5 Elements of Strong Brand Messaging (& The Brands That Do It Best!)

Have you ever tried to get a message across, only to be left with blank stares or confusing questions? What might make sense in your head doesn’t always connect to your audience.

The same thing can happen to your brand message! Only now, a confusing message can potentially impact your success as a business. Unclear brand messaging increases your chance of failure and, at the very least, confuses your audience, leaving you to miss out on opportunities to grow.

In this article, let’s dive into brand messaging (how it’s different from your visual branding), the five elements of strong brand messaging, and tips to improve it.

What is Brand Messaging?

Brand messaging reflects how an organization (or persona) interacts with its audience. More than a visual representation of a company, brand messaging represents how one connects with their audience across all their communication channels, including their website, social media, advertising, and any customer interactions.

When you have strong brand messaging, things like your values, mission, and vision come through in your communication so apparently that they attract and retain your ideal customers. (We’re talking beyond your About page on your website here!) However, suppose you’re unclear about who you are, why you exist, and the problem you solve. In that case, your audience won’t know where you stand or whether they should do business with you.

5 Elements of Strong Brand Messaging

To attract your ideal customers, engage your audience, and compel them to take action, be sure to integrate these five elements into your brand messaging: consistency, authenticity, empathy, clarity, and differentiation. Let’s dive into what each of these elements means (with examples!).

#1 Consistency →

Consistency in your brand messaging means staying true to your voice, tone, personality, and overall message across your platforms. It means you don’t change who you are from one day to the next or confuse your audience about where you stand.

If you think of your brand as a person or a character, consider how you want your customers to talk about that character. Where there is consistency, you set clear expectations for your audience that help you build trust.

Benefits of consistency:

Sets expectations: Your audience doesn’t become confused about who you are from one day to the next—they know what to expect.
Builds trust: The more you set expectations by staying true to who you are, the greater your chances of laying the foundation to build trust with your audience.
Improves recall and recognition: Through consistent messaging, your brand becomes an identity your audience is more likely to remember like an old friend.

Brands that do not have consistent messaging might (unintentionally) give off a deceitful vibe or otherwise cause your audience to feel confused about where you’re coming from.

For example, if you’re no-nonsense and serious one day, and the next you are cracking jokes, your audience may feel unsure about you—not because you’ve done anything wrong, but just because they don’t know what to expect.

Below are some popular examples of brands with solid messaging consistency.

Can you recognize how their values come through in your interactions with them?

Apple: Apple’s brand messaging revolves around simplicity, innovation, and design excellence. They consistently emphasize these values, whether it’s their product packaging, advertising campaigns, or retail experience.
Nike: Nike’s brand messaging focuses on empowerment, athleticism, and excellence. Their famous “Just Do It” slogan encapsulates this ethos, evident across all their marketing materials, from commercials to social media posts.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola’s brand messaging centers on happiness, togetherness, and refreshment. Their advertising campaigns often evoke nostalgia and celebration, reinforcing these themes.
Google: Google’s brand messaging emphasizes simplicity, usefulness, and innovation, which they consistently promote, focusing on improving users’ lives.
IKEA: IKEA’s brand messaging revolves around affordability, modern design, and accessibility. Their marketing materials often highlight the ease of assembly and the wide range of options available.
Disney: Disney’s brand messaging is built on magic, imagination, and storytelling. Whether it’s their theme parks, movies, or merchandise, Disney consistently delivers on these themes, creating a sense of wonder and nostalgia among audiences.
Starbucks: Starbucks’ brand messaging emphasizes community, quality, and the coffee experience. Their marketing campaigns often showcase the cozy atmosphere of their cafes and the craftsmanship behind their beverages, reinforcing these values.

Tips to Improve Consistency →

Create a brand voice and messaging guide. Include a comprehensive outline of your values, mission, vision, tone, personality, customer personas, brand persona, grammatical preferences, and themes and topics you want to be known for.

Train your team. While it’s great to have a brand voice and messaging guide, it won’t do much good if your team doesn’t understand the reasoning behind it or, worse, ever open it. Be sure to walk your team through the guide and help them put the guide into practice every day.

Audit your brand messaging regularly. Review all your communication channels and identify where misalignment or confusion might occur. A helpful way to understand where there’s inconsistency is to look at what kind of questions are coming from your customers. Where are they confused? What are your most common questions?

#2 Authenticity →

Authenticity in your brand messaging means expressing your values, mission, and vision beyond your About page on your website. Your authenticity will come through in every part of your communication (and even in how you conduct your business!).

Authenticity also separates you from your competitors. If consistency means staying true to who you are, authenticity is about being true to who you are without compromise.

For example, instead of catering to everyone and washing out your identity, strong brand messaging should define who you truly are and allow you to be real with your audience.

Benefits of authenticity:

Attract ideal customers: Being real means you can’t please everyone. And that’s OK! In the best-case scenario, your authenticity will attract the people you’re most excited to do business with.
Build credibility: When your messaging is authentic, it’s honest and transparent, which ultimately builds credibility and allows you to form long-term relationships.
Form stronger connections: When you focus on how only you can serve your customers, your brand will stand out among your competitors, allowing you to create stronger connections.

