Key Messages are exactly what you want your audience to take home. It’ your ‘drop the mic’ line. Whether launching a campaign or a generic message for your brand or product it is important to have your key messages in place. You need to have a strategic communication plan by ensuring you develop effective key messages. Here are key guidelines to developing your key messages:
What to do: Identify your target audience Research on your audience and ensure that you are targeting a particular group of audience. Ensure you have your primary and secondary audience well defined. Remember if you are targeting everyone chances are you are not targeting anyone.
Know What You Want To Say
Keep your messages simple and still provocative enough to create interest and deliver the message. The messages need to be short and specific. Remember determining your key messages depends on your goal; what you need to achieve and the duration you have. Have a plan Apart from having a clear and specific goal you need to have a step by step plan on how to get there. Ensure these steps are realistic and measurable. Be able to answer in a sentence “what do you want to achieve?” determine if your key messages are meant to be a one off kind of message or is it a long term message for your product or brand?
Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.
If you are managing or running a campaign ensure that all the messages that are launched across all platforms are uniform. Consistency ensures that your message is repeated over and over again and this helps strengthen your message.
6 Comments
4 signs that it's time to re-brand
Branding is no longer just the physical aspects (the logo, slogan, colors or name) but how your clients and customers view your brand. A brand needs to stand out from the competition; be able to sell a common service or product in a unique way and speak volumes to your clients. From time to time brands re-brand; but how do you know it’s time to invest in re-brand? There are various aspects about your brand that one ought to consider:
Customer dissatisfaction
Are your clients or customers complaining? Whether face to face or through social media. Especially with technology and social media platforms a single dissatisfied customer or client can create an irreversible damage to your brand. The complaint only needs to go viral and before you know it hundreds of people are airing their own set of complains and other thousands of people are re-posting, re-tweeting and sharing the contents on various social media. Therefore you need to evaluate; if your customers or clients are complaining, what are the levels of complains? Is it an everyday occurrence? If it is then may be its time you thought about where your brand is heading.
Most brands concentrate on communicating about their brand to their consumers and forget that their team plays a critical role when it comes to the brand success.
Therefore increasing team engagement through communication is critical for your brand; a great strategy will have to involve effective execution and it is your team that plays a major role in executing it. If you don’t have a proper and effective way of communicating to your team then your brand is headed for a downfall. Lack of proper communication causes most problems and may lead to confusion and cause a good brand plan to fail. Here are 4 key reasons why you need a strategic communication plan for your team:
Communication creates a deeper understanding of the brand among the team. If they do not understand then they break the bridge between your brand and the clients. A team that has positive relationships (high levels of commitment) with their brand help develop positive relationships with the customers and clients.
In order for your clients to know and understand your product or services, your brand needs to be comprehensive and consistent and for your brand to engage, motivate and increase your consumerism it needs to be strong. Before starting your brand audit you need to have the objectives of the audit, and then understand the internal description of how your brand has been marketed. Then do a checklist for your brand:
Perception of the brand
You need to know if there is consistency of your brand message among your audience and your intended message. This should be about what your brand delivers, and what it should be delivering. Your audience needs to know what your brand stands for and what it has to offer. There are key questions you need to ask about your brand perception:
Note that your brand cannot appeal to everyone; it has to be designed to target a certain group of people, to solve a particular problem.
Value of the Brand
Know and understand your brand. Key questions to ask:
Understand your brands perception, image, reputation and attitude among your consumers. It’s also important to know the value of your brand in terms of pricing.
Competition in the Market
Competition propels us to greater heights and achievements. By knowing what your competitors are doing differently you get to understand what limitations your brand has. This enables you to strategize on how to tackle them. Find out:
New trends and market opportunities
Know and understand your market:
Summary of what your brand audit should be able to reveal:
Note: any successful brand audit is built from the inside out; this includes both the internal and external stakeholders.
A brand audit is effectively a health check of your brand; to be able to identify and address problem areas with a net result of helping turn things around and grow the bottom line.
