Part 2: Messaging for Movement and Leveraging Your Brand in the Marketplace
In part 1, we discussed the importance of establishing a memorable and trustworthy foundation to build your brand on. By incorporating the key concepts of identity, transparency, and focus, any small business owner can create a brand personality that stands out from the crowd.
Once you have built up a brand with a solid foundation, the next step is understanding how to leverage your brand to communicate effectively with your clients. Whether that is through your advertising, across the web, in social media channels, or in person, even the best brands are limited to how they are communicated. The best way to achieve this is by building a consistent, cohesive, and connected community.
Consistency
First, no matter what your values, consistency is a key element to strong brand messaging. This can mean everything from sticking with your values for the long run, to creating and sustaining a unique brand character.
While it may be easier to just tell clients what they want to hear, being consistent in your core values, your voice, and communications in general will bring an authentic personality to your brand that is worth more across the board. This means that it is important to establish your values and voice early on in the branding process, and ensure that they are values that are viable for the long run.
Brands are like individuals, and the most successful brands are the ones that are recognizable in character and execution. This authenticity brings a human factor into the mix and allows your customers to know that you are real.
Cohesiveness
Secondly, create a cohesive marketing strategy that pulls together all of the different marketing channels you choose to use into one integrated and consistent message.
While consistency means creating a character and identity for your business, and sticking with it, cohesiveness means ensuring that your identity is used equally across all messaging channels. As a small business owner, you don't want potential clients to see your website and not be able to easily connect it with your social media pages, and the easiest way to ensure that doesn't happen is to make sure that your tone, voice, and messaging all appear consistently across every tool that you use to spread the word about your business. The way you communicate is just as important as what you are communicating, and this will become more important the more that you grow.
From social media to content marketing, ensure your brand voice and values are present across all your touch points, so there is no doubt in a client's mind who they are dealing with.
Connection
Finally, foster emotional and social connection throughout all of your messaging. Social media has transformed the communication channels between businesses and consumers from a one-way communication method to a two-way channel where feedback and community is paramount. With this, has come the ever-increasing importance of a healthy dialogue between the business and consumer. Gone are the days when marketing was a one-way street, and with these changes come opportunities to further connect with existing and future customers.
The move to internet-based business has changed the way common essential marketing strategies like word of mouth are applied, and successful online retailers like Amazon have fully taken advantage of the changes in the way this connection looks. While there was a time when it would be hard to imagine purchasing a product online, such purchasing activity is now commonplace due to the full integration of product reviews by online retailers like Amazon. As a result, even in brick-and-mortar stores, some buyers will still look to online reviews when making a choice between two products.
Connection looks different these days than it ever has, and undoubtedly will change in the future, but what is important is finding ways to authentically connect and communicate with your target market.
Effective messaging is an ongoing strategy and requires so much more than just content creation. In the age of technology, our team at Gryphos Creative understands the importance of connecting with your market base and growing a dynamic community. Communities are the future of marketing, and the best way to unlock the full potential of your brand.
In part three we will cover the importance of adaptive branding, but for now, if you have any questions about anything you have read here, reach out to our team!
