5 steps to nail your brand messaging
Consistent branding copy with a sense of humour and fun all starts with nailing your brand messaging. Having the right messaging in place is what turns your fun copy and fun brand content from “fluffy” and “done-for-the-sake-of-it”, to something that engages your dream clients again and again.
Only by saying the same things over and over again can you start to stand out to the right people.
So how can you be sure that you’re saying the right things?
That’s what we’re going to look at now.
YES. RIGHT NOW.
Strap in, and let’s look at the 5 steps that you can apply to your messaging, in order to stand out as the truly fun brand.
Step 1: Not just being a “nice to have”
If you only remember one thing from this blog, please let it be this: the core of your brand messaging comes from the difference that you make to your customer’s lives.
To bring this idea to life, I want to use an example.
Let’s say you’re a Snake Whisperer who specialises in taming the unruly pet serpents of stay at home spouses. It’s a niche market, but it’s a lucrative one, and you want to corner it.
After some research and brainstorming, you come to the conclusion that you help your customers in the following ways:
You stop your customers’ pets from having untimely temper tantrums
Your customers no longer have to deal with snake vomit (or, acts of protest) all over their WHITE furniture
Any house guests who go to visit your customers are no longer asphyxiated, or nibbled at by unruly snakes
A beginner business owner (and Snake Whisperer) might think “right, wonderful, I know what difference I make to my customer’s lives, these 3 points must be my brand messaging. PERFECT!”
And sure, understanding the actual impact that your services have on your customer’s life is a great place to start…but it’s not where developing your messaging ends.
If you were to create and share your marketing copy with these messages in mind, your target customer might read it and think “yeah, that service sounds nice”. But that’s not what messaging needs to do.
Your messaging needs to make your customers go:
“OMG holy moly I need that URGENTLY, I could not go a single second longer without having this in my life. How do I buy it NOW?”
So, how do we get your Snake Whisperer messaging to that point?
You’ve got to push your messaging further, and ask yourself: “so what?”
Step 2: Passing the “so what?” test
Applying the “so what?” test to your messaging is what’s going to start kicking things up a notch, and makes what you’re offering to your audience start to feel magnetic, and unignorable.
It’s a very simply test, and consists of asking:
“So what? What difference does this make to my customer”
So, let’s apply that to our basic messaging, and see what it gives us:
You stop your customers’ pets from having untimely temper tantrums
“SO WHAT?”
Your customers get to live in a peaceful and tranquil home.
________
Your customers no longer have to deal with snake vomit (or, acts of protest) all over their WHITE furniture
“SO WHAT?”
Your customers save THOUSANDS on reupholstery and dry-cleaning fees
________
Any house guests who go to visit your customers are no longer asphyxiated, or nibbled at by unruly snakes
“SO WHAT?”
Your customers have longer-term, successful relationships. And more friends.
________
Now, you go out to your target audience with your “so what”-proof messaging, saying things like:
I’ll make your home peaceful, tranquil, and restorative
I’ll save you thousands in reupholstery and dry-cleaning fees
I’ll make long-term and successful relationships feel easy
Banging. We’re starting to get the hang of it.
But as we continue to kick this messaging up a notch, there is one thing (or 3) we need to be careful of…
Step 3: Falling into the 3 traps of basic, generic messaging
As soon as you start looking to upgrade your messaging, and turning your bland messages into benefits your audience are desperate for, you end up saying exactly the same thing as every other business out there.
That’s because you’ve boiled down the value of what you do into one of these 3 things:
You help your customers save time
You help your customers save money
You help your customers make money
And let me be clear:
YES, THESE ARE UNIGNORABLE BENEFITS THAT EVERYONE WANTS AND NEEDS.
BUT YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST BUSINESS OWNER TO REALISE THIS.
NEARLY EVERY BUSINESS IS OFFERING ONE OF THESE 3 BENEFITS.
We can already see it starting to happen with one of your “so what?”-proof messages:
Your customers SAVE THOUSANDS on reupholstery and dry-cleaning fees
And I bet you didn’t even realise you were doing it.
This doesn’t mean you can’t start talking about that in your messaging.
But just be careful not to reduce it down to “save money” on its own.
Because, again: EVERYONE IS SAYING THAT WHEN THEY PROMOTE THEIR BUSINESS.
Which brings me onto my next point:
Step 4: Say something specific to both you AND your audience
Like I say, talking about the time/money saving/making-ability of what you do isn’t necessarily WRONG.
But for a business owner with a personality and a love for fun like yours, you can do more than just talk about the benefits of what you do. You can do it in a way that reflects:
Your own personality, and the fun you’ll bring to the process
How well you understand your customer, and how they want to be spending their time and enjoying their life
This is why being able to understand your audience’s definition of fun (and humour) is sooo important. If you can do that, it doesn’t just showcase you as the solution, but also as the transformative experience that they’re going to enjoy the most.
How do you actually get to that point with your messaging? You need to get specific. Ask yourself questions like:
What are your customers doing with that extra time? Or that extra money?
What is it about YOUR process in particular that you know your customer will benefit from AND enjoy the most?
What makes you the best person to walk your customer through this transformation in their lives?
What have previous customers said about what it’s like to work with you?
In just a couple of steps you’ve taken your Snake Whispering messaging from:
A nice to have
A generic benefit
To something that is:
Unique
Designed to speak to your target customer specifically
AMAZING. So I guess we’re done here? You’re messaging is basically perfect now, right?
NOT QUITE.
The last thing we need to do is make sure that your messaging is easy to be consistent with.
Because it’s not just about showing up in front of your customer once in a blue moon and telling them why they need you.
You need to be hammering home this messaging week after week.
Which, again, brings me nicely onto my next point.
Step 5: Your fun brand messaging needs to be something you can actually use
This sounds kind of obvious, but you’d be surprised how many businesses have messaging that they have no clue how to use. Rather than having a messaging as a “fluffy” “vague” document that sits untouched in your G-drive, it needs to be:
Full of copy that you can can drag and drop into key assets and brand documents
Something that you look at and go “yeah, I know exactly what I need to say now”
Stuff that makes you go:
So how do you actually do this?
Steer clear of “surface level” words
Get specific
Use language that you actually use in daily life
Focus on things you have evidence for
Find the themes that show up everywhere in your business
Want to kick your messaging up EVEN MORE NOTCHES?
Doesn’t matter if you’re a Snake Whisperer or not. We can do more than just get it all nailed.
WE CAN GET IT NAILED IN A DAY.
Along with your brand personality, and web copy (and get 2 weeks of copy support thrown in too).
Check out my Nailed in a Day service to find out more.