How to Craft Messages With Your Brand Design

Nov 29, 2022 | Business Tips, Marketing Articles

To survive and succeed in the vastness of today’s economy, as a business or entrepreneur, you need a way to stand out in a sea of competition. You need a brand with a clear message that grabs the attention of your intended audience, one that they can relate to.

A good brand message is beneficial in so many ways. It allows you to reach out to the specific customers you hope to attract, makes coming up with promotional content a lot easier, and can help keep you perpetually enthusiastic about your promotional efforts.

 

What’s in a Brand Message?

Your brand is more than just a logo—it’s the entire look and feel of every customer interaction. And to be effective, it must have a message.

To connect with the audience you want, your brand must send a clear message that’s meaningful and engaging. One of the most significant purposes a brand message serves is as a communication bridge between your business and your audience. It should appeal to your audience, to their needs, values, and wants. It should be woven through every piece of content from you that they see.

Different from your brand’s identity and personality, your brand message communicates who your business is at heart. The brand personality expresses the message in its words, tone, colors, images, and spirit.

Consider a company that sells quality athletic shoes. Their brand message could be a simple, motivational statement about staying active and being fit. Their website and ad content could reflect that message with images of fit people of all ages and backgrounds, wearing the shoes and appearing to be in motion. The colors would be vibrant and eye-catching. Their logo might even be a symbol that embodies perpetual movement.

 

Why Does Your Brand Need a Message?

There are so many choices out there for consumers no matter what product or service you’re talking about. A strong brand message helps consumers decide which option is best for them based on their personal beliefs, passions, or values. It lends authenticity and strength to your company’s reputation and values, helping you resonate with your target audience.

The right message also serves an umbrella under which all of your promotional content from ad copy to social media posts to emails will be covered by. It forms the foundation that customer loyalty and trust will build upon.

Having an established brand message also makes your marketing efforts a lot easier moving forward because it establishes the slant your content will take. It makes decisions about promotional content quicker and easier.

 

How to Create the Right Brand Message

Creating the right brand message is essential, and it can take some time and careful thought. There a few things to keep in mind as you begin crafting your message:

 

What Are You Offering and to Whom?

The message you come up with should be appropriate for both the product and service you’re offering and for the audience you want to attract. It should be positive, meaningful, and considered from all angles to ensure it’s sensitive to all audiences. It’s also important to understand your audience’s awareness level. What’s their awareness of you, your products and services, and your competition? Understanding that will be immensely helpful in finding a statement to define your company.

 

Ask Your Audience

Pull your audience in to help you. A fun survey or poll could be used to either ask your audience what they think of the ideas you have so far, or you could ask for their opinions. Feel free to ask questions. If you have the opportunity to talk with customers on the phone or in person, engage them in conversation. People enjoy feeling that their opinion has value and many will be happy to assist.

 

Ask Your Personal Network

If you don’t have an audience or much of one yet, drafting help can be tricky. Work together as a team within your business and if you’re a business of one, ask your family and friends what they think. More importantly, ask them what they think of you as an individual and as a business owner.

Once you have a collection of thoughts and feedback from your team, audience, friends, and family, the challenge is for you to find the true message.

Perhaps you are selling an organic cookbook you wrote for those who are health conscious and who prefer food without chemicals or GMOs. Maybe you’re told by your family or team that you’re the picture of perfect health for leading such a lifestyle. You might come up with messages like “eat good, feel good” or “eat well, look better.” And that’s only one of the directions you can take with that one example. The possibilities are endless. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, have fun with sorting through the different ideas in your search.

 

Tips to Create the Best Brand Message

If you need a little more help in hitting the right note, give these tips a try.

 

What Do You Believe In?

What do you believe in and what is important to you? Your customers will share your values, and those should absolutely be at the heart of your brand message. Only authenticity will work here, and it will shine through the right message for your business. Keep in mind the important role emotion plays in all of our decisions, both yours and those of your customers.

 

Keep It Simple

It’s not possible to cover every thought or value in your message. What you come up with won’t appeal to everyone. Instead, focus on just one or two values, the most important ones, and work with them to craft a message that’s short, memorable, effective, and has heart.

It should also be mentioned that having multiple brand messages won’t necessarily make your more successful. More often than not, more than one message can create confusion in your marketing efforts. Customers have enough of that on the marketing in trying to decide what they want and who to get it from. Keep things simple and help them out.

