Build Your Marketing Foundation with Branding & Messaging

Intro to Marketing Strategy Series

Are branding and messaging different, and isn't marketing the same thing? Aren't they all related under that one umbrella? And if you're a new creative content creator, business owner, what should you work on first? Hi everyone. Today we're gonna break down what appear to be very different concepts, branding, marketing, messaging, and really figure out how they all fit and work together.

We're also going to discuss how people tend to jump over some of these vital aspects of their marketing when they're devising their marketing strategy. 

I do this because the stories that we share have the power to create an inclusive ecosystem and a more equitable and just society that we all can thrive in. My plan is to give service-based businesses such as course creators, consultants, coaches, service providers, author speakers, the tools that you need to build an audience and a business that is sustainable without adding to your overflowing plate.

I realized that I have the tendency to get ahead of myself when I'm talking about why your message matters. I feel like we all do this to some extent, so I felt like it was best for me to start off with a series of like introductory videos to explain some of these marketing concepts, explain marketing strategy as a whole, and define these terms before we really dive into getting deeper into these concepts.

I will just preface all of this by saying that I'm giving you my personal definitions and that not everyone uses them in the exact same way. So if you hear it in a different context, it's not incorrect. I just feel like this is a good place if you're a solopreneur because it can feel overwhelming to start, and there's just so many articles and things out there.

 This is just gonna get us started . There's already a lot out there on branding, and I'm gonna be very honest, I am not a visual person. I'm not a designer. I'm more of a writer. For me, this is gonna shape my definition and how I approach branding.

Building Brand Equity

Branding, in my view, is the feelings and associations that come, to mind when you see or hear a business. 

 An obvious example is Nike. You hear the name, their slogan may come to mind, but definitely that Nike Swoosh, right? There's action there. There's movement in that swoosh and it ties into their slogan, right? Just do it. It may be different now, but that was what it was when I was younger. 

Some other things that may come to mind may be some of the athletes from their campaigns, right? There was Venus and Serena Williams. There was the campaign with Colin Kaepernick. There might be somebody else if you're in different country than the United States.

All of these things that come to mind, it's called brand equity. Which is a really fancy word, but it basically means that the work you put in to create your brand is an asset that is going to continue to work for you even when you're not actively developing it or communicating with your audience.

People will talk about, we're talking about Nike right now. They didn't pay me to do this. They're not putting any work into promoting themselves, but I'm talking about them because they have built up that brand equity that gets people continuing to think about them, to talk about them. Really trying to advocate for them.

Branding while again, we think more of the visual aspects, right? The logo or the fonts or maybe the colors that come to mind. But it really is about combining the words and the visuals together to create an overarching experience. And like I said, that's what really helps folks advocate for you, because if one is strong but the other is weak, it's really just confusing for people.

 You really have to have a bit of both. Brand equity is work that you put in, so it's not going to happen overnight. It's about having that consistency, and it's also understanding why you've made the branding decisions that you have and making those all cohesive across the board, no matter the medium that you're in.

And also having them all in one place for future reference. Like a brand guide, brand book, even a Google Doc. It doesn't have to be fancy, but you have to have all of those decisions in one place because otherwise you're gonna continue to try to reinvent the wheel. Often I see people stray further from their original vision, which, like I said, we don't wanna confuse people.

The whole point of brand equity is to be so on point that people immediately think of things when they think of you. So you don't wanna muddy the waters with that. I'm gonna put some of these in the video description, but there are a couple of resources that come to mind for branding.

 On YouTube. Kaye Putnam has a really great YouTube channel and a lot of great resources on it. I'm also a podcast junkie myself, so I like "Oon Brand” with Nick Westergarrd. I think that's another great resource because again, it's a lot of different branding people that he brings on.

Messaging Supercharges Your Marketing

Messaging, it's a little bit more difficult to define and [00:06:00] it, seems like it's similar to branding. That's probably why, at least in my experience, I don't see a lot of people talking about it quite as much. That's why I kind of wanna hone in on this in future videos as well.

But messaging is the language that you use to describe your business. it's how you talk about the problem you solve, about the people you serve, what makes you different from other people in your industry, your values, your beliefs, your purpose. It's your story. And if you get it right, it's gonna be the catalyst to all of your marketing and branding efforts.

 The more obvious parts of your messaging would include your tagline, your elevator pitch, your bio your website copy, positioning statements, etc. This is all the tangible aspects of the messaging. Messaging and branding do work together. The, way I separate it out for myself is branding is the feeling you wanna inspire in your ideal clients. Again, which is done through visuals and words, but messaging is how you communicate to invoke those feelings. 

