4 ways to improve your brand message today
A great brand message can be enchanting. It can draw people in and hold them rapt. Captivated. It can raise people up, inspiring and encouraging them. Every brand has this potential. You simply need to know how to unlock it. Here are four ways to do just that, and help your brand become everything it can be.
Ask what difference you hope to make
While there are other great ways to improve your brand message, none is more powerful than clarifying the difference you hope to make in a life, a community, or even the world. This is referred to as your why or your purpose. I call it your Big Audacious Meaning. This is important for you because it will establish the core of your brand message. It will help you stay focused as you weigh every communication by whether or not it is in line with and amplifying your purpose. More importantly, it will uncover something that is incredibly compelling and meaningful to those you are hoping to connect with. That is how a brand becomes irresistible.
You gotta serve somebody
Apologies to Bob Dylan for appropriating that title. But the language identifies the problem so well. So many brands seem to forget this. It's easy to understand. You have a lot you want people to know about your brand. That leads to the tendency to start talking about yourself. All your features and functionality.
While people will want to know those things eventually, they're most interested in their own challenges and opportunities. You talking about you is mostly distracting to them. They'd rather hear about how your offering can help them tackle those challenges or take advantage of those opportunities. You have to change your orientation. Start by getting rid of language like "our target" or "our market" and start referring to them as those you hope to serve. This will help you begin to transform how you think about your brand and how those you hope to serve think about it.
Stop selling and do this instead
And speaking of serving, let's stop immediately jumping to selling. Nobody likes to be sold. Those you hope to serve are looking for help. Not a sales pitch. So start thinking about how you can help. Can you share your deep knowledge of your domain? Knowledge that people would find extremely useful? Could you offer a helpful guide? How about a video showing them how they could solve a problem? It's okay to include your offering in this video as part of the solution. People will give you permission because of the generous help you are supplying. Just don't go overboard and make it a thinly veiled commercial about you.
Find their burning question
The easiest way to identify how you can help those you hope to serve is to understand their burning question.
This is the question that is haunting them. It could be a problem they are trying to solve. Or maybe a question about doing something that can improve their lives. Understand the question and you can provide highly relevant help.
A great way to find that question is to do a journey map. This charts the stages those you hope to serve go through - ultimately engaging with you and ideally becoming your advocates. As you might have guessed, they’ll have a unique question at each stage. Identify the question for each and then get creative with how you help them answer that question. Deliver this kind of help and you will create avid followers. For more on creating journeys, check out this post.