7 Signs Your Company May Need a Better Brand Messaging Framework
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At EnticEdge, we are healthcare and wellness business consultants dedicated to helping companies clarify and align around their competitive advantage, which we call your authentic edge! Our team brings 30+ years of healthcare expertise in strategic advising, value mapping, business consulting, client experience, team and cross-departmental alignment, and more, all tailored to helping teams achieve mission-driven growth.
Successful branding is not only about having a great product or service but also how its value is communicated to your audiences. This communication, or your brand messaging, dictates how your audience will perceive and connect with your business in the short-term and the long-term. This is why a thoughtful, strategic framework is needed so that you can best guide your brand’s image in your audiences’ minds. Let’s start with brand messaging; sometimes, despite your company’s values and identity seeming clear to you, there are a few telltale signs that it’s time to improve your brand messaging framework, so we have provided some manageable steps your team can take to make those improvements.
What is brand messaging?
Brand messaging is the strategically curated content used to communicate a company’s value, identity, and marketplace positioning. It also encompasses the tone, style, and personality that you hope to convey to your target audiences to deliver a unique and authentic impression. To confirm your brand messaging is strong, it is important to pinpoint these key components of your brand:
Value proposition (competitive differentiation)
Brand promise
Brand voice
Messaging hierarchy
Defined and understood target audiences
A vital tool needed to strengthen your branding is a cohesive brand messaging framework. Your brand messaging framework is the structured approach to communicating your brand tenets that ensure team alignment, consumer recognition, and adaptability. This framework must be an active and crucial part of all marketing and communication efforts so that your company’s image stays consistent and clear to all stakeholders. It is how others will know the value you provide, what you stand for, and why your business matters.
The 7 signs you should improve your brand messaging framework
Your brand messages might seem obvious internally, but be sure to create a process for checking in and making sure they are up-to-date, accurate, and compelling.
Stagnant growth. When a product or service is clearly good, but not attracting or retaining customers, it may signify that your current messaging strategy is not sufficient. In order for potential customers to develop trust in the quality of your brand, understand the value of your product, service, and company, and be willing to pay, it must be made clear and convincing to them through your brand messaging.
Low brand recall. Poor brand recall from your target audiences is an evident sign that your brand is not resonating with them. It is critical to ensure your brand’s personality, voice, and tone is aligned and resonating with your target audiences to build an emotional connection between them and your business. There are easy ways to research brand recall.
Wrong audience. Again, this is an indication that within your brand messaging framework, your understanding of your target audience is skewed. A brand should be catered to its target audiences’ needs and desires to catch their attention and interest. If your ideal audience is not discovering your brand, it is time to revise or redirect your communication.
Unclear positioning. Brand positioning is how you place yourself within your market based on your competitive advantage, or what truly differentiates you in the competitive market space. Brand messaging is meant to be a tool to intentionally position your business. If you or your audience cannot easily pinpoint your brand’s position in your competitive landscape, then there is a critical gap in your messaging.
Lack of internal synchronicity. Team alignment is an undervalued component of many companies. If your whole team does not carry the same perception of your brand, and understanding of your messaging, then there is no way for the delivery of it externally to remain consistent. Team alignment is necessary across all facets of your business, so ensuring your messaging is clear and consistent is essential. A strong brand messaging framework plus team trainings will help synchronization.
Mismatched perception. The aim of branding is for your audiences to understand your business’s value and purpose as you do. If the messaging you intend to deliver does not match its external perception then either your communication of your messaging or the messaging itself is most likely not doing a sufficient job of expressing your brand.
Simply outdated. As your company grows and your market evolves, your branding can and should change too. It is important to not change so much that your brand is unrecognizable, but small tweaks to your brand messaging and strategies likely are needed for your business to stay up-to-date and modern amidst competitors.
Steps to improve your framework
Whether you feel that it is necessary for your brand to return to the drawing board or just requires a few tweaks, the task of modifying branding can feel tedious and overwhelming. To ease this process, here are a few steps your team can take to rectify your brand messaging framework:
Dedicate focused time and attention to building a thoughtful framework with your team. Compiling descriptive and distributable documentation of your brand messaging framework will greatly improve team alignment. With thorough documentation that can be shared across all teams internally, new hires have the ability to have the same understanding of the company’s brand as does the CEO. Consider using video or visuals to help team members engage appropriately.
Conduct testing and collect feedback on your framework to determine where the liabilities are and where your framework needs revising. Feedback can come from your customers, your teams, and other stakeholders.
Market research, market research, market research! Your market, audience, and industry are regularly changing. Revisit the conversation of who your prime markets are and where you provide value in the competitive landscape, so that your company and its messaging mature accordingly.
Instill trust and humanize your branding to improve the emotional and personal connection with your audience. In the healthcare and wellness industry, your messaging should emit empathy and proof of understanding of patients’ emotions and challenges to boost your brand’s recall and conversions.
Consider a value mapping session where your team can rediscover your company’s mission, vision, values, and differentiators so that everyone is on the same page regarding what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, who you’re serving, and how you stand out. Book a call with us at EnticEdge where we bring 30+ years of healthcare expertise in value mapping, strategic advising, business consulting, and more, all tailored to help your team achieve mission-driven growth.
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