Your Authentic Brand Self

With a barrage of constantly churned out content splattering all over the interwebs on the daily, it's becoming more and more challenging to garner attention for brands. Today's consumers are hit at all angles with slick marketing messages, content being created by influencers, and ads. It's become so much that our brains can't process all of the content being thrown at us so we start to ignore the nonsense automagically.

The Humanity of it All

Some brands have a tendency to speak their own language. They do this because its the path of least resistance, it's easy. They craft messaging points about their bundles, or their products that are riddled with engineer speak or worse yet, lawyer speak. This is the stuff that becomes noise, this is the stuff that today's consumers will simply ignore.

Heroes Of The Day

The brands that are breaking through are the brands that make their consumers/prospects the hero of the message. They don't obsess about the details of their products in their messaging, rather, they focus on the impact of their goods on the target consumer. The end result, the brand triggers an emotion in the prospect, that emotion leads to a stronger connection, that stronger connection could lead to a sale, or at least, be top of mind for the consumer when they are ready to buy.

A Fine Line

How can your brand be more authentic? It starts with defining what's at the core of the business. What drives the business, why does the business exist, what does the brand care about? Articulating this "stuff" into the brand's messaging, social media content, ads, and most importantly, internally, is mission critical. Ensure that your internal messaging and reality matches your external messaging and reality, this is often the trap where consumers start to see chinks in the brand armor.

It's also critical to know your customer. What fuels them, what will make their life easier, how can we save them time, money, and aggravation? Weaving that knowledge into our brand footprint allows us to always put the customer first and ensure that any messaging point puts them first.

The Feel Good

When your prospects feel good about your messaging, or an ad brings a smile to their face, you win. You many not win this second, but you are changing something within them. That's what true marketing is, changing the way that someone feels about something. That's what we're after in all of our messaging and in all of our interactions. The brands that ask themselves, "self, how can I spark joy today" already set themselves up for success.

The Bottom Line

Be human, be sincere, be genuine and always put your customers first in all of your messaging. Striving to be different for the sake of being different will almost always result in tripping consumer bullshit detectors. Thanks for reading and sharing!

How To Be On-Brand

"Let's make sure that every social media post that we put out has our logo on it, so it's on brand." - One of my previous clients

This still makes me cringe. I'd always have to explain that the brand's logo is already in about 4 other places already on the social media channel itself. But, my frustration with the above request goes way deeper than that. Branding is NOT just about your logo. Throwing that bad boy all over the interwebs isn't going to endear anyone to your "brand".

Branding is about a relationship. A relationship between the world and your company. It's about feelings, it's about humanity, it's about emotions and how your organization makes others feel when they interact with it. Branding is about building trust, and that trust is earned by being authentic. Many companies are trying to be "someone" they aren't, consumers see right through that BS.

Sure, using the same marks, the same color scheme, and the same fonts all help to eventually build some recognition, but what really helps a company connect is its ability to connect with consumers through a human voice. Corporate gobbledygook nonsense speak has never caused a consumer to fall in love with a brand, never caused them to talk about that brand, and never caused them to stay loyal to that brand.

So, how can you start to earn and build trust? Look at your words. The words on your website, your social media channels, your ads, and your other touch points need to be HUMAN. The personality of your brand should shine through each and every touch point, it should evoke an emotion, whether its fun, loving, joy-filled, or snarky, it should always stay on-voice. One of my pro-tips is to always make your target consumer the hero of your story and content. One last tip: never start a piece of content with the word WE. Put your consumer first, talk to them like a human, be consistent, and feed them what they are hungry for.