Branding

Branding and brand messaging is how you communicate who you are to your audience, including customers, partners, suppliers, and employees. Your brand comes across with every touchpoint – your words, tone of voice, logo, images, website, colours, and so on.

Branding often includes a visual brand identity, mission statement, values, and unique narrative.

Having a brand helps quickly identify, set expectations and build trust in an individual or organization.

Brand messaging tells your story, establishes trust with your audience, distinguishes you from your competitors, influences buying and employment decisions, and helps establish your company culture

Elements of your brand messaging framework include:

1. Vision statement – A future and aspirational goal of what you want to see achieve or change in the world.
2. Mission statement – “Why” your business exists.
3. Values – A set of guiding beliefs and behaviours that drive your brand’s culture, vision, and mission.
4. Positioning statement – A summary of what you will deliver (promise) to your target audience.
5. Differentiators – What sets your brand apart from your competitors.
6. Value propositions – Short statements that define what you can do for your customers.
7. Voice – How you present (personality) your brand to your audiences.
8. Elevator pitch – A very short description of what your company does for whom and why that uses simple words.

Product messaging includes many elements, including a product description, the values/benefits of your product, who will buy or influence the buying decisions, the challenges faced by customers who may purchase your product, competition to your products, and unique differentiators.

Product messaging is crucial because it shapes how customers perceive and understand a product, influencing their buying decisions and overall experience.

Effective product messaging translates complex product features and benefits into clear, easily understandable language, helping customers quickly grasp what the product does and why it’s valuable to them.

It also helps to distinguish your product from competitors by highlighting unique features, benefits, and the value proposition, making it clear why customers should choose your product over others.

Finally, consistent messaging across all marketing channels builds a cohesive brand identity, reinforcing your brand and establishes credibility and trust with customers.

Content marketing offers readers informative and useful material that answers questions, provides insights and value, and helps your audience through the marketing and sales funnel.

Blogs, eBooks, announcements, videos, and newsletters are forms of content marketing that attract potential customers, keep leads/prospects engaged, and turn customers into advocates or champions.

Here’s a structured approach to help you create impactful product messaging:

• Understand your target audience: Identify the industries, buyer and influencer personas for your products/services.
• Identify pain points and motivations: Identify the specific problems your product addresses and the benefits that will motivate your personas to buy.
• Define your Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Clearly articulate what makes your product unique compared to competitors. Don’t forget the “do-nothing” option.
• Craft key messages: Develop a core message that succinctly captures your UVP and supporting messages that expand on your core message. These should cover specific features, benefits, and use cases.
• Develop messaging framework: Create headlines, subheadings, body copy and call-to-actions (CTA) for your various personas to ensure consistent communication about your product.
• Test and refine: Gather feedback from real users and stakeholders and make adjustments to ensure clarity and impact.

Product positioning is the process of establishing and promoting a product’s unique value and place in the market relative to competitors.

Product messaging is the content (words and images) to convey a product’s value, features, and benefits to the target audience.

Rebranding is a marketing initiative where an organization’s brand is changed to develop a new, differentiated identity in the minds of stakeholders such as customers, partners and investors.

A rebrand can be a small change (i.e. update logo) or a big change (all new brand identity and messaging).

The decision to rebrand should not be taken lightly as rebranding carries risks. Your audiences are used to how you look and communicate and may connect with you in the same way.

On the other hand, if your company is looking to be more current, is looking to reposition itself in the market or has undergone a merger/acquisition, a rebrand can revitalize how your company is perceived.

It is best to consult with a marketing professional to work through the factors to consider before taking a decision to rebrand.