The best brand messaging moves your audience and connects with them on an emotional level.  Here are 3 needle-moving messaging strategies you’ll want to add to your brand toolbox that can inspire your audience.

MESSAGING STRATEGY #1:

FOCUS ON BENEFITS

It’s easy to default to talking about the features of your product or service first because we think that’s what people really want to know.  Features are an essential part of your communication for your business because they describe specific details of your offer that are necessary.  However, features are informational, not inspirational.

Examples of features:

• Bamboo coffee table measuring 48” x 24”

• Candle made with soy wax and wooden wick

• 12 week coaching program with access to private Facebook group

If you want to inspire your audience to buy, lead with benefits.  Benefits are what your customers gain from your offer - a desired goal, outcome or feeling your audience really, really wants.  It’s that ultimate takeaway they’re emotionally attached to and will speak to their internal motivations.

Examples of benefits (for same products/services listed above):

• Bamboo coffee table of your dreams, giving you that California coastal lifestyle you covet

• A candle that sounds like a wood-burning fire to ground you and fill you with peace for your morning ritual

• Transform your life in 12 weeks with this coaching program that helps you discover your own unique balance between work life & mom life…finally feel guilt free so you can thrive

BRANDING INSPIRATION FROM DISNEY

As a former Disney movie marketer, I often look to examples I can pull from this well known brand to illustrate my points - - - here’s one from Jack Sparrow himself where he expertly articulates features vs benefits in this quote from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl:

“Wherever we want to go, we go.  That’s what a ship is, you know.  It’s not just a keel and a hull and sails; that’s what a ship needs.  Not what a ship is.  What the Black Pearl really is, is freedom.”

JACK SPARROW, Pirates of the Caribbean

Let’s break this down to fully understand our messaging strategy:

• Features: keel, hull, deck, sails (informational)

• Benefit: you can go wherever you want to go (inspirational)

• Ultimate Benefit: FREEDOM (gotta have it, want it now)

For this first brand messaging strategy, focus on communicating the benefits of your product / service and the ultimate benefit - that big desired, intangible quality that attracts a customer.

Essentially what you’re doing is showing your audience how your product/service can change their life.

MESSAGING STRATEGY #2:

FIND THE FEELING

If you want to inspire your audience, find the feeling you want to evoke and spread it through every piece of communication and let it seep into every intentional experience you deliver to your customers. 

Start by answering this question: 

What FEELING do you want your customers to EXPERIENCE every single time they interact with your brand?

THAT’S the feeling you want to pepper into everything you do.  You may even want to add it directly into your main brand tagline or slogan so it’s the #1 message your audience is seeing again and again, every time they come across your brand.

Coca Cola is known for leaning into the FEELING they want their customers to have when they pop open a can of Coke.  From taglines like:

OPEN HAPPINESS

To…

TASTE THE FEELING

KIA is another example, with their global brand slogan:

“MOVEMENT THAT INSPIRES.” 

Their intention behind their tagline is to inspire customers as their mobility needs evolve and simultaneously inspire their own teams to rise to the challenges they’re facing in a fast-changing industry.

Finally, I love sharing Airbnb as an example because every brand evolves over time, and discovers more about their customers (as you will!) that allow them to refine their message to connect on a deeper level.

Airbnb initially had a core message that was to “travel like a human.”  As the company began to realize that Airbnb was more than simply a tool people used to travel, they adopted a new Mission and Tagline that speaks to their core customer...take a look:

AIRBNB MISSION: To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.

AIRBNB TAGLINE: Belong anywhere.

This gets right to the heart of the ultimate benefit and foremost feeling their consumers want and have whenever they use their service.  Brilliant.

MESSAGING STRATEGY #3:

TELL A STORY

Storytelling is one of the most popular ways to inspire and be memorable.  It may have seemed an easier task when I worked at Disney marketing movies and we had stories built into the products (films) that we were positioning to audiences worldwide.  However, don’t think that your product or service doesn’t have a story to tell.

Take a look at some examples to inspire you to add storytelling to your own brand messaging.

Example 1: BKR water bottles

A water bottle is just a water bottle, right?  Right.  Until you add a brand strategy - aka adding meaning, value and heart.  Until you understand your own audience so well and it meshes with your mission, vision and values so you can tell a story about your products that make your audience feel seen, heard and inspired.  Yes, a story can do all of that.

When you click on any of the BKR water bottles, you’ll immediately be taken into a product info page to learn more about it.  It defaults to what they call “DESCRIPTION” and you can also toggle to the right and click on ‘INFO.”  Their descriptions are their stories, so they lead with story, lead with the feeling, and lead with the ultimate benefits.  (The INFO section are the product features - information their customers will want to know, but they don’t start with that because it's their storytelling descriptions that hook their audience and inspire them to buy).

Instead of calling it a pink water bottle, they named this 1 liter glass bottle with pink wrap: TUTU and here’s their “description”:

“Inspired by warrior women crisscrossing the globe in the name of fashion, slinking around London in tarty pink ballet flats, wearing them until they look like dirty Band-Aids, a Rossini-centric soundtrack in a store where everyone speaks with French accents, hair pulled back fresh and clean off the face, a sheer blouse with elbow-length sleeves and rose gold buttons.  And it was just really an attempt to see herself with new eyes and extra colors, with no plans and no intention of arriving- just the knowledge that she would come back different from how she left.”

What a wonderful way to add storytelling to a product to resonate with your audience! 

Example 2: ANTHROPOLOGIE

There are so many ways to tell a story for your brand.  Here’s another example I found just scrolling through Anthropologie’s Instagram stories:

Anthropologie is obviously promoting their line of denim, but instead of just talking about the cuts, lengths, washes and styles (the features), they decided to grab their audience’s attention by turning their new denim into a story to make it more memorable.  Notice how they expertly weave in their brand’s values, too, giving their customers yet another way to feel aligned with their brand.

Here’s what their Instagram stories say if you can’t easily read it from the image:

“ONCE UPON A PILCRO

Our tale begins in a denim dreamworld, where legacy craftsmanship and artisan details set the storybook scene - and every heroine trades her cape for cooler cuts.

Our plot? The pursuit of progress…a path toward more sustainable practices, more innovative designs, and the discovery of a few bluebirds, of course, along the way.

Follow us down a rabbit hold of indigo, and meet a cast of characters who can make all your jeans comes true.”

IN SUMMARY

Hopefully, this has inspired you to add one or more of these 3 effective brand messaging strategies to your business.  I can’t wait to see how you use them in your communications - - - just take your pick:

1 - Leading with the benefits

2 - Focusing on the feeling

3 - Telling a story

When you define your brand strategy, you’re crafting a core message to communicate effectively to your target audience.  Using these evocative messaging strategies will help you connect emotionally, creating deeper relationships with your audience.  When people feel something, they remember it.  It motivates them.  They want it.  And…they tell others about it.

Find out more about developing your brand & messaging strategy with Hilary’s help so you can develop an intentional brand that’s known for what you do and attracts your dream clients.