In today’s marketing, consistency is key.
This certainly applies to the way your brand communicates through its messaging, style and tone of voice.
I can’t make it any simpler than that. While you do need to vary up your types of content to keep things fresh and, yes, brands do evolve over time, it’s very important to have a consistent core message that forms a relatable identity.
Here’s why your brand needs a core message and how to do develop your own.
Think about your favourite brand
You understand its personality the minute you conjure it up in your head, right?Probably from its distinct communication style.
Now think of BMW versus KIA, or Apple versus Microsoft and Samsung. They’re all very different. More importantly, you immediately KNOW they’re different and know WHY they’re different.
This doesn’t happen by accident. You’ve formed an opinion about each of these brands through marketing and brand positioning over the years.
Why do brands spend so much time on positioning?
That’s why marketers spend so much time on positioning.
What does positioning have to do with core messaging?
Your brand’s message is a key part of your brand’s positioning!
How your brand communicates on websites or social media, in ads or within content speaks volumes to people and gives it its own personality – just like any human.
Think of all of your friends. You know who they are, what they do, and how they act. You understand their personality. It works the same with a brand.
When your brand is consistent, it’s much easier to build, maintain and reinforce the desired positioning.
How do you create a strong brand?
To make a brand successful, everyone must know what it is and understand what it means.
Whether people visit your website, hear an advert, listen to a podcast, read a blog and so on, they must immediately know what it is. That’s the power of a good brand, after all.
Core messaging guidelines are like (and often part of) overall brand guidelines.
It defines your brand’s tone of voice and personality when communicating.
It’s very hard to keep your brand consistent if you don’t have a central document that defines your brand’s core messaging. When you have a core messaging document that details how your brand speaks, then you can create a sense of consistency across all of your content.
Why create core messaging guidelines for your brand?
If your own team can’t define your brand, then it’s going to lead to sending out inconsistent messages, resulting in a very confused audience.
Imagine if a brand was super serious across all of their content, but on their website, they were quirky? People would think they’ve visited the wrong website.
People don’t choose brands they don’t understand or can’t relate to.
That way, when your customer visits your website or reads an article from your brand, they will instantly know it’s from you, and it continues to reinforce that with them. You can become known as experts in that particular field or strong players in a niche – all because you continue to speak the way that your brand always does.
Doesn’t that get boring?
So, people will often say: keeping things too consistent can be boring.
YES it can, but there’s a balance that’s important here.
Your CORE messaging should always be consistent. This lies at the heart of your brand.
But how you build and adapt that messaging across your multiple channels can be fresh and varied. Just make sure that, with every interaction, your customer has with your brand, that they can always tell it’s still you.
For example, if your brand is a bit of a jester and takes a funny approach to a product or service, then your website and promotional campaigns should follow suit. If you’re suddenly serious, people will feel disconnected and their image of what your brand was in their mind gets blurred.
This ‘brand blur’ in their mind is never good for your business, because people don’t choose brands they don’t understand or can’t relate to.
What’s the point of a core message?
What I’m trying to say is, if you’re creating a new website or launching a new piece of content, you should be asking yourself:
- What is this saying to my audience?
- Is the tone and message consistent with how we want people to view our brand?
- Will this uphold the positive aspects of our brand?
- How will this reinforce the good qualities of our brand?
- How will this further re-establish and enhance our brand in the minds of our target customers?
What does a brand’s core message guidelines include?
There’s no hard and fast template for a brand’s tone guidelines.
Some businesses have one core message, others have multiple and some have a mixture. But what they all have in common is a theme that unites their brand’s message – a theme that connects with a target segment.
As a Message Marketing bureau, we customise the approach depending on each unique business.
For example, one recent client we built the tone of voice document for took the form of a Capability Booklet. In this, we established their brand’s tone and personality in the form of a public-facing piece of content that, from then on, was the cornerstone of their brand.
For other clients, we’ve added communication styles to their overall brand guidelines document – which is a good approach. Why? Because everything about their brand is all in one place.
We’ve even created a one-page brand core message guidelines where it had one message and then a few examples that their team can use as references. This is effective because it’s easy, simple and referable.
In general, a core messaging document should answer the following:
- What is our brand’s main tagline that we want people to recite?
- What supporting messages stem from this?
- How do we speak?
- What’s our personality?
- What are a few examples of the phrases we use?
- What vision, mission and objectives do these messages support?
- How do we talk about our products and services?
If you cover these questions, then you’re definitely on track to building a consistent and robust brand message.
Do you need help developing your brand’s core message?
At Melotti Media, we are message marketers!
So, developing brand messaging and tone of voice is exactly what we do. We work together with you to come up with terms, messages and phrases that are unique to your brand, encapsulate what you do and resonate with your desired customers.
Then, as professional copywriters, we put it all into words and create content to spread the message to your audience.
Let us help you!
How Can Melotti Media Help You?
To engage your customer and achieve ongoing business success today, you need a powerful message, quality copywriting and consistent content. However, this is easier said than done.
Perhaps you’re time poor and spread thin, or writing may not be your expertise.
So, let us take care of your message marketing, copywriting and content marketing needs!
For more information or to speak to a quality marketing copywriter to get the results your business deserves, contact me now at enquire@melottimedia.com.au.
Our Message Marketing services can sharpen your words into achieve your goals, today.
Christopher Melotti
Melotti Media | Copywriting & Message Marketing Bureau
www.melottimedia.com.au
