not meant for the conversation.
For example:
There are two basketball trainers in a local area.
Trainer A works with college students in the summer.
Trainer B works with former D1 athletes who are looking to recover from injury to play overseas.
Trainer A has a broader target demographic.
Trainer B has a more specific demographic.
When it comes down to crafting a brand message, it will be a lot easier for Trainer B to attract athletes because the WHO is well-defined.
FIND YOUR WHO
When you want to write a letter, an email, or a text..
Do you write the message first, then decide who you're going to send it to?
No, you go to their specific profile, email, or phone number and then you send the message that is hopefully relevant to them.
The same goes for your business and your brand.
Define your audience first, then craft the message that is relevant to them.
Think about your best customers, case studies, etc. as they will be great reference points to build from.
What Do They REALLY Want?
Your audience wants something, but something is holding them back.
If you can successfully identify and communicate how what you have to offer removes what is holding them back, then you can position your brand as a supportive representative for their end goal.
Note: I didn't say that you have to deliver what they want.
You simply must be an active force of removing the negative agent that is holding them back.
Humans are wired for survival and in that psychological wiring, we are more prone to focus on the negatives than the positives.
Loss aversion is a strong cognitive bias.
Even among the boldest of human beings, protecting what you have is first instinct.
Removing a threat is aligned with that line of subconscious thinking.
When you can identify the current and/or future threat to their goals (and more importantly, their desired emotional state as a result of achievement), you become a partner in helping them navigate towards their success.
This is why the WHO is so important.
You cannot identify a threat effectively if you are attempting to talk to everyone at once.
What is the goal? What is holding them back?
What Are You Going to Do About It?
This is where we get into the weeds a bit, because it's not really about what you're doing in the client fulfillment process, per se.
It's moreso about how you show up in opposition to the negative force that is holding your target audience back.
It's about how your brand stands up against this common problem that you have identified and created a solution for.
Remember, branding is not about selling anything.
It's really not even about marketing.
It's about generating exposure and awareness in your marketplace about your position on the problems your market is facing.
Again, branding is not about saying "hey, I have this thing for sale!"
It's essentially "Hey, this is an issue affecting people I care about."
It is raising awareness about something larger than yourself so that your brand becomes synonymous with a greater force than the product/service you're offering.
The Irony of Brand Messaging
Up until this point, you may have noticed that this involves much more thinking than people give credit for.
That's because your message has to be true to what your brand represents and not just what you want it to represent.
This is where marketing comes into the mix.
Your "brand message" is not some concrete document like the Constitution of the United States.
It is a philosophy, a way of thinking, and a way of living.
It's not a slogan, a tagline, or a marketing hook.
It's not the tired "I help ____ to ____ by ___."
If anything, it's quite similar to "the moral to the story" of a children's book.
You don't read the moral of the story verbatim.
You're supposed to feel it and internalize it.
And your market should be able to resonate with how your message displays itself in every aspect of your business.
So we're thinking about who our target audience is, what they want, what negative forces are holding them back, and how we can show up as a positive force for their goals.
It doesn't matter what type of product or service you offer.
This is at the core of a transformational brand that is seeking to gain marketshare in a world of increasing competition and options.
Your brand message is a culmination of ideas that showcase what your brand represents philosophically.
It's an opportunity to shine in your highest truth and inspire others to do the same.
Truth is what makes your brand attractive and alluring because when people resonate with a truth, the connection goes beyond any product or service.
Life would simply have it that you have a product or service that can help them with a problem they are facing.
Dig deeper than the business.
Understand that your purpose is naturally embedded in all things and the human connections you are here to foster require you to expand your reach and notoriety by building your brand to its greatest potential.
- JEM