When you think of M&M’s, what feelings come to mind? For many people, it’s the same positive emotions they feel when they like someone. That’s because brands evoke the same feelings in us that we experience with people – according to research from Bergische University.
That means getting your brand messaging right to connect with your audience is critical to success.
Crafting a brand messaging starts with having an entire identity that communicates who you are as a brand and what makes you different from other companies in your industry. The entire process could take months – if not years – to fully take effect, but mapping out a strong brand messaging framework is a worthwhile marketing strategy that sets you apart from the rest.
In this article, we’ll look at:
• Brand Messaging Basics
• The Eight Brand Messaging Pillars
• Brand Messaging Frameworks Around The World
• Building Your Own Framework The Right Way
Brand Messaging Basics
What Is Brand Messaging?
Often, people think brand messaging is just a catchy slogan or tagline, but it’s much more than that.
Josiah Wiles, Vice President of Client Experience at Thrive, explained that while “branding is the basis of your business identity, almost like your brand’s personality,” brand messaging is the “communication of your branding to your audience.”
Brand messaging is the process of crafting a clear, concise and consistent message that communicates your brand’s unique value proposition to your target audience. It’s the foundation of your brand, encompassing everything from your tagline, brand promise, tone of voice and brand personality.
Essentially, it’s how a brand speaks to its customers and should be consistent across all communications, from advertising to social media posts.
What Is Brand Marketing?
Many people use the terms “brand messaging” and “brand marketing” interchangeably, but they are two distinct concepts.
Wiles further explained that “brand marketing is the leveraging of your brand and brand messaging to attract new customers or increase visibility across different mediums.”
Brand marketing promotes your brand through various channels to create brand awareness and reach your target audience. It includes email marketing, social media advertising, event marketing and more.
Brand marketing is how you get your message in front of your ideal customer, and it helps to connect more deeply with them.
Why Do They Matter for Your Business?
These branding elements work in tandem to create a powerful brand identity that resonates with customers.
A strong brand message communicates a brand’s identity consistently across all platforms and helps customers understand and engage with the brand.
Meanwhile, brand marketing brings that message to a broader audience and creates brand recognition and trust. Without a clear and consistent brand messaging strategy, a business’s marketing efforts may fall flat. Similarly, a business’s message may not reach the intended audience without effective brand marketing.
Any successful marketing strategy needs to nail these two components “to create a compelling story that speaks to how you solve your customer’s problems,” said Wiles.
“Most companies lose sight of this and focus most of their messaging and marketing on their own perceived value of themselves.”
Wiles said that the most successful companies are those that leverage branding through the lens of their audience.
This means that companies should begin by understanding their target customer, what they care about and what their needs are. From there, businesses can create messaging that resonates with that audience.
The Eight Brand Messaging Pillars
Every brand marketing strategy should be built on core brand messaging pillars that help to define the brand and create a clear message.
Adam Draper, Thrive’s Digital Marketing Manager for Strategy, has identified these eight brand messaging pillars your framework should have:
Pillar 1: Brand Purpose
Your brand purpose or mission statement serves as a guidepost for your business and informs all your activities, including:
• Marketing Strategies
• Customer Service
• Employee Engagement
Draper recommended asking this question when formulating your purpose: “Outside of generating revenue and turning a profit, why does your brand exist?”
In other words, “What is its mission and what values are central to what it does and the way it does it,” Draper further explained.
Pillar 2: Visual Identity
Most of your brand will be seen through the visuals you choose. This includes:
• Logo
• Website Design
• Graphics
• Illustrations
• Font Style
• Color Palette
Your visual identity “helps guide a consistent, recognizable brand experience that supports brand awareness growth and ‘stickiness’ for your brand identifiers,” Draper said.
Pillar 3: Unique Value Proposition
“Your unique value proposition defines who you are, and why you are different to your competitors,” Draper said.
For example, Volvo is known for its safety features, and BMW is known for the best driving experience.
“This component is often what helps set you apart from your competition at key stages of the user journey, and highlights junique selling points (USPs) such as key product or service features, quality, cost or aftercare,” Draper said.
