How to Craft Brand Messaging to Build Loyal Customers 

In showcasing your brand to the world, it’s not enough to just write a positioning statement, fling it into the world, and hope it sticks. You have to know that the first process of building a brand starts not at the inception of the color schemes nor the flare of the themes, but with an idea. This is where you make your build your brand and thus must be one that should resonate with the market. 

You might think that messaging is as easy as coming up with catchy slogans, but it's more than that. Branding experts have to look for insights from data and trends to come up with a strategy that is consistent, clear, and thoughtful enough that it could eclipse the overall image of your brand and your own company's values.

To find out how we do it, here is a nifty guide that will tell you all you need to know about how to craft your brand messaging and how the world that you have what it takes to lead the next generation of the competitive market.

Let’s get started!

What is a Brand Messaging?

Let’s look back on the obvious: A brand is a distinctive name, symbol, design, or combination of these elements that makes your product, service, or company unique from your competitors. It serves as the company's primary identity and represents the core value proposition, values, and beliefs targeted to a particular target market.

To communicate your brand’s value is through brand messaging: a strategic communication framework that conveys the core essence of the brand and its unique selling points, both explicitly and implicitly. It encompasses the tone, voice, and language used in the content, advertising, public relations, and customer interactions. This unified brand message is carefully crafted through randing tactics that captivate, engage, and resonate with the audience, ultimately influencing their perception of the brand and motivating them to take desired actions. 

This is one of the key components of brand strategy and has a significant impact on the success of building a brand.

Why is Brand Messaging Important?

Perhaps the most defining aspect of brand messages is consistency. In a brand that is brought to the world, even from the audience, you can expect that your external brand messaging evokes different and often disjointed perspectives and reactions, even when some aspect of it is unintentional. Strategic brand messaging helps to unify your brand voice, allowing you to have control of what your brand is supposed to be. When the brand’s intent is clear, unique united, and memorable, it allows further brand messaging, and marketing campaigns, to a much more effective and easier.

How to Create an Effective Brand Messaging Framework

Brand messaging frameworks are developed to define effective ways of communicating with consumers and help build loyalty. To start creating your own brand messaging framework, you need to do the following:

‍

Identify Your Target Audience

Understanding who you are speaking to is the most crucial part of crafting effective brand messaging. It helps you refine the details of how you define your brand personality. Here are some of the guidelines for defining your audience:

1. Client Interviews - A surefire way to start is to analyze the demographics of those who already are buying your product or services. Study their age, interests, pain points, and their location so you can hone your brand messaging in this group. For example, millennials are keen on innovative technology and do their own research before making a purchase - consider a voice that permeates professionalism and trustworthiness.

1. Supply a Demand - Another way to identify your audience, or at least scale your existing market, is to research the market to check if they are a need that you can fill. You can leverage this as you can potentially be the lead that fills this part of the market.

1. Create Buyer Personas and Anti-Persona - Creating a profile of a person that doesn’t buy from you is as important as creating a profile of an ideal customer. This allows you to refine your messaging to be effective, efficient, and focused on a group that yields better returns.

1. Always Revise - Target audience research must not be a one-time undertaking only. Market trends always change and the messaging that works currently may not be in the future. Those who have adaptive branding strategies win.

Look for market trends

Research the competition to understand better what kind of messaging appeals to your audience the most. Look for points of interest in the types of content and advertising that perform best. Focus on the core message behind each successful campaign to identify what resonates with your audience. Here are some of the things to take note of in your research:

1. Use digital tools for research. Checking statistics doesn’t have to be tedious if there are resources available.
2. Your conclusion must be based on the facts. Jumping to conclusions might make you miss some of the important details in your analysis.
3. Keep yourself updated with industry influencers and publications. They can provide you with some alternative insight into your research.

Create your Brand Positioning

The Brand Positioning statement serves as your brand’s mission statement that defines what you stand for in the marketplace and sets you apart from your competitors. Your statement refines how to convey your brand promise to the target audience. Here is some type of brand positioning strategies that you can look into:

1. Convenience - you can take advantage of the human natural urge to seek the easiest path to things you want. Location, accessibility, and ease of use are the factors that make a particular product or service convenient, and you can use this as the basis for your brand messaging.

1. Price - clients and customers consider cost as a critical factor in their purchasing decision. If you consider this, your messaging can be the highlight of how your cheaper brand doesn’t risk its quality.

1. Quality - wealthy customers consider quality in their preferred products, even at premium prices. If you consider their positioning, refine your message that caters to this demographic.

Define Your Brand Voice

Your brand voice is the tone and style of your messaging. It should be consistent across all channels, helping to create recognition and trust with consumers. When defining your brand voice, consider how you want to come across and make sure it aligns with your target audience. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to better guide you in determining your brand tone of voice:

1. What emotions do you want to evoke in your audience?
2. What kind of voice would not appeal to your audience?
3. What are the best words to communicate your brand story?
4. What makes your voice different from others?
5. What language do you use?

For example, a brand targeting young professionals may want to adopt a conversational voice that’s light-hearted and relatable. A luxury fashion house might want to use a more authoritative and formal tone and must convey style

.