Brands that don’t communicate authentically tend to sound robotic, manipulative, or out of touch. They fear rocking the boat within their industry, so they color within the lines and rely on their products or services to sell themselves.

While you can still have a relatively successful business with standard (even washed-over) language that might sound like it was written with AI, you’ll be less likely to make a mark or stand out.

For example, think of what it’s like going to the grocery store—do you gravitate toward brands that stand out or off brands? There’s a reason they’re “off”!

Below are some examples of brands with strong authenticity.

Can you recognize how they don’t shy away from being bold about the values they represent?

Patagonia: Patagonia is widely recognized for its commitment to environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Their messaging is authentic because they not only talk about these values but also actively engage in initiatives that promote repairing and reusing clothing to reduce waste.
Dove: Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign has been praised for its authenticity in challenging conventional beauty standards. By featuring real women of diverse body types, ages, and ethnicities in their advertisements, Dove has built a reputation for promoting body positivity and self-acceptance.
TOMS: TOMS’ “One for One” model, where they donate a pair of shoes for every pair sold, has been central to their authentic messaging. By transparently communicating its social impact and philanthropic efforts, TOMS has built a loyal customer base that supports its mission of improving lives worldwide.
Warby Parker: Warby Parker’s messaging focuses on affordable eyewear and social responsibility. By offering stylish glasses at a fraction of the cost of traditional retailers and implementing a “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” program, they communicate their commitment to making a positive impact.
Chick-fil-A: Chick-fil-A is known for its consistent messaging around family values, customer service, and community involvement. Their authentic marketing approach emphasizes their commitment to quality food, genuine hospitality, and giving back to local communities.

Tips to Improve Authenticity →

Define your values. Whether you have your brand values on your website, it’s important to understand what you stand for. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone. By knowing your values and using them as a basis to inform everywhere you communicate, your audience has something of substance they can sink their teeth into.

Practice transparency. Don’t just share your brand’s origin story. Share your missteps along the way and use your failures as an opportunity to show people you’re a human brand that can learn from your mistakes.

Be real. Be careful about using AI if you don’t intend to edit what’s generated into your voice and personality (and truth!). Prioritize stories about real people, use real images, and share from a place of truth, not fabrication.

#3 Empathy →

Empathy in your brand messaging means communicating with your audience from a place of understanding and care—making your customer the center of your story.

A brand that’s done its homework on its customers’ wants, needs, and challenges has a far better chance of building a solid connection and compelling its audience to engage. Why? Because when you understand what your audience is going through, your communication reflects empathy and customer focus.

Often, the best way to show empathy in your brand message is by painting a picture through a narrative that helps your customer feel seen and understood (and then delivering on your promise to serve their needs!).

Benefits of empathy:

Create an emotional connection: When you communicate your customer’s problem, pain points, challenges, and an ideal outcome, you do more than inform your audience on what you can do—you create an emotional connection that shows you care.
Help your audience feel seen: When your audience sees their own story reflected in your communication, you help them realize that they are not alone—that they are seen.
Step in as a guide: Rather than presenting yourself as a know-it-all hero guru who cannot be ignored, your empathy shows people that you understand what they’re going through and offers guidance toward a helpful solution.

Brands that don’t communicate with empathy tend to display their own accolades over their customers’ needs.

For example, when you go onto a brand’s website where empathy is absent, you might notice…

a lot of “we” language
talk about how amazing they are
focus primarily on their origin story
no mention of your experience

Generally, people don’t buy products and services—they buy transformation. They want to see the value your products and services provide. They want to know how you can help them overcome an issue and come out victorious on the other side. If you can empathize with your customer and position yourself as a guide on their journey, your brand message will do a much better job of converting sales.

Here are some examples of brands that do a great job of communicating with a customer-centric, empathetic approach…

Zappos: Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer, is renowned for its customer-centric communication. Their team actively seeks customer feedback and uses it to improve their products and services, demonstrating a genuine empathy for their customers’ needs and preferences.
Lush: Lush, a cosmetics company known for its handmade, cruelty-free products, prioritizes customer needs and values in its communication approach. Lush’s messaging emphasizes transparency, sustainability, and ethical sourcing, resonating with customers who prioritize natural and environmentally conscious products.

Tips to Improve Empathy →

Listen to your customers. Whether you seek their feedback and perspective via surveys, interviews, or research, one of the best ways to improve your empathy is by trying to understand their pain points, needs, and experiences.

Put your customer at the center of your story. If you present the case for your product or service in a narrative from your customers’ perspective and their experiences or challenges, you have a better chance of helping them feel seen and heard.

Use the 80/20 rule for “you” vs. “we” language. When writing for your brand, pay attention to how often you use the word “we,” which usually focuses attention on yourself, and how often you use the word “you,” which focuses on your customer. If 80% of your messaging is “you” focused, you’re likely in a good spot to make your customers feel seen.

#4 Clarity →

Clarity in your brand messaging means cutting the jargon, tangents, and unnecessary fluff. It’s about getting to the point your customers care about. Just because you might care about something doesn’t necessarily mean it adds value to your customers. Consider cutting it from your messaging if it doesn’t add value, build trust, or create a connection.