 

 

Draw Inspiration from Successful Companies

What are some of your personal favorite brands and what are their brand messages? Take notes, do some research, and allow your favorites to inspire you.

 

The Rest

Having the right brand message is crucial. Once you have it, you can move on to the right colors to accompany it, crafting the best logo, and the composition of quality content for all of your communications which will be made much easier because you have an established message. Take all the time necessary to get every aspect of your message just right because your customers deserve it.

How A Graphic Designer Can Help Your Social Media Grow

Nov 19, 2018 | Business Tips, Marketing Articles

There are plenty of reasons why people choose to spend a vast majority of their time on social media. It is proven that even though we might not scroll down through our social media feeds all day, it is likely that we are constantly connected to the platforms we use and are easily engaged once we receive a notification or message. Social media sites are a unique marketing tool as they please your audience’s visual senses and allow them to put together a list of people and brands they want to stay connected to. They are useful in helping users stay in touch with their friends and family and remain on top of current events of any field they are interested in. If you are a brand looking to grow your visibility, a basic understanding of social media is an absolute must. The world is seeming smaller and smaller each day, thanks to the invention of Internet and globalization. We’ve come to the point in history where you can sell your product or service to a consumer thousands of miles away with ease. The only trick of the game is how to get your product or service enough visibility.

Let’s be clear here on what a ‘brand’ stands for. A brand, or branding, is the process of creating emotional assets linked to an idea – be it a business, product, a service or even a person. It is no secret that you can create a brand out of an otherwise anonymous human being – this is how it came to be that influencers today play such an important role in the world of social media.

Once you are set on what your brand is, you should think of the best way to showcase its attributes. Here is where graphic design plays an important role. People tend to stay away from hiring someone to help them in formulating their business branding due to high costs or the belief that they can do all the work themselves. Nowadays, with high competition across social media, a pretty picture is a good place to start, however, not knowing how to work with technology to take your content to the next level will leave your brand seeming uninteresting, instead of the leader in your niche. Hiring help such as a social media marketing expert and a graphic designer will get your social media on the right track to being your best marketing asset, while saving you time. For now, here are a few reasons to think about consulting a graphic designer during the creation of your brand.

 

Graphic design helps create a firm visual identity.

When introducing your brand to your chosen graphic designer, you will need to help him or her create a firm plan for your brand’s perfect visual identity. Tell them any ideas you have or ways that you visualize your brand and a quality graphic designer will know exactly what type of photographs, colors, shapes, artwork, fonts and typography to use to make your brand visible to your target audience. For example, selling children’s clothes versus advertising a yoga studio would require two completely different types of aesthetics. Plus, your graphic designer will advise you on the type of content to use depending on the needs of your brand. All of this will come in handy when differentiating yourself from other brands, which is a must in the world of marketing. Creating a firm visual identity will help both your potential and return customers by giving them a recognizable brand to remember.

 

Professional graphic design helps you stay on top of the trends.

Just as every year brings with it a new variety of trends, so do the different styles of graphic design. Flat-lay pictures were a popular photographic style of the past few years and every brand experimented with it, as well as gifs or visually appealing animations, however trends have changed. Platforms like Instagram come up with new updates faster and faster and sometimes it might feel overwhelming to stay on top of them all. With a graphic designer by your side, you won’t have to worry about researching and inventing new ways to entice your audience, as he or she will most likely have a few new, out-of-the box ideas up their sleeves.

 

A good graphic designer will make sure all your content is consistent.

When developing your branding strategy, you should have decided on the right social media platforms to help promote your brand in the best possible light. Your graphic designer will help you stay consistent across all those platforms, without appearing repetitive. This is why you need the first step to be done accurately (creating a firm visual identity), as it will help you stay recognizable, and then show you exactly where you have the freedom to start playing with your brand. Let’s say you’re selling active-wear and there is a marathon coming up in your city. Advertising your brand as the perfect choice for runners of the event would have to be done differently on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or any other channels your brand uses. Keeping your graphic design in line with your brand yet changing the keywords in the content to focus on the particular running event would resonate with your target audience who are involved.

All in all, an experienced graphic designer will give you the confidence to make the right choices when it comes to the content you use to promote your brand on social media.