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Ep. 7: Getting Clear on Your Key Messages
37 Plays1 year ago
Join hosts Chloe and Darci as they discuss an all too common struggle for small business owners - defining your brand’s key messages.
Key messages are an essential ingredient for a cohesive and effective marketing strategy. Clearly defined key messages will save you time when creating content and make building a cohesive brand feel so much easier. Yet they’re frequently overlooked by entrepreneurs when they DiY their branding.
In this episode, Chloe and Darci dispel the myth that defining key messages is a daunting process and show you how mixing in a pinch of intention and a dash of strategy can make all the difference when it comes to your brand’s development.
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Follow Darci at Sweet Tooth Creative
Website https://sweettoothcreative.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Brand Jam
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Brand Jam, the brand strategy podcast for colorful and compassionate brands. I'm Darcy, the candy-fueled copywriter behind Sweet Tooth Creative. And I'm Chloe, owner of Conscious Design Studio, Chloe Ariel Design. On the show, we'll be talking about what it's really like to build a brand from scratch when you're a business of one. And how to find what works for you so you can create a brand that grows with your business without burning yourself out. At Brand Jam, we believe there's no one right way to be and embracing our differences enhances the experience for everyone. So if you're a fan of bold flavored branding and are trying to do business better, come hang out. We're so glad you're here.
Understanding Key Messages
00:00:41
Speaker
If you're anything like me, you may already have your key messages and you just don't know it. Getting clear on your key messages really does not take that long, but it is so worth it.
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome to Brand Jam! This is episode 7, and today we are talking about key messages. Hey, I can always talk about key messages. Yes, Darcy is a master of key messages. So this certainly like, I don't know, I'm forever trying not to talk way more than Chloe just because I am a talker. But I will probably dominate the conversation a little bit today because key messages really are the kind of arena, the bread and butter, the jam, so to speak.
00:01:28
Speaker
oh yes exactly it's the jam for my brand but yeah key messages are super they're your key messages are essential for your brand but for a copywriter the ability to identify a brand's key messages and put them to work is one of the best skills you can have So yeah, so I'm gonna probably info dump a little bit and be excited and rambly, but I love key messages. So first, I will define what a key message is. So your key messages are the things you keep coming back to when you're talking to your audience, right? Well, this brings up the the idea of like content pillars, where those are also things that you keep coming back to. How is that different than key messages?
00:02:14
Speaker
So content pillars, there's different approaches to content pillars, and that could be a whole own episode and probably one day will be. But what I will say is that content pillars, which people use to define the type of content tent they're creating to kind of like categories their categories of content you create. and you can choose to use your brand values as your content pillars, which is something I enjoy doing for a lot of my clients. Or you can, another kind of like easy way to create content pillars is to just use your key messages. And by that I mean, think of if you could only tell your audience three things about whatever it is you're an expert in, whatever it is they're coming to you for help with. And I don't mean three things about like, this is my offer, here's what's special about it.
00:03:00
Speaker
No, no, you're the expert in this area. They are coming to you for your expertise. What three pieces of expertise are most important that you get across? If you're pinched for time, if you only have a moment with them, what three things do they need to know to make the biggest impact in their business? And once you have those three things, they can be your content fillers because from there, everything you make every time you're talking to your audience should tie back to one of those three things. Even if it's just, again, just like we said in the last episode, it's one tiny facet of the thing, it still supports the overall message.
Chloe's Key Messages Reflection
00:03:39
Speaker
Okay, so as you were talking about that, I'm thinking about my own messaging, and you know, I really don't have my key messages outlined very well. What's coming to mind for my three things, we can use me as an example, is like accessibility is essential, personality driven design, and ah your business can be conscious and fun. Yeah. And I'd have to like sit down and and go through it to see if maybe the second and third overlap too much and maybe tie into the same thing. Again, going back to some some of the strategy behind this is going to be similar to how you defined your brand
Impact of Brand Values on Messages
00:04:14
Speaker
values. They are not the same thing, but your brand values will typically have a very heavy influence on your key messages yeah because it's what's most important to talk about. Therefore, what is important to you on a values level
00:04:28
Speaker
it's going to be in play. But yeah, I definitely think like accessibility being essential, great, great key message for your design studio and personality driven design creating connection, I think, with your audience as a way of connecting with your audience. The value of that is another great key message for you. And then that differentiates it a little bit more from your third one, which helped me with a little reminder. It was Your business can be conscious and fun. Yes, exactly. That you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. That's a great thing to talk about. And I mean, looking at that list, an easy way to know if you're touching on your key message is, is that something like you get excited to talk about? Again, I think I mentioned in the last episode, does it light your brain up? Are you like, Oh, yes, give me the mic. I have things to say. Big time. Yes. And that's probably a key message. And there's you know some additional strategy in terms of like making sure that the message then supports your offering because it all needs to work together. But for the purposes of this, if you are you know early on in your brand identity building, the most important thing is is to identify three things that you want to talk about a lot a lot because that is super important in terms of building brand awareness and sticking in people's brains coming to mind when they think of your category is being consistent in your messaging coming back to the same point over and over again because
00:05:55
Speaker
People need to hear things multiple times.
