Brand Messaging - Your Content Strategy Starting Point

If the content is the king, how would you call a newborn king? Brand messaging, of course!

Every great content strategy starts with brand messaging. No shortcuts.

The marketing work in a B2B startup includes ongoing messaging work; it never really ends. But, there are two primary milestones when you must allocate some time to do strategic messaging work: 1) When starting a new startup and 2) whenever you are going towards a strategic event, such as launching a new product, penetrating a new market, etc.

Before you schedule a messaging workshop with all your stakeholders, some preparation work is required:

1. Define your target market - TAM, SAM, SOM is a way of understanding your business' relationship to market size. Concerning the messaging, you need a good definition of your SOM, the Serviceable Obtainable Market, which is your actual target market. Read here what TAM SAM SOM is, how to calculate it and how to use it: https://www.process.st/tam-sam-som/
2. Analyze the competitive landscape - Competitor analysis is a research process that reveals who your competitors are and how they position and promote their products online. Read here about competitor analysis tools: https://sendpulse.com/blog/competitor-analysis-tools?
3. Define your buyer personas - According to HubSpot, buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, guide product development to suit the needs of your target customers, and align all work across your organization (from marketing to sales to service). I highly recommend working with the HubSpot Free Buyer Persona Guide & Templates: https://offers.hubspot.com/persona-templates
4. Conduct keyword research - Keywords are the foundation of SEO. If nobody is searching for what you're writing about, you won't get traffic from Google, no matter how hard you try. Here's a beginner's guide for keywords research: https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/ and here's an article about 10 Free Keyword Research Tools (that aren't Google Keyword Planner): https://ahrefs.com/blog/free-keyword-research-tools/??

Once all the above is completed, you should be ready to schedule your messaging workshop. Make sure all stakeholders are invited and involved; their professional point of view would inspire and enrich your messages.

Here's a list of the deliverables you would aim to achieve in your messaging workshop:

1. Value matrix - The value matrix is a detailed version of your value proposition and the foundation of all your messaging work. Create a table with the following columns: Buyer Persona, Pain point, Value (how your product addresses the pain point), Message. It won't be easy, but when this step is completed, you're halfway there.
2. Positioning statement - Following the value matrix you've created, use this template to understand how to phrase your positioning statement: For [Target customers] who [Statement of need], the [Product name] is a [Product category] that [Statement of key benefit]. Unlike [primary competitive alternative], our product [Statement of primary differentiation].?
3. Brand promise - According to HubSpot (again, I know), a brand promise reveals what consumers can expect from a brand across all touchpoints. Read here how to build your brand promise: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/brand-promise?
4. Primary message & proof points - Copy the messages you wrote in your value matrix table and paste them into a new table with two columns: 1) Message 2) Proof points. This is the stage in which you need to prioritize your messages and add proof points, supporting examples and reasons to believe.
5. Glossary - The glossary should contain key terms used by your company and related to your products to ensure accuracy and consistent use. Also, consider that the glossary will expand over time, so you better add it to your online knowledge base and make sure all the relevant employees have access.
6. Call for action - You will use a few calls to action on your website, ads, landing pages, etc., but in this case, you need to define your top priority. It might be: Start a free trial, Request a demo, Join our waiting list or anything else you want your target audience to do while engaging with your brand.
7. The tone of voice - How do you want to sound? It's always a combination of a few values. Here are some examples: professional, authoritative, confident, respectful, eye-level, excited, sense of urgency, empathic, pragmatic, joyful, optimistic, respectful, friendly. You got the idea, right?

Usually, two meetings of 2-3 hours each take to complete the brand messaging workshop. Afterward, you'll need some time with your content writer to refine it all and finalize the messaging guide. That's it! Now, your brand messaging is ready to evolve to content for your website and all other marketing materials.

So, when was the last time you worked on your brand messaging? What was your biggest challenge?