8 Brand Communication Strategy Tips & Techniques

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Tip 1: Segment Your Market

Every market is made up of different groups of people which are referred to as market segments.

The people within each segment share more relevant characteristics with each other than they do with those in other segments.  

When you segment your market and identify the segments you want to prioritise, your chances of landing your message significantly increases.

So make sure you take the time to dissect your market and Identify those you want to target as a priority. 

Tip 2: Create Detailed Audience Personas

For each market segment Identified, you want to create a highly detailed audience persona to bring the details of that group of people to life.

Who are they?

Where do they life?

What do they drive?

What do they like to do on the weekends?

This persona begins to bring some individual tangibility to the group of people in your targeted segments, but this is still just the starting point.

Demographics and psychographics outlining their circumstances and habits are the bare basics but in reality, you need to dig a lot deeper to be able to develop brand communication that connects. 

Tip 3: Clarify Their Unique Challenges

What makes one market segment different from the next is not about their demographics or circumstances of their lives.

Of course a group of people earning 150k+ or more represents those who can afford a more luxury brand, but demographic segmentation is simply not enough.

When you understand their behaviours, objectives and more specifically their challenges and the emotions connected to those challenges you have many angles you can truly resonate from.

So after segmenting your market and creating your personas, be sure to get the clarity on the unique challenges and pain-points of each segment. 
 

Tip 4: Agitate The Problem

When you have clarity on the challenges of your audience and the potential impact of those challenges and the pain-points and fears connected to them, you have a problem you can help them remove.

This problem, if it goes unresolved will take your audience in a direction they don’t want to go.

Some people are well aware of this while others will happily put their head in the sand until it’s too late. Either way, a reminder gives them an chance to change courses.

By agitating the problem and highlighting the potential consequences on a non-response, you help your customers to see the potential danger and give them an opportunity to do something about it.

In that moment of the realisation of impending danger or consequences, they’re significantly more likely to take action to correct the course. 

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Tip 5: Speak Directly To Your Persona

When creating website copy, social posts, advertisements or any other form of brand communication, the message shouldn’t be directed at the entire market or even market segment.

It should be directed at a single person within that group which is manifested in the audience persona otherwise known as a buyer persona or customer avatar.

Brand messaging that speaks to a single person is far more effective, connected and believable when compared to messaging or copy addressing thousands or even millions of people.

And this is why creating a detailed audience persona is so important. When you know your audience well enough to the point that you feel you know them, you can create messaging that is far more likely to land. 

Tip 6: Use Stories To Align With Their Journey

Stories are without question one of the most effecting forms of communication known to man or woman.

Story based communication has been used for millions of years as a means to pass on valuable information from one generation to the next long before writing and more complicated forms of communication were formed.

The reason it’s so effective is that it’s now part of our DNA. When we hear a story we gravitate towards it and it opens a loop that needs to be closed with a resolution, outcome or ending.

If you can weave your brand into a story that aligns with the journey your audience is on, your brand will register with them in a way that fact based communication can’t compete with. 

Tip 7: Lead With Personality

At the core of every brand should be a differentiation and positioning strategy to highlight why the customer should choose them over their competitors.

Often these differences are fundamental buying decision factors that compel the audience to take action though these differences can have support.

As humans we’re simple creatures and some of our behaviours are still very primitive. For example, if I’m in a foreign country in a room full of strangers and I hear a familiar accent, I’ll gravitate towards that accent because familiarity represents safety in numbers on a primitive level.

If something happens, this person will protect me and I’ll protect them. It’s all subconscious, but it still dictates how we behave.

The more familiar you can make your brand feel to your audience the more likely you are to connect and personality is on of the most effective ways to make your brand feel familiar.

So lace your brand communication with characteristics and traits that your audience will gravitate towards and make your brand feel familiar. 

Tip 8: Use A Messaging Framework

Before you can communicate your brand effectively you need to know what your brand wants to say.

A core message is traditionally seen as a distilled paragraph or text that represents the meaning you want to put into the market about your brand. 
 
But a single body of copy is not enough to influence your brand perception in the market. 
 
Instead, Identify the key messages you want your audience to understand about your brand and develop a framework of these messages to place into the market.

With consistency and time, these key messages should shape the brand reputation and ultimately grow the brand’s equity. 

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