HOW TO STAY ON BRAND: BRAND MESSAGE
Words are hard. And for many small business owners, writing is not necessarily your favorite task or skill in your tool box. You are good at your business. You are knowledgeable about your product or service. You are an expert in your industry.
The message, copy, words, story, and marketing phrases are pushed aside and forgotten until an ad needs to be made or a sentence needs to be written on a bio or website. It's usually done quickly without greater thought or strategy. This creates inconsistency and confusion.
When we work with clients on their branding, we not only design their logo and define their color palettes, fonts, and graphics. We also define their brand message based on the answers to the following questions:
Who is your target audience?
What is their need or problem?
How are you the solution?
What do they gain when they work with you / buy from you?
Who is your competition? What is your differentiator?
Why do you want to do what you do?
Once we discuss these questions and their answers,
we are able to define the following that is included in their brand messaging:
1. Tagline: The tagline is the phrase or series of words that you see with the logo. It can be descriptive or more marketing/advertising focused. Some taglines will list 2-3 words that describe what they do or offer. Some will be a short phrase that addresses a problem or need. And for more established brands, you will see more marketing/advertising-focused taglines that differentiate them from the competition.
DESCRIPTIVE EXAMPLES:
DESCRIPTIVE EXAMPLES:
MARKETING-FOCUSED EXAMPLE:
2. One-liner: We make sure our clients have a one-liner or one sentence that they can say when someone asks the question “What does your company do?”. You can think of this as your business elevator pitch. We try to cover the who, what, how in the sentence.
Eloise Design Co. Example:
We help professionals and small businesses discover and
communicate their brand through voice and visuals.
3. Phrases: There are other short phrases that come out of our discussion with our clients. They are not necessarily taglines but phrases that can be used throughout the website or on social media or even on an ad. They can even inspire a larger campaign that you carry through print and social media marketing.
Eloise Design Co. Examples:
Branding and creative strategy for small businesses
Don’t do your business alone.
You confuse you lose.
Staying on brand
We don’t just create, we teach, mentor, and demonstrate.
Elevating or establishing brands
Campaign Phrase Example (real estate group):
Your Exceptional Resource for All Things Real Estate
4. Words: We will also uncover words that our client says frequently with clients or customers. Or words that are industry specific. We will compile these words into a list that will help in writing future descriptions and can be shared with a team to speak consistently.
Eloise Design Co. Examples:
Branding
Design
Creative Strategy
Communication or Communicate
Message
User-experience
Differentiator
Consistency
Consulting
If you need help with your brand message, contact Eloise to see if
we are the right fit for you! You can see more of our work here.
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