Benefits of clarity:

Improve readability: Focusing your copy on only what needs to be said helps you make every line count. If it doesn’t provide clarity or add value, cut it.
Reduce mental load: Don’t make your readers work to decipher what you’re trying to say in heavy copy, long sentences, or complex vocabulary—you’ll put them to sleep. Give them ease. Get to the point.
Boost conversions: When your copy is clear, valuable, and concise, your audience can more easily grasp your message, which leads to higher conversion rates.

Brands that aren’t clear tend to use industry-specific jargon or buzzwords that are unfamiliar to their audience. Think of it like Gen Z trying to explain TikTok to Boomers. They might be using all the correct terminology, but their audience will likely still not understand or have a frame of reference on which to base it. In the end, where there is no clarity, there’s no foundation to build trust in what you’re trying to sell.

Here are some examples of brands with crystal clear messaging:

Dollar Shave Club: Dollar Shave Club’s messaging is about simplifying the process of buying razors. They use clear, humorous language and visuals to explain their subscription service and the benefits of using their products.
Allbirds: Allbirds’ messaging is focused on sustainable and comfortable footwear. They use clear language and visuals to explain the benefits of their products, such as natural materials and easy care.

Tips to Improve Clarity

Simplify. Avoid using complex language, vocabulary, industry jargon, buzzwords, and long sentences. Consider how you would describe something to a third grader and then improve upon it to fit your audience. Be sure that the words you choose either add value or build trust. If they don’t, consider cutting them out.

Do a boredom check. If you’re bored reading your copy, your customers are probably bored, too. But you may be bored because what you’re saying isn’t clear. If you were to re-write your message from scratch and only have three sentences to write it in, what would you say?

You might also try describing your goal to a friend. Notice the difference in the language you use when you speak casually, and then try to incorporate that into your message.

Use examples. It’s one thing to say something. It’s another to show something. You can do wonders for clarity by simply showing people what you mean versus telling them what you mean.

#5 Differentiation →

Differentiation in your brand messaging means highlighting what only you can do in relation to your competitors. Differentiation requires a heavy dose of authenticity in your value proposition, which is strengthened by having a crystal clear understanding of your customers’ needs.

You might be similar to other brands offering similar services, and that’s OK. Consider, however, what makes your brand unique. What do you offer of value that others don’t? It could be your past experiences, a specialized, niche service, or an unconventional approach.

If you can communicate your differentiation well, your brand will stand out and become more recognizable within the sea of others in your industry.

Benefits of differentiation:

Stand out among competitors: When you’re not trying to match feature-for-feature what your competitors are doing and instead focus on what you do uniquely well, you stand out as an innovative option to your audience.
Become a go-to brand: Clear differentiation allows your audience to recognize the unique way you can serve their specific needs—something they can’t get anywhere else.
Increase profitability: When you position yourself to serve your customers’ needs with something your competitors don’t have, you’ll be perceived as more valuable.

Brands that don’t differentiate themselves risk becoming easily forgettable. They may also struggle to attract and retain customers with specific needs, which may result in having to reduce prices to match what their competitors are doing.

Here are some examples of brands with strong differentiation:

Chipotle: Chipotle differentiates itself from fast-food competitors as an option for customers who care about healthy, fresh-food options.
Trader Joe’s: Trader Joe’s focuses on providing a curated selection of specialty items, innovative flavors, and private-label products that can’t be found in traditional supermarkets. Trader Joe’s also emphasizes friendly customer service and a fun shopping experience, setting them apart from larger grocery chains.

Tips to Improve Differentiation

Know your ideal customer. If you can narrow your focus on a specific type of customer with a specific type of need, it’s much easier to define the unique ways you can serve them. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, your narrow focus sets you apart. Define the type of customer you want to serve most, and then get to know them well.

Focus on your strengths. Identify what you do best and match your strengths to how you meet your customer’s needs.

Share your story. While it’s important to focus on your customers and make them the hero in your marketing communication, don’t forget that your brand’s story helps define where your values, mission, and vision came from. Your brand story is unique to you—full of your struggles, wisdom, and passion—and can attract your ideal audience.

Conclusion: Brand Messaging Changes the Game

In summary, strong brand messaging is essential—it should never be an afterthought! Paired with a beautiful design, a strong brand message sets your brand apart. Integrating consistency, authenticity, empathy, clarity, and differentiation into your messaging allows you to create a powerful brand identity that resonates with your ideal customers and sets you up for success.

Consistency → Sets expectations. Builds Trust. Improves recall recognition.
Authenticity → Attracts ideal customers. Builds credibility. Forms stronger connections.
Empathy → Creates an emotional connection. Helps your audience feel seen. Allows you to step in as a helpful guide.
Clarity → Improves readability. Reduces mental load. Boosts conversions.
Differentiation → Helps you stand out. Allows you to become a go-to brand. Increases profitability.

Take time to craft a brand messaging guide that allows you to communicate with confidence and clarity. Need help? Through a series of deep-dive surveys and interviews, we can identify what makes your brand stand out and craft a guide unique to your brand voice. Let’s talk!