What if your greatest competitor in business was not a competitor at all? What if it was you?
We encounter organizations every day, from small businesses to mid-sized entities and corporate brands, all struggling with the same issue. It’s preventing them from growing and scaling, and keeping them from creating aligned, strong cultures in their organizations. It has become a massive hindrance to their progress no matter what size they are and represents a more significant threat than their actual competitors.
What’s their common struggle?
In each case, these organizations don’t possess clear brand messages that customers, employees, and stakeholders can rally around and connect with. They’re sending messages in bottles that are confusing and ambiguous.
For far too long, we’ve relied on complicated mission statements mounted to our walls to tell us who we are – smart-sounding words that no one uses in everyday language and complex corporate phrases that try to capture the essence of our businesses. We’ve slapped those messages onto our websites and into our print materials, and woven them into our elevator pitches.
We’ve shared those messages with our customers, leaving them more confused about who we are and less likely to want to buy from us. Inside our businesses, we’ve passed these messages on to our employees and made it more challenging for them to get aligned, engaged, and work together toward a common goal. Across the board, people struggle to comprehend our words, and if they can, they don’t understand what they really mean.
All anyone really wants to know is this:
As a business or an organization, who are you, what makes you unique, and why should anyone care?
Strong brand messages should be a compass for your business. As your employees walk in to start their day, your brand messages should speak to how they will serve your customers and work together – they should create internal alignment and clarity for your teams. When employees leave at the end of the day, those messages should be their measuring stick, something they can look to as they assess their performance against. Walking out the door, they should be able to say, “Yes, I did that!”
For your customers, these same brand messages should serve as a beacon that draws them in and sells them on your best attributes. In a marketplace that is getting more competitive every day, clear messages are one of the most powerful tools you can possess. They should be simple and straightforward, and customer-focused so that your audience feels heard and understood, and then sees you as the best solution to satisfy their needs and wants.
As a firm, we have made brand messaging our main focus. It is foundational to all of the work we do, from website development to print marketing. Without a clear brand message at the core, the rest is just window dressing. We believe in this so deeply that we have spent massive amounts of time, energy, and resources developing OrangeBall’s Brand Bounce Bootcamp to help clients create and define their own brand messages.
We also believe in the small business community and businesses of all sizes, and have made a commitment to helping them to scale and grow. Not just one or two, but as many as possible. With that in mind, we are proud to be hosting the Big Give event here in the Twin Cities this December. It’s a one-day workshop designed to help businesses of all sizes strengthen and clarify their messages, AND bring toys to underprivileged kids at the same time. It’s our way of giving back to the community that has helped us grow, and provide a powerful kickstart to 2019 for local businesses. To learn more about OrangeBall’s Big Give, visit: www.orangeballcreative.com/Big-Give
The Takeaway
Stop for a moment, and consider your current brand messages. Are they inspiring? Memorable, or forgettable? Now is the time to begin clarifying, refining, and sharpening your most powerful tool – your message.