A brand audit will help determine:
Brand Strengths
This helps you understand the unique aspects of your brand to capitalize on. Your brand strengths could stem from your edge that sets you apart from your competitors. Your employees are part of your brands strengths. Do you empower your employees? Do you have the right employees working for your brand? Is your brand adaptive? Is your brand able to adjust according to its environmental conditions? As technology advances; is your brand up to par or is it stuck? Your brand needs to be able to adapt first in its particular industry and to set the pace. How is your brand interaction with your clients and customers? Satisfied customers and clients are potential marketers.
Brand Weaknesses
You will be able to identify what your customers or clients are saying about your brand; this can be done through surveys, questionnaires or even having a suggestion box. This will enable you to receive immediate feedback. your brand AMBASSADORS are employeesWithout a proper strategic communication plan, communication from any position in the organization is bound to fail; from the managers to the subordinates. A great strategy involves setting goals and objectives which will be executed by the people who are in constant contact with your brand. These are your employees. Therefore communication starts from within the organization then works its way out to the public; your employees need to understand your vision, then what they are working towards in order to effectively communicate these aspects to the public. Therefore for any organization to achieve effective communication then employees need to play a major role. Organizations need proper and effective ways of communicating to its employees; because lack of communication means it has lost its core function. Communication creates a deeper understanding of the brand among employees; because if they do not understand then they break the bridge between the organization and the public. Employees who have positive relationships (high levels of commitment) with their organizations help develop positive relationships with customers and clients. Interaction and communication to employees is critical to the overall functioning of an organization. Management must be clear in communicating the vision, mission, goals and objectives of the company, both overall and at the departmental level. Each employee needs to understand their role in the vision of the organization. Communication of goals and the objectives of the organization enables each employee to know and understand their role and place in the vision of the organization. This helps the employees to stay positive and productive. Communication creates a higher level of performance because it causes strong relationships and trust. Both the managers and the employees should be able to provide information and seek information. Work cannot be carried out efficiently if there are communication barriers between the employees or between the employees and the managers. Increasing engagement through communication is critical for any organization. Communication means that employees feel like they’re part of the team, that they are part of the greater vision, and this brings out their unique strengths which in turn they bring to the work place. Communication will enable feedback. Feedback is critical in order to establish if indeed the organization is actually communicating and if the message is reaching the right target audience. So when the staff are kept in the loop; the goals, values, and concerns out in the open, they feel that they can give their feedback and therefore the staff stay engaged and in turn translate this to success of the team. Lack of effective communication causes most problems in organizations. Thus, the process of communication employees and organizations are interlinked, whereby without communication, an organization cannot attain its mission, vision, goals and its objectives.
A brand audit is effectively a health check of the brand. To be able to identify and address problems areas with a net result of helping turn things around and grow the bottom line.A brand audit in an organization helps to determine:
Therefore it’s important to determine how accurate and effective your organizations interactive components (company name and color, tagline, logo, sounds, styles, voice and tone of messaging) are and where you can improve without alienating your current audience. These components can be determined through a number of ways; interviews, reviews, research, observations or surveys. Surveys are one of the most important tools; they help determine the overall overview of the team’s opinion of your brand. These surveys can be done to both internal and external teams and gives the team a better understanding of the target audience perspective on your identity. The internal team include your employees, shareholders, investors, and retailers. There are critical questions that are critical during the survey:
External stakeholders include the current customers and potential customers. There are critical questions that should be asked.