Pillar 4: Brand Personality
Imagine your brand as a person – what would they sound like? How would they speak to their customers?
Your personality helps you “build a consistent voice for the crowd,” Draper said.
It defines how the brand expresses itself across all communication channels, from the “type of language you use, the style of your content or website and the type of imagery you use.”
To create your voice and tone guidelines, you’ll need to consider how you want people to feel when they engage with your content. Do you want readers to feel empowered or inspired? Once you have a sense of the feeling you want to evoke, create a collection of adjectives that evoke that emotion.
Use these adjectives as descriptors for words in your brand’s voice and tone.
Pillar 5: Target Audience
Knowing your target audience allows you to create a unique brand message framework.
“By understanding your audience’s needs, what motivates them and what impacts their purchasing decisions, you’re able to create personas that represent your audience,” Draper said.
Start by defining their:
• Demographics
• Interests
• Values
If you want to make it more engaging, you can create customer profiles to help your team better understand who they are talking to. Create your own character, such as “John, a 32-year-old entrepreneur looking for the best tools to help him succeed in his business,” or “Mary, a busy mom looking for fun activities to do with her kids.”
“This helps tie your brand messaging to specific segments of your audience, providing a more personalized experience,” Draper explained.
Making these fictional profiles puts you in your customers’ shoes and makes marketing the brand more authentic and personal.
Pillar 6: Brand Messaging
Every serious company worth its salt should have a message that summarizes its mission and values. These are your slogans and taglines that you “would use to communicate other aspects of the brand messaging framework such as the value proposition and USPs,” Draper said.
Think of some of the most iconic brand messaging examples out there:
• Nike’s “Just Do It”
• Coca-Cola’s “Taste The Feeling”
• McDonald’s’ “I’m Lovin’ It“
All these brand messaging examples are simple yet powerful. They give a sense of what the company is about in just a few words. So if you want people to remember your brand, create an unforgettable tagline that encapsulates your mission and values.
Pillar 7: Brand Storytelling
As the old saying goes, “facts tell, but stories sell.” Storytelling is one of the oldest message pillars in a brand marketing strategy and is still relevant today.
It gives your message an emotional angle that resonates with your customers and makes them more likely to take action.
Start by finding interesting stories about your brand. This could be a customer success story or even the story of how you started the business. Then weave these stories into your messaging so that they become part of the narrative around your brand.
Pillar 8: Brand Organization Documents
You want to ensure that all your brand messaging and marketing elements are used consistently. Therefore, creating a document that outlines all your branding information helps ensure all your communication and marketing accurately represent your brand.
Draper said your documents should include all the information we mentioned above, such as clear guidelines on each pillar, examples of how they’re executed and visual clues.
Brand Messaging Frameworks Around The World
Inspiration is hard to come by if you’re looking at a blank canvas. Thankfully, many notable brand messaging framework examples out there have been crafted with care and thoughtfulness.
Apple
Aah, Apple. The tech titan’s messaging framework is the stuff of legend. When someone asks, “What is brand marketing?” they’ll likely be pointed toward what Apple is doing.
The company uses minimalism, simple language and an emphasis on user experience to convey its message clearly and effectively. You can see this in perhaps its first successful ad, Macintosh “for the rest of us,” which was all about how easy it was to use the computer.
Over the years, Apple perfected its brand marketing strategy of minimalism and simple experience, focusing on a customer-centric approach to its ads. Take a look at the website’s homepage:
Using only two words in its 2023 iPhone campaign, “Pro. Beyond.“, Apple effectively communicates this messaging framework of power and performance, specifically for its premium and professional-level audience.
The takeaway here: Keep it simple, memorable and customer-centric. That’s Apple’s formula for success when marketing the brand to the masses.
Netflix
Netflix is up there in some of the best brand messaging examples. The streaming service’s main goal is to get people to watch as much content on its streaming platform as possible. To do this, it uses a combination of clever copy and visuals that capture the audience’s attention and make them want to watch more.
