So, you’re looking for more success with your small business and realize the best way to connect with future clients is through your brand messaging. But where do you begin?
To create memorable marketing and brand messaging, I’m looking to the always reliable, always memorable, infomercials for inspiration. This marketing messaging framework will be fun to do and leave you with a well-equipped brand messaging toolkit for all of your future marketing. Your brand messaging and positioning will give you confidence and you’ll finally trust in your marketing to bring in new business.
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRAND POSITIONING AND MESSAGING
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand the difference between your brand messaging and brand positioning.
In simple terms, brand positioning means the distinct space your brand holds in the minds of your target audience, especially when compared to the competition.
Your brand messaging is everything you say in connection to your brand. To be successful, brand messaging should be simple and strategically crafted to be memorable and easy to understand, while reinforcing your brand position in the market.
WHY INFORMERCIALS ARE THE BEST MARKETING MESSAGING EXAMPLE
We’re using infomercials as our inspiration for this messaging strategy exercise because:
a) they can be so over-the-top and funny, and b) they have their marketing messaging framework down to a science.
Infomercials and home shopping channels truly are the perfect example for creating your messaging and marketing strategy. Why? Because they know exactly how to:
quickly grab the attention of their ideal customer
keep their ideal customer engaged
trigger their emotions to motivate a purchase
remove any uncertainty that may hold them back from buying
Beyond that, they are the masters of memorable marketing because they know how to use key brand messaging so that even after the infomercial is over, the audience is still left thinking about that product.
SIDE BAR: if you have not yet watched Vanessa Bayer and Molly Shannon in the home shopping channel-inspired sitcom I Love That For You I can’t recommend this show enough.
THE 5 KEY INGREDIENTS FOR CRAFTING MEMORABLE BRAND MESSAGING
Let me introduce the five key ingredients that make any infomercial a success. These 5 key elements are exactly what you need for your brand messaging and will be our guide as we work through the marketing messaging framework.
1. On Screen Tagline
The on screen tagline is the hook that is ever present. It communicates exactly what the audience needs to know to keep them interested in what’s ahead. For your brand strategy, consider this your brand promise or value proposition. It needs to be short and sweet and highlight a key benefit that will hook any new viewer in an instant.
2. Problem Story Arcs
The best way to keep an audience engaged is through storytelling. For brand messaging to be successful, it needs to speak to their key problem areas. A classic infomercial example is when the Tupperware comes crashing down from a cupboard.
Your brand messaging story arc will need a beginning, middle, and end. It looks like this:
the problem (beginning of the story)
the solution (the middle)
and the transformation (the happy ending)
3. Key Selling Features
This goes without saying: every great business needs to identify its best selling features. These are the most appealing benefits your product or service has to offer and when you’ve successfully positioned each one, you’ll always keep your audience engaged and primed to purchase.
4. Unique Differentiators
To up the ante and make your product or service the only solution to their problem, highlighting how it’s different than the competition will improve your conversion rate. This is where a successful brand positioning strategy comes in hand. (That’s all part of my strategy and brand messaging services.)
Infomercials will typically highlight industry norms or well known examples that the competition offers and counter with their own unique selling proposition.
5. The Objection Crusher
If you’ve ever tuned into The Home Shopping Network, there comes a point in every infomercial where the host asks their guest a question that they know the viewers at home are wondering. Think of these as the last point of resistance in your audience. What are their biggest concerns that are stopping them from taking action?
Your brand messaging needs to have clear responses ready to go that will eliminate uncertainty in the minds of your audience.
USING THE MARKETING MESSAGING FRAMEWORK
Here’s where you get to work. Inspired by our love and admiration for infomercials, here’s the marketing messaging framework you’ll use to write your brand messaging and grow your business. Be sure to follow this order to make the process easier and more effective.