Once you have established your brand messaging framework, you can create content that resonates with your target audience.

Design your tone and style guide

Now that you have a solid understanding of your brand's messaging, it’s time to create a style guide. This document should set the standard for how your brand communicates across all platforms.

The style guide should include the following:

• Your brand value propositions and mission statement

• Guidelines for your brand voice, brand's personality, and tone

• Examples of approved messaging, key themes, talking points, and content

• Specifications for logo usage and branding elements

• Guidelines for imagery and visual identity

• Color palette, typography, and font usage

While consistency is a must in creating your brand style guide, keep in mind that you must be prepared to make changes in the future to suit your brand messaging.

Gather audience feedback

Initial statement and brand messaging efforts may not always be right and it is best to gather data to check what works or not. Your target audience is your best source of feedback on your brand messaging. You can gather their response through customer reviews, surveys, emails, social media posts, etc. Take note that only gather the things that are useful because customers aren’t always right nor do they represent your target audience. Here are some of the questions you may ask in your surveys:

1. How would describe the way we communicate?
2. What did you feel when you first heard about us?
3. Which part of our messaging appeals to you the most?
4. Which part of our messaging appeals to you the least?
5. Did you feel interested after you heard about us? Why or why not?
6. How can you make our messaging better?
   

Take notes of their age, gender, interest, and other useful information and assure that their feedback will always remain confidential.

Customer engagement like this not only improves your brand messaging but also gives another statement to them - that you are willing to listen to the people and adapt to their needs, thus giving your company higher credibility.

Evaluate and Change As Needed

Finally, once you have gathered all the necessary data and have made your analysis, you should regularly review your brand messaging and adjust as needed. Here are some things to take note of when making your changes.

1. Customer reviews - as mentioned, customers don’t always represent the majority and thus, you must look deeper they feel a certain way about your brand messaging. Try to come up with a compromise that understands the balance of asserting your brand and keeping with the trends of your target audience.
2. Industry trends - As always, keep in mind the data trends in your industry. This way you can make intuitions on how to make your brand messaging distinctive while still adapting to the leading market.
3.  Own analysis - you can also make proactive changes in your brand messaging if it feels outdated to you. After all, it is your company’s voice that resonates in your brand and thus should be the final authority of how you craft your brand messaging. 

You must be willing to make a change if it's necessary, and even rebrand and change your value proposition if it suits you. But remember that it still must be consistent with the core values that molded your brand since its first inception.

Here are some Great Examples of Brand Messaging

A strong brand messaging framework is essential for success regardless of your business type. Here are some great examples of companies that have mastered their messaging:

Dove

Dove’s centered its whole brand identity and messaging on a principle and say: “We believe beauty should be a source of confidence, not anxiety. ” Their brand voice is warm and caring, and their messaging focuses on celebrating diversity and inclusivity.

Apple

Apple’s brand messaging is focused on simplicity, innovation, and quality. They often pair simple descriptions of their features and how they affected their target audience’s daily lives. Their slogan, “Think Different,” encourages their potential customers to push boundaries and challenge the status quo.

Taco Bell

Taco Bell’s messaging conveys fun, excitement, and boldness. They are active in their social media post and are updated to modern trends. Their slogan, “Live More," is a call to action for customers to make the most of their lives.

Volkswagen

Volkswagen’s messaging is centered around a brand positioning statement of convenience, safety, low cost, and reliability. The slogan for one of their most famous advertising campaigns, “Think Small,” emphasizes the importance of practicality and affordability.

GoPro

GoPro’s value proposition is a leading market for action cameras. Their brand messaging encourages customers to push their limits and explore new experiences. Their slogan, “Be a Hero,” invites customers to take risks and live life to the fullest.

Red Bull

Red Bull’s messaging is all about energy, excitement, and adrenaline. The slogan “Red Bull Gives You Wings” communicates their value proposition that their energy drink can help customers achieve anything they want.

JetBlue

JetBlue’s messaging focuses on comfort, affordability, and convenience. Their "You Above All" tagline demonstrates their commitment to prioritizing customer satisfaction.

Loom

The messaging for the video conferencing platform Loom conveys warmth and trustworthiness. Their slogan, “Better Together," conveys that communication is essential for success.

FabFitFun

FabFitFun’s messaging encourages customers to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. Their slogan, “Delivering Happiness and Well Being to Everyone, Everywhere." speaks to their commitment to making customers feel good inside and out.

As you can see, each of these brands has created a unique messaging framework that resonates with their target audience. By learning from these examples, you can develop a brand messaging framework to help your brand stand out.

Final Thoughts

Creating meaningful connections with customers through effective brand messaging is essential for any business looking to build long-term customer relationships. By understanding your target audience, using key messages, being authentic in your messaging, and engaging in conversations with customers, you can create a loyal following that will stand by your brand through thick and thin!

With the right core messaging, building customer loyalty doesn’t have to be complicated. Start small by focusing on what matters most - connecting with people emotionally! For more information on effectively communicating your brand message, check out our blogs at Evolv. Read our articles on brand messaging and learn how to create a brand messaging strategy that resonates with your customers.

‍