An example of this is one of their original series titles: “Stranger Things.”
The title itself grabs attention and creates intrigue – what could it be about? Who are these strange things? You can only find the answers by watching the show.
Netflix also uses visuals like bright colors and interesting fonts to help create an engaging experience for viewers. From its homepage to the preview images used for shows, everything is designed with the viewer in mind.
Dizzy Stop
Dizzy Stop is a health and wellness company that produces herbal supplements for dizziness, imbalance and vertigo.
What we love about the brand is its commitment to helping its audience make informed buying decisions, even if it means not buying from the company. This meant increased sales, page views and clicks for both its Amazon store and website.
Here are some of the results the company got after running customer-centric campaigns and brand marketing services:
Ambler Industries
As a professional landscaping company, the folks at Ambler Industries had their work cut out for them. But by positioning the brand as an expert in the community, this company built trust among its potential customers and increased sales.
This involved publishing industry-related content on its social media accounts while also applying community-centric posts in its strategy. It also partnered with a brand marketing agency so it can focus on providing top-notch services instead of on the marketing side of the business. This resulted in massive follower and engagement growth in its accounts, especially Instagram.
Building Your Own Framework The Right Way
Here’s a myth: These brand messaging framework examples did something different. The truth is they followed the same process of marketing the brand.
Now, let’s solve the last piece of the brand messaging puzzle: actually creating your own message framework. Let’s break down the best practices leveraged by our chosen examples to craft your framework.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
As cliche as this sounds, it’s still one of the most important factors when crafting your message framework.
Knowing who you’re talking to helps ensure your message is tailored to the right people. It also creates a more personal connection with your customers and makes them feel like they matter.
Just take a look at how Apple solved this problem. The company’s messaging was for a specific group of people: the ordinary user. This brand marketing strategy made complex technology seem simple and accessible – effectively connecting with their audience.
Step 2: Identify Your Core Values and Brand Promise
The next step is to identify your core values and brand promise.
Netflix is an excellent example of this. Its brand promise and mission, “We want to entertain the world,” meant creating different types of content, from original series to movies and documentaries, which is precisely what it’s offering while staying on top of the entertainment (and streaming) industry.
Use the message pillars we previously discussed as your foundation. From there, you can craft a statement that reflects the promise of your brand and what it stands for.
Step 3: Know What Sets You Apart
Everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. So, your messaging frameworks need to position your brand uniquely.
Ambler Industries did an excellent job at this. Instead of focusing on price or discounts, the company chose to focus on its expertise in the field and the trust that comes with that. This has allowed Ambler Industries to be seen as more than just a landscaping company – but a trusted expert in the community.
Step 4: Define How You Will Be Seen and Heard by Customers
Your brand message pillars are only as good as the way you communicate them. Ambler Industries chose a content-driven approach that focused on building trust, while Netflix made sure its visuals were attractive and inviting.
It’s essential to take some time to define how you want customers to see and hear your brand. This includes creating visuals, such as logos or slogans, and determining which channels suit your message and audience.
Step 5: Test and Refine Your Messaging Framework
Let’s say you’ve done everything, sat down and said to yourself, “This is genius!”
Well, the truth is that it doesn’t have to be set in stone right away. You should take the time to test different brand management strategies and refine your messaging frameworks as you go. This involves running A/B tests on various ad campaigns or seeing how your customers respond to each message you put out there.
Doing this ensures your messaging framework is working for you and connecting with your customers.
Boost Your Online Presence With a Top-Notch Brand Marketing Agency
So, what is brand messaging? It’s a combination of flair, creativity and strategy that are used to ensure your company’s message is consistent and reliable across all channels.
While it takes some legwork to get it right, the rewards are well worth the effort. So don’t be afraid to put in the work and create a messaging strategy that stands out!
If you’re looking for a serious partner in branding and marketing, look no further than Thrive Internet Marketing Agency. We offer brand marketing services that stick to your values, whether you’re an emerging business or an established name.
It’s time to go to the next level and become more influential in your niche. Contact us today to get started!
