In this day and age, your personal and business brand are vital to the success of your business. When your customers and potential customers know about your products or services without you saying a word, you have a strong brand. If not, then you need to work on your brand communication.
Brand communication is a strategic approach that focuses on expressing a company’s identity, values, and messages to establish a consistent narrative that resonates with its target market.
According to Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable South African Brands 2024 report, South Africa’s most valuable brands have a total combined value of $29,7 billion. FNB is the most valuable brand in the country with a brand value of R54 billion.
For smaller businesses, having good brand communication can be the difference between a successful business (long-term) and one that was short-lived.
In this article, we look at the concept of brand communication and give you tips on how to improve your own.
Elements of Effective Brand Communication Framework
Before you can develop your brand communication strategy, there are several core elements that will help shape your audience’s perception and interaction with the brand.
Brand Messaging
Brand messaging is how you communicate your values, purpose and selling points to your customers. The messaging needs to connect with your customers by highlighting your brand’s personality.
Brand messaging includes everything from taglines and mission statements to the tone and style of your comms.
Example: Red Bull and its slogan “Red Bull gives you wiiiiings’. The slogan has helped position the energy drink as more than a beverage but fuel for sports and adventure.
Brand identity is a mix of visual and intangible elements. These elements shape how consumers see your brand and how it feels in the market. Your brand identity is all about creating a positive perception with your audience and setting the tone for all your brand communication.
Example: Coca-Cola is a brand that’s famous worldwide. The company’s brand identity is based on emotion and connection to its customers. One of Coca-Cola’s most successful campaigns includes the slogan “Open Happiness” which links back to the company’s purpose: To refresh the world and make a difference.
Brand Voice
Brand voice is the ‘personality’ your brand assumes in all communications. A good and well-defined brand voice gives you a solid foundation for impactful storytelling. It’s similar to creating a unique character that speaks directly to your audience. Like a non-visual mascot.
Example: Spotify is a digital streaming platform which has positioned its brand voice as funny, direct and concise. The company plays up the humour of different playlists, new releases and its popular Spotify Wrapped. Using its brand voice, Spotify connects with its customers in a casual manner to build a positive relationship.
Brand Values
Brand values are the core beliefs and principles of your business. The brand values are the fundamental qualities that define the brand’s identity and guide its behaviour, decisions and interactions with customers and stakeholders.
Example: Google’s philosophy is made up of ten core values. The company names these core values ‘Ten things we know to be true’, these include:
- Focus on the user and all else will follow
- It’s best to do one thing really, really well
- Fast is better than slow
- Democracy on the web works
- You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
- You can make money without doing evil
- There’s always more information out there
- The need for information crosses all borders
- You can be serious without a suit
- Great just isn’t good enough
Google’s brand values are part of the reason why there is so much trust between the company and its users.
Brand Personality
Brand personality is the set of human characteristics and traits linked to a brand. Your brand’s personality defines how you communicate and interact with your audience, shaping the overall vibe.
Brand personality is reflected through elements such as visual identity, language and messaging.
Example: Nike embodies the purpose and spirit of its tagline “Just Do It” by always encouraging people to push past their limits and do more to achieve their goals. This type of messaging is always reinforced in all Nike campaigns and communications. This clearly defines the personality of the brand.
How to Build Your Brand Communication Strategy
The following steps will help you build a brand communication strategy that is robust and will produce results.
Step 1: Know Your Audience and Their Journey
You need to have a good understanding of the journey your target audience is on. You can do this by finding what they are going through in life, what they are trying to achieve and what obstacles are in the way.
You can get these insights by reaching out to your audience on different channels, specifically the channels where they get and share information. Through this, you will be able to tailor your brand communication to fit their needs.
Step 2: Uncover Your Audience’s Pain-points
This step involves understanding your customer’s pain points for long-term benefit. If a customer feels a brand is empathetic to their issues, they will have loyalty to that brand. By uncovering what your audience’s pain points are, you can tailor your brand communication to make it more personal to them, securing them as a customer for life.
Step 3: Know What Your Position Is
Before you can implement your brand communication strategy to life, you need your brand strategist to do some research. Your brand strategist (or you) needs to uncover opportunities to develop a differentiation strategy or value proposition and your position in the market for the brand.
Step 4: Gain Value Clarity
Now your brand strategist will work to clarify the exact value of the brand’s position to the audience. Gaining clarity on both position and value are key parts to an effective communication strategy.
Step 5: Develop a Core Message
Your core message should point out the core points or ideas of your brand to your audience. The core message needs to have your brand values, unique selling points and brand promise. A good core message can differentiate your brand, and echo with customers.
Step 6: Bring in Meaning and Emotion
Now that you have listed your key messages and values, you will use them to uncover the emotions each message appeals to. If you use emotion and meaning, you will connect more deeply with your target audience when you communicate with them. Use the relevant language and tone that resonates with your audience to evoke their emotions.
Using these steps you can create a comprehensive brand communications strategy and ultimately build up your brand awareness with your audience.
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