A routine brand audit will help monitor the cycle that way the brand remains fresh and relevant and it’s possible to keep track on when to reinvigorate or revitalize before sales start to slip.Remember it’s about establishing your overall position in the marketplace and creating greater consumer awareness
There are different stakeholders in an organization and the most critical is the employees; they need to hold the organization in high esteem and understand the objectives, the culture and the vision of the organization. "The internal publics are your bridge to your external publics." Your employess are your bridge to your external publics; they are your greatest asset that is why they need to understand their part in achieving the organizational goals. As a strategic process, internal communication can motivate and empower organizations employees. Therefore the critical questions you need to ask are:
Employees of an organization are part of that core group which has very intimate relationship and a stake in the organization. They have the potential to make a customer loyal to the organization or be a one-time customer therefore your organization needs to win their loyalty, confidence, and organizations should be able trust them.
Awareness of the brand in the market You need to know if there is an alignment within your company about what your brand delivers, and what it should be delivering for your audience; do they know what your brand stands for and what it has to offer. What is it that you are communicating to your audience and what do they actually think of your brand (How do you want people to think of your brand as compared to what types of leads you are aiming to get?). You also need to know if you are targeting the right audience; is your brand tailored right for that particular audience (your brand cannot appeal to everyone; it has to be designed to target a certain group of people in order to solve a particular problem). Value of the Brand You get to understand your brands perception, image, reputation and attitude in the market. What are the strengths of your brand? What is your brand offering that your competition is not offering? Competition in the Market
You get to understand what deficiencies/limitations your brand has and be able to strategize a way to tackle them. To find out what your competitors are doing, who they're talking to, why they're talking to them, and how effective they are at it and also get to know if your audience has a better alternative. New trends and market opportunities Know and understand your market: understand what your competition is doing and what new trends are in the market and also understand the future channels suitable for your brand. A successful brand audit is built from the inside out; this includes both the internal and external stakeholders. Increasing engagement through communication is critical for any organization; a great strategy in any organization will have to involve effective execution and it is employees who play a major role in executing it. If an organization does not have a proper and effective way of communicating to its employees then it has lost its core function.Ineffective communication causes most of the problems in organizations and it may lead to confusion and cause a good plan to fail. There are several critical reasons why an organization needs communication to prosper; Without proper strategic communication, communication from any position in the organization is bound to fail; from the managers to the subordinates. The managers should be able to communicate the goals and vision of the organization efficiently in order for each employee to know and understand their role and place in the vision and goal of the organization.One of the major reasons why we communicate is to provide information and seek information;Work cannot be carried out efficiently if there are communication barriers between the employees or between the employees and the managers. Employees stay positive and productive this can only be achieved through effective communication; Management must be clear in communicating the mission, goals and objectives of the company, both overall and at the departmental level. Feedback is critical in order to establish if we are indeed communicating and if the message is reaching the right target audience and organizations are no exceptions. So when the staff are kept in the loop; the goals, values, and concerns out in the open, they feel that they can give their feedback and therefore the staff stay engaged and in turn translate this to success of the team. Thus, the process of communication and an organization are interlocked, whereby without organizational communication, an organization cannot attain its mission, vision, goals and its objectives. Efficient communication increases a higher level of performance because it causes strong relationships and trust. Communication is the lifeline of any organization. Communication means that employees feel like they’re part of the team, that they are part of the greater vision, and this brings out their unique strengths which in turn they bring to the work place. Communication creates a deeper understanding of the brand among employees; because if they do not understand then they break the bridge the gap between the organization and the external publics; employees who have positive relationships (high levels of commitment) with their organizations help develop positive relationships with the customers and clients. Interaction and communication to your employees is critical to the overall functioning of an organization. Employees stay positive and productive this can only be achieved through effective communication; Management must be clear in communicating the mission, goals and objectives of the company, both overall and at the departmental level. Feedback is critical in order to establish if we are indeed communicating and if the message is reaching the right target audience and organizations are no exceptions. So when the staff are kept in the loop; the goals, values, and concerns out in the open, they feel that they can give their feedback and therefore the staff stay engaged and in turn translate this to success of the team.
Thus, the process of communication and an organization are interlocked, whereby without organizational communication, an organization cannot attain its mission, vision, goals and its objectives. |
AuthorMary Ndulili Categories
All
This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of Cookies |