The brand message is an essential marketing tool for any company. A clear, concise message can help a brand stand out from the competition and build customer loyalty. However, many brands struggle to create and maintain success with their marketing efforts because they don’t have a strong marketing message in place.
It doesn't matter if your marketing materials are online or offline; without clarity of message, you will not be able to achieve marketing success.
The key is to position your potential customer as the hero of the story, identify their problem, position your business as the qualified guide, give them a plan that would lead them to success, and cast a vision on what their lives will look like after they choose to work with you.
Customers read your marketing materials to find answers to questions. Whether you’re a brand owner or a marketer, you must understand what these questions are and address them with clarity and confidence. This is customer-centric marketing at its best.
It begins with the customer's needs in mind, uses the customer as the hero of your story, and ends with a glorious vision of customer success.
What is Brand Messaging and Why Does it Matter?
Brand messaging reflects your business' overall message. It is a vital marketing tool because it's what customers see most often, and they create the impression of your business in their minds.
If marketing messages are not clearly and concisely presented, then they won’t be effective in helping you connect with potential customers. The marketing materials that make up your brand story are some of the most important marketing tools that you can use.
Stories are very effective in helping you connect with your customers because they create an emotional connection. Your marketing materials need to be in line with the customers' needs, and your customer's story needs to convey that what you do is going to solve their problem.
How to Create Marketing Messages That Resonate With Customers
You have to show your potential customers that they are at the center of what you do. Let them know that you understand their problems and you are the right brand that can guide them to the answers they're seeking.
This marketing message has to be simple enough for your customers to understand, but still compelling enough that people want to follow along with the story you're creating.
Customers want to be invited into a story where they are the hero who needs to transform into someone better, and they have to know that this transformation is totally possible with your guidance.
The StoryBrand Marketing Framework
The StoryBrand framework is a marketing process that helps brands transform messages that resonate with customers. It has been adopted by many marketing teams to drive marketing success, help businesses grow and create great marketing material plans in less time.
These steps are laid out in full detail in Donald Miller's book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.
The StoryBrand framework is a 7-step process to building and telling a story that builds marketing success for your brand.
Step 1: Identify the secret longing of the hero (your customer)
Your brand's message has to invite your customer into a hero's journey where it's all about them getting what they want. The StoryBrand Framework puts the customer at the center of the marketing process and enables you to focus on what matters most: them.
In our world, we are bombarded by media messages every day that tell us who we should be - or worse yet, make assumptions for us. Customers have grown savvier these days. When they look at your website and get the sense that there's nothing about your content that can help them, their brains automatically tune you out.
Step 2: Identify their problems
Part of the reason why you need to keep your message clear for your customer is that among every other business in your industry, you are the only one who truly understands their specific problem. Your business' message should clearly communicate this to your ideal customer.
You are not marketing to companies. You are marketing to people who have problems, and they hire you to help them solve those problems. They could be emotional or physical or both. What matters is that your message needs to bring their problem into sharp focus.
Step 3: Introduce the brand as the qualified guide who can help your customers overcome their problem
This part of the StoryBrand Framework is less about who you are and more about what you do. Tell your hero that you can guide them through their problem because you've done it before. Let your hero know that you have the determination, talent, and expertise to get it done.
You would be surprised at how many marketing pieces completely disregard this step. It is important to recognize what your customer needs because if you don't understand their problem, they won't either.
Step 4: Give them a plan
Show them a roadmap they can follow. This point in the StoryBrand Framework is where you show them the way. Most business leaders stay on top because they are generous about showing customers how they can solve their problems. Customers buy solutions, and when they know they can get it from you, they pay attention.
People don't read through your website, they scan it. They are looking for a clear message on how they can solve their problems. If you give them one, they will keep reading until they see a way forward. A customer's life is complicated and busy, so make sure to give them a clear message on how you can help.
You are giving your customer the tools they need to succeed. When you do that, they will wait in line to buy from your company. Your customer might even tell other people about how helpful you were.
Step 5: Call to action
This is the part where the hero's journey takes an important turn. This is where the StoryBrand Framework goes into a fork, which we'll discuss in a bit.
The call to action is a clear message about how your hero can move forward in their journey. It manifests itself as something simple like the 'Buy Now' or an option for users to Schedule a Call with you.
Step 6: Help them avoid failure
A hero can easily get lost on their journey and experience failure if they don't have a guide to help them. Since they chose you as their guide in their journey, you know how they can avoid failure.
They may choose to take a different route or see things from a different angle if you are not clear in your brand's message. Being unclear about this will only make your customer confused and lost in the process. That is why it is important that you are consistent with your message.
Step 7: End their story in success
This finale to the StoryBrand Framework is all about painting a picture of the kind of life they can experience when they choose to follow your brand's guidance.
Effective marketing using the StoryBrand Framework is not about hype or fluff. It's about the experience people will have when they choose to buy your product or service over someone else's. To do this, you need to paint a picture using words that allow them to visualize the story as clearly as possible.
Clear marketing messaging tells a story, and they are often more compelling when the narrative starts and ends with the hero in mind.
You can take a deep dive into each of these steps in Donald Miller's book Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.
The StoryBrand Framework has helped hundreds of companies and business leaders to simplify marketing and save time. It also helps marketing teams attract more leads and increase conversions for marketing campaigns.
It helps companies craft a customer-centric message and differentiates businesses from their competitors. The process also saves time for marketing teams by helping them concentrate on customer insights, not product features. It's a simple yet powerful customer-focused approach that allows businesses to differentiate their message from competitors.
By completing this process, you can create a marketing plan that simplifies your message and attracts more customers. Plus, it can be used over and over again with multiple marketing channels to achieve success.
For most businesses, the brand message can be difficult to create and maintain, but marketing without them is even harder.
The key to your business' success is knowing your customer's problems, positioning your business as the qualified guide, and giving them a plan that would lead them to success. But how can you identify exactly what their problems are? And how can you increase your chances of them choosing to work with you?
The solution is to clarify your message by using the StoryBrand Framework. We are the first Story Brand certified agency in the country and we can help you create a clearer message. This marketing strategy will help not only with marketing but also with the company culture within your business!
Take a deep dive into how a simplified marketing message using the StoryBrand Framework can help grow your company and increase your ROI.
Let's talk about how a simplified marketing message can help you grow your company and increase your ROI.
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