10 Techniques to Keep Your Brand On Message as You Grow
Ensuring your messaging and communications stay on brand as your business grows is crucial. But growth, especially rapid growth, may mean you have new staff members who are unclear on what the message is, or how to best convey it.
New clients bring with them the temptation to expand to a broader brand message that, if done haphazardly, can hurt more than help. A muddled brand message may leave your target audience feeling confused about what you represent and what you offer, and may even cost you engaged clients.
So how can you keep your messaging consistent? We asked 10 members from YEC to share their recommendations for growing brands, from creating an internal guide to talking message with every new hire. Here’s what they had to say:
1. Identify Your Strategy Versus Tactics
My best tip on growing and staying on brand is identifying strategy versus tactics for your messaging and communications. Identify your brand’s purpose, positioning and personality. After those are identified, work on the strategy and tactics for marketing. Strategy is the overarching goal that matches the brand and won’t change regularly. Tactics are the things you do that fulfill the strategy.
– Kenny Nguyen, Big Fish Presentations
2. Have a Brand Champion
Every company should have someone who manages all aspects of the brand. That person can then identify the advocates who can be trusted to speak on behalf of the brand to ensure that the proper messages are being sent out. Develop an approval queue so that there are always multiple eyes that oversee all communications.
– David Ciccarelli, Voices.com
3. Imagine Your Brand as a Person
You really should try to communicate your messaging with the same “voice,” or write with the same sort of attitude. I find that it helps to imagine your brand as a person: Who are they, what kind of mood are they in, and what kind of word choices do they make? I find brands grow like a character, so this can be a great way to visualize them early on.
4. Create a Content Strategy Document
We have an internal content strategy document that our marketing team put together outlining our goals and everything we want to communicate through our content and brand. We also hold regular management meetings to discuss updates and changes to our company, so our staff can communicate those changes with the rest of the team. This keeps everyone on the same page and reduces any confusion.
– Kelsey Meyer, Influence & Co.
5. Make Sure the Guidelines Are Up To Date
Most businesses create a visual branding guide to help with print and website design projects… and just stop there. But it’s so important to stay up to date on creating guidelines for social media platforms, emails and blog posts, for instance. This way, when you have a new team member take on a particular project within the company, it’s easy for them to stay on brand.
– Nathalie Lussier, AmbitionAlly
6. Enforce Strict Guidelines
As your business reaches mass appeal, many brand managers become tempted to update their messaging and communications in a way that connects with a broader customer demographic. However, the irony here is that you alienate more people when your messaging aims to speak to a wider audience. Use strict brand guidelines to stay true to your core values, which will attract even more loyal customers.
7. Use Your Brand as a Backbone
Use your brand story as the backbone of all your communication efforts, especially when hiring new employees. Like the game telephone, the brand messages will morph and fizzle away as emphasis lessens. When your team is on top of the brand’s purpose and core ideals, they will also be on top of all incoming and future business prospects.
– Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media
8. Break Your Message Down to Its Simplest Components
To see a brand through times of growth, it is critical that you are able to describe what it is in very simple terms. If your brand message becomes complex — or worse yet, becomes corporate — your employees will have a difficult time keeping on message as their workload increases. Breaking your message down to its simplest components will give your team tools to extend the brand as you grow.
– Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors
9. Hire People Aligned With Your Brand
Your people are an extension of your brand and will be doing a lot of the messaging and communicating for your business. Hire people who align with your brand’s attributes, values and essence. If you hire people who live and breathe your brand, being on brand will come naturally. The key is to find people who align before you hire them, not after.
– Robby Berthume, Bull & Beard
10. All Onboarding Staff Should Learn Brand Messaging
As your business grows, share brand messaging and voice with new hires as part of their training. This onboarding process should be the same for all new employees, no matter their department. Also be sure to take some time to educate new members of your company about your brand and how important it is to stay unified.
Using the Internet to Grow Your Brand and Reach 24/7
When the topic of brand exposure and reach come up, blogging and content creation are two of them most common responses. Once you integrates any form of content creation and marketing into your business, your branding and viral reach truly come into play. This is even more true if you put in the time, work and effort throw social media and advanced demographic targeting into the mix. If you don’t currently have a blog representing your personal brand or business, be sure to check out this how to start a blog guide. It takes less than ten minutes to setup and will make for a world of a difference in the longterm reach and branding for your business.
If you enjoyed this expert round up, I recommend you also take a look at some of our previous expert discussions on the power of chatbots, strategies to grow your Facebook marketing and also recommendations on the best tools for growing buzz around your brand.
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