Step 1: Identify 3 - 5 Key Selling Features
What are three to five benefits that your product or service offers that will keep your future clients or customers engaged? Try not to focus solely on the bells and whistles. Consider:
where your target audience is versus where they want to be, or
how they currently feel versus how they wish to feel.
In other words, what are the top highlights that you can commit to speaking to in your marketing that will keep your audience hanging on to your every word?
Step 2: Write 3 Problem Story Arcs
a. Identify their Functional and Emotional Problems
The best way to go about this is to brain dump as many problems your audience has as it relates to your product or service. The deeper you go, the better.
For every functional problem your ideal client or customers has, identify the emotional problem that exists as a result of that functional problem. Remember, it’s our emotions that lead us to act.
b. Write Your Brand Messaging Story Arcs
Choose the three problems that will resonate most with your audience and, for each, write a brief story. Each one needs to include:
the problem (beginning of the story)
the solution (the middle)
and the transformation (the happy ending)
The transformation is the real money-maker when it comes to marketing your brand. People don’t buy the solution, they buy the transformation.
Step 3: Identify 2 – 3 Unique Differentiators to Position your Brand Messaging
Your brand positioning and messaging will always be more memorable and frankly, effective, when you’re familiar with the competitive landscape. Ask yourself:
Who are your potential clients or customers comparing you to?
What are your competitors offering?
What are your ideal clients or customers used to seeing?
Why haven’t they been able to solve their problem yet?
Use this information as fuel for differentiation and identify two to three ways your product or service is unique. Make this as aligned to their goals, desires, and values as possible.
It’s worth noting here that it’s not about necessarily coming up with something completely different than your competitors, it’s about knowing how to market your offer in an original way that is compelling and memorable.
Step 4: Write Your Brand Promise
Your brand promise is your hook, a super concise but memorable value proposition. In an infomercial, it’s the ever present on-screen tagline. For your brand messaging, it will be the hook on your website and communicate with the utmost ease what you can do for them!
The shortcut to writing a memorable brand promise:
what you do
who it’s for
the benefit it delivers
Keep it simple, concise and jargon-free. This will take some time to perfect. I recommend writing upwards of 15 iterations. This will allow you to get a lot of bad ideas out of the way and gradually simplify for the biggest impact.
Remember to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal clients or customers to ensure it’s touching on exactly what they need to hear to feel confident you’ll be worth their time.
Step 5: Identify 3 – 5 Objections and Counter Responses
Your biggest asset in crafting brand messaging that converts is having clear responses for common objections. In Jonah Berger’s book The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind he speaks about removing uncertainty in their mind.
For this final step of your marketing messaging framework, brainstorm a list of possible objections or concerns your next client or customer may have that’s holding them back from buying. For each one that you have, write a concise response that will counter that resistance and make them feel confident buying your product or service.
TO MAKE YOUR MARKETING MESSAGING FRAMEWORK EFFECTIVE, DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!
There’s one key takeaway from infomercials that can’t be overlooked when it comes to your brand messaging and marketing. In fact, this is where most entrepreneurs and small business owners trip up.
You need to be willing to commit to your messaging. Sales and marketing is a long-game and you need to give your future clients and customers time to work through the buyers journey.
Once you’ve completed the marketing messaging framework and have a cohesive and memorable brand messaging toolkit, here’s how you use it: become a broken record.
Repetition is recognition and for your marketing to be successful, you need to keep speaking to these same key brand messages.
Resist the temptation to go off-script, have patience in the process and be repetitive. Nobody is as close to your messaging as you are. But you need to stick to your marketing messaging framework long-term to see it work its magic.
Feel like more work than you’re ready to tackle yourself? My strategy and brand messaging services are precisely how I help my clients craft memorable marketing messaging that’s easy to commit to. Sound like something you’re interested in learning more about? Join me for a free Brand Realignment Call and find out what a tailored brand strategy can do for your business growth.
Jenny Henderson Studio develops memorable brand experiences and strategic brand foundations to improve recognition and revenue for service-based small businesses.