Consistency in Messaging
00:05:58
Speaker
Exactly. I had someone email me just yesterday a link to an accessibility website, like ah a color picker thing. Just it was like a fun game. And i they were like, oh, I thought of you when I saw this. And I was like, this is exactly what I want. I want people to think accessibility and think my business. Exactly. And that's what I mean when I say that key messages make it easier to create your content because you're like, this is what I want to be known for. This is what I'm going to talk about. This, this, this. And you just keep coming back to it and then you see it pay off with how your audience
Managing Diverse Interests with Key Messages
00:06:34
Speaker
responds. Key messages are also great if you have a little bit of shiny object syndrome, because I not only have topics that I can talk a lot about, I have a lot of topics I'm happy to talk about. I'm chatty. yeah you know And so for someone like me who you know is interested in a lot of things and easily falls down rabbit holes and stuff, This helps create some focus in a way that doesn't feel like work. So it helps me prioritize what I'm focusing on without feeling like homework or rule or like a box I have to fit myself into. Yeah.
Identifying and Refining Messages
00:07:11
Speaker
So maybe the the actionable item is brain dump all of the things that you're really excited about talking about and then go through and
00:07:20
Speaker
and whittle them down or combine them into broader categories yeah definitely that that's a great place to start especially if you are super early on another one and you know we like i said said this with the brand value same thing if you already have a library of content if you have if you've been posting for several months, couple years, whatever, go back through and look and you can look at what post performance stuff in terms of like, that is helpful, not in deciding what to say, but in weighing what resonates with your audience, because that's not the only thing that matters. But sometimes you say things that you just kind of think offhand, and you know are important, but like, don't realize that your audience has been waiting to hear and then you get the reaction and you're like, Oh,
00:08:09
Speaker
Oh, they want they want to know more about that. I love talking about that. Let's go. Yeah. So you can look at that. The other thing to look at when you're examining, you know, what I call it is mining for gems in past content is what keeps coming up or what related topics seem to be creating like a thread through all of your content and maybe what is the category right above them that encapsulates them all, because there's probably a key message there. Yeah, and and on the other side of that, if you're going through your older content and there's something that you felt was really important and you want that should have resonated, then maybe the way that you're saying it or maybe the audience that you're reaching isn't quite the right audience and then you can work
Using Key Messages for Consistency
00:08:51
Speaker
backwards from there.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, if you feel in your gut that something is really important and people don't realize it, that does not mean you shouldn't talk about it. It just means you have to probably talk about it a lot. It might be a high education hurdle you have to overcome um in terms of, you know, there are things that people know they need, know they want. There are things people need and they don't realize it or they know that they want the outcome, but they don't know how to get there. And so in those situations, you're going to have more work to do in helping them become aware. And all of that strategy ultimately starts with your key messages with what are we talking about? What do we want them to be aware of? And what are we going to keep coming back to and make sure they understand as importantly? Exactly. Okay. So we have all these ideas and things all written down, but then what are we doing with them? What is the, what is the goal
Simplicity and Specificity in Messaging
00:09:44
Speaker
with the key messages? What's, what's the outcome? I gather the physical thing that's going with it. You know what I'm trying to say here. Oh yeah. Yeah. So the first thing you're going to do with it is again, create that internal document, that point of reference for you, for anyone working on the behind the scenes of your brand that clearly spells it out. You know, our key messages are one, two, three.
00:10:06
Speaker
And then from there, you can, as your, either if you have content to already categorized, you can list different examples of ways to talk about each one underneath. you can You can expand on that from there. You can use those as content pillars and go in and brainstorm content on those those topics. You can use it in other places, but that, for this exercise, the the most important thing for you to walk away with is a document that says it doesn't have to be pretty, It doesn't have to be fancy. It says, our key messages are these three things. So three, five, I really would recommend keeping it to three just because you want to be cohesive and consistent and the more key messages you have, the harder it is to do that. Just because you keep it to three doesn't mean you're going to say the same thing over and over and over again. You're going to find a hundred different ways to talk about each one. And with keeping the three categories, they're usually broad enough, right, that there's going to be almost an infinite number of things like that you can talk about under
Exploring Personality-Driven Design
00:11:06
Speaker
each one. Yeah. Think of, like, think of your key message as the headline. Your key message is the headline, but you could write a four page blog post about that key message. That's what, what you're basically looking for is something that you is not vague. It should be pretty specific. It should say, yeah this is this. This is important because you need to be aware of X, Y, and Z, like not X, Y, and Z, X, one thing. More people should be aware of this because, you know, that like you want it to be specific, but also broad. because then you are going to explain it like I said 100 different ways you're going to talk about it in different scenarios you're going to talk about the different ways it applies to their business or your product or whatever it is that you know you're discussing with your audience but yeah you want you want like the thing that encapsulates it all indicates what you're going to talk about but then you can get very detailed with it get very specific with it
00:12:04
Speaker
Okay, so let's use me as an example again. yeah um And let's take one of my key messages we talked about earlier, maybe the personality driven design leading to deeper connections with your audience. Can you help me break that down a little bit? Yeah, so like I said, you'd have the statement about, you know, personality driven design is key for creating a strong connection with your audience, then you're going to talk about why that is. And that can be 10 different things. It can be talking about how important shared values are. It can be talking about the delight that we've mentioned that people people need dopamine. yeah You know, you're you're providing that burst of, oh, I like that. And that commonality of, oh, this person's like me, that connection. Like there's all these different ways that having a personality driven brand helps you connect with people. Even like you can go into the neuroscience of it of like people stop scrolling four faces.