Your, brand voice, that's part of your messaging. We call it brand voice because it is about your brand, but it's the tone it's all these different things. And when you have these decisions in mind, it saves you so much time when you're writing content such as website content, your social posts, sales pages, content marketing, email, newsletters. 

If you are not sure how to describe what you do, what would normally take somebody with their messaging, maybe half an hour to write a social post. I'll tell you, before I had mine down, it would take me four hours to write one social post, like an email newsletter, six to eight hours, because I was not clear on my messaging.

 When you're doing branding, you do need to work on messaging and vice versa. [00:08:00] Even if it's just auditing the brand.

If you're redoing your messaging, let's say you're pivoting to a different offering, you would still at least wanna revisit the brand, and see if it's still going to connect with the new messaging.

You don't necessarily need to update it a whole lot but look at both when you are going into a new project or you're, trying to update that again, I'm gonna give out more resources because if you do wanna learn more, I think there's good places to do that.

Dr. Michelle Mazur is a really good messaging strategist. She's wrote the book Three Word Rebellion. She has a podcast called Rebel Uprising. This is a place that I really want to delve into more on my own YouTube channel. 

Feel free to subscribe if you wanna learn more about messaging. 

Now for marketing, I feel like there's so many definitions out there, and I got my marketing degree last year.

And I had a whole class on branding. None on messaging. None on copywriting. So thanks school. 

Marketing is Your Messaging & Branding in Action

Marketing is a huge umbrella term because decades past marketing and advertising were interchangeable because that's the only type of marketing that really for the most part, existed, like direct mail, TV, ads, radio spots. That was the only thing that used to exist. I don't wanna go too much into the history, but those things were synonymous and now it's really grown, right?

There's social media marketing, there's content marketing, influencer marketing, there's market research. Sales is considered part of marketing in some fields, including like, I said, when I went to school. Marketing is the big umbrella, but I'm the type of person, I like to chunk things down and block off time.

" I'm gonna work on my marketing." That's why it feels overwhelming, right? I just listed a dozen things you could be doing in that marketing block. There's just too much to do. So you really have to[00:10:00] hone that down when you are deciding to do marketing.

For me, the way I like to think of it is, Branding and messaging is what I do first, but marketing is my branding and my messaging in action. It's once I've created the plan we're gonna talk about developing your marketing strategy, especially as we go into 2023. But you should already know what you stand for, what type of emotions that you're trying to evoke, what language you're trying to describe.

And then once you get into your actual marketing, like again, the actions and strategies that represent that messaging and that brand that's what's going to make that more real and concrete. It's also gonna help support your goals that you've already developed. Again, something that we'll discuss later.

And then even further, we're gonna create campaigns that you can break down into those weekly actions. So when you do chunk down and you do feel like you're gonna, okay, I'm gonna work on this weekly action, it's gonna feel more manageable to you. Marketing does feel [00:11:00] overwhelming for valid reason.

You might be wondering what comes first, branding or messaging? Good question. It shows that you're thinking through how to bring this into your own business. Bad news. There's no correct answer, at least in my view. Cause I can see this working either way. In my latest iteration on my business, I created my website in the span of a week just to get some clients in the door.

But once I had more time to be intentional, I went the route of branding first. I used things like skill share to help me with the visual aspects. I use Fiona Humberstone, how to style your brand, and I use that as a backbone of my own branding process. 

And then I've been doing messaging for my own clients, but it wasn't until I took all those concepts and steps that lived in my head and I put them down on paper and then I was like, oh wait, here's my messaging process. I'm bringing all my clients through. Why have I not done that for myself? The cobbler's kids have no shoes.

Any other online service providers like, oh yeah, I should do that for me too. I actually did it . It took longer than it should have but, I did it. 

 I went branding to messaging, which I know sounds weird for you, live and breathe messaging and copywriting, why wouldn't you go that first? There's no wrong or right way. Do what feels natural to you or what your needs are for your business in that particular moment. But either way, you decide to do it. Please, do not neglect these pieces before you get to working on your marketing.

By slowing down and being more intentional with your branding and your messaging, you're gonna save so much time on the implementation side. And it's gonna be much more impactful because you really thought through all of these things. 

 For the next video in the series, it's gonna be a crash course on marketing strategy and what that means when that entails, and there will be some exercises that you can get started thinking through these big picture decisions that's gonna shape the foundation of your marketing. 

If you'd like this video, I plan to release more videos on marketing, including messaging, storytelling, and I do plan to do some content planning workshops to get us started on the right foot in 2023.

Remember— The world needs what you have to say.