How can you tell a consistent brand story across platforms?

Occasionally, you might find yourself with a diverse audience encompassing various cultural, demographic, and age groups. In such situations, it may be necessary to tailor your narratives to suit the unique context and comprehension of each group, all while maintaining a consistent brand tone

We often talk about the audience as specific people or user, or even 'the buying committee'. That's useful, YET it will be exactly the same analysis as your competitors are doing. The truly impactful insights often sit at the higher level - cultural norms, group self-perceptions, changing trends. Want a big brand? Think big!

An easy one to forget: 'How much time do they have?'. It's actually quite easy to write a brand story that goes on for pages. Editing is key!

Keep it easy and simple: The unique value you offer people (strategy). The way you deliver it (product / service). The way you communicate it (branding). In short: What you offer. How you deliver it. How you communicate it. (It doesn't have to be about you're changing the world...)

In specific scenarios, your product or service might closely resemble a competitor's, like a delivery service both offering lightning-fast deliveries in mere minutes or seconds. In such instances, where the value proposition and differentiator are nearly identical, this is precisely when you should carve out your unique brand attitude and build your core message upon it.

Product differentiation is Marketing 101, yet is mostly unrealistic in tech and SaaS - every competitor has a similar roadmap, with a few months' deviation. To stand out, disrupt the common way these offerings are presented - less features, more emotional benefit. Simply explaining the value in a way that's meaningful to the use (their Jobs To Be Done or even big life's aspirations) and sufficiently entertaining (to finish reading the sentence) will set you apart.

I have also found that each audience sub segment uses each platform differently, audiences consume differently content according to their psychgraphics and demographics. A 45 year old in NYC consumes content on differently on each platform in comparison to a 45 year old in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

There are too many platforms and too many choices these days. To give yourself the highest chance of success, you have to find the one that is best fit for YOUR audience AND is either currently emerging (so you can ride that wave) or relatively under-leveraged by the competition. Don't knowingly go into the room where the only way to get seen is to pay - be smarter than that. Also, the world is not ONLY social networks - emails, fancy Direct Mail, PR stunts, pop-up events, billboards by your prospects' offices - ALSO WORK!

Consistency is the secret sauce of successful branding. It's about delivering a cohesive experience that builds recognition and trust over time.

This is where great branding usually collapses. A common mistake I see is hiring a creative copywriter who is a conceptual thinker for your Playbook, to then hand it over to any average content writer for CRM or banner ads. 'Meh' copy makes the whole branding exercise void for you, and confuses / disappoints your audience (who were kind of excited about reading your fun email).

Map the content to the stages in the funnel and set KPIs by the stage of the funnel. Yes, audience won't follow your mapped out journey perfectly in that way. But it will allow you to quickly see where your content is not meeting it's objective. When looking for best performing content, make sure your benchmarks are by media channel. Assuming exposure to the right audience, due to algorithm differences, a comment on LinkedIn counts for more than a comment on TikTok.