00:13:03
Speaker
It is human instinct to stop when we see another person instead of you know a text-based thing. So that's another one post about it you can make. you know There's a bunch of different ways to divide up that topic, and then you can go into, okay, well, so personality-driven brand is important. We know and why now. How do you do it? And then you break it down all the different ways and then from there you can be like breaking down the different areas where you can infuse your personality. You know, like here's how to do it on social media. Here's how to do it on your website. So you just continue to kind of like expand and expand and expand. But it all comes back to that single message of you need to be thinking about this. Yeah. And that's why we're going to talk about it a hundred times.
Evolving Key Messages
00:13:49
Speaker
Awesome. And just like everything else, you can experiment with these, they can change, you know, you keep checking in with them, come back to it, new things might appear, you might realize that you need to get more specific, that you need to pivot it. But the important thing is to be thinking about these things at all, have some intention there. And then you can build on that over time. Yeah, super helpful. If you know, this was back when I first started sweet tooth creative, the best place to start is to kind of like look at what I've written and look at what I am already talking about. um So because some of this is going to be subconscious and you you don't realize it until you look back and pinpoint the pattern. So, and and a lot of it just comes from doing, like to some extent, another thing that helped me refine my key messages was understanding the gaps for my audience. And some of that just came from taking on more clients, talking to them, noticing patterns again, what keeps coming up? What are people struggling with repeatedly? You know, what do people just maybe not understand? Because their expertise is in a different area. They're not a copywriter. and then you know bridging that gap. and If you're anything like me, you may already have your key messages and you just don't know it. I just came up with those by looking through my Instagram feed really quickly and just refreshing on the things that I talk about a lot. and I was just doing it kind of subconsciously. It might help that I do have a brand background, marketing background, but you you may already find that you have you have what you need to move forward to young grasshopper. Exactly. A lot of this is like you're not starting from zero. Most of my clients come to me, they do not have a key messages document in their brand file. Doesn't mean they don't have key messages. And often it takes me 15 minutes of going through their content to be like, oh yeah, you have key messages. They're this, this, and this. But that knowing is what kind of like makes them so much more effective
00:15:48
Speaker
And it it not only makes things easier for your audience because it makes your brand more cohesive and it helps you stick in their brains, but it also makes it so much easier for you to create content. um That's the biggest, like kind of that's the best feedback I get anytime anytime I do key messages with a client or a candy club member is they're like, oh, this made it so much easier to make my content. And we, you know, are in an industry where we need to make a ton of content and idea generation is a very significant problem for some people. It's a pain point. I don't like pain points, but people feel that and getting clear on your key messages really does not take that long, but it is so worth it yeah for then it saves you time everywhere else.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, clarity again comes up here. It's so important. And once you're clear with yourself and your business, then you can also be clear in your messaging so that you can build those deeper connections with your audience. Exactly. If you're kind of all over the place with your messaging, you know, people might really enjoy your vibe. But if it creates that little bit of confusion of, Yeah, no, I know I like them, but what do they do again? I know I like them, but I'm not sure when I would need them. Yeah. And this basically like jumps that gap and gets them to where they're like, I know I like them. And also if I need this, I'm gonna i'm goingnna go to them. Yeah, I think once you once you start to define these things and create this foundation for your business, it's gonna feel like a fog has lifted, a weight has lifted off your shoulders. like It's not gonna feel so heavy and so difficult to do things. Exactly. And that's what this season is all about.
Episode Wrap-up
00:17:30
Speaker
It's about what is the best use of your time because you you never have enough of it. There's always more to do. And so every episode is kind of about like here's where to focus your energy and you're going to get the most return on investment for the energy you put into it. Exactly. So and game messages are a perfect example of that. Like it really, really doesn't take that long. And then you will use it all the time.
00:17:56
Speaker
That's it for this episode of Brand Jam. Check out the show notes for links to the resources we talked about. If this episode hit the spot, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps Brand Jam reach more listeners, so we really appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.