From Awareness to Loyalty: Content Marketing Fueled by Strong Brand Messaging

‍Did you ever wonder why some brands stand out and remain firm in the face of adversity while others fail? While many factors are at play here, content marketing fueled by strong brand messaging carries the most weight.

‍Just like a politician or a business leader who stays true to their word wins the hearts and minds of people, so do brands that deliver consistent messaging gain the upper hand during market turbulence.

‍It takes a strong brand messaging strategy and targeted deployment of the right tactics to build awareness, ignite engagement, and foster loyalty among the audience.

‍Plus, there’s a lot of noise when it comes to any aspect of SEO, let alone one that involves this level of automation. So, it gets confusing to know where to even begin.

‍Curious to know more? Find out how to turn your brand’s message into a powerful customer magnet.

‍Consistent brand presentation across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%, and companies with strong branding outperform weak brands by up to 20% in the stock market.

‍The theory of branding and communication tells us that brand messaging is a thread that ties all interactions between a business and its customers. It’s much more than just a single corporate message, a slogan, or a logo; it’s consistent communication via multiple channels across the entire customer journey.

‍From the moment the customer encounters your brand for the first time to the moment they leave or develop loyalty — the entire customer journey must be saturated with messages that depict your brand in a positive light.

1. Building Awareness: The First Touchpoint

‍The first impression lasts very long; it may even last indefinitely, setting the tone for all future encounters to come. Content marketers say that a bad impression will take a lot of money and much effort to fix, with 86% of consumers likely to leave a brand after only two poor experiences.

‍Brands must be prepared to capture the potential customer’s attention by offering:

• Clear and consistent messaging: a strong brand message must be crisp and clear, ideally aligned with the corporate mission, vision, and values.
• Emotional connection: emotions last longer than just words, therefore, a brand must ignite strong positive emotions from the first encounter.
• Unique value proposition: your brand must stand out from the rest, offering something novel and unique.

2. Engagement: Turning Awareness Into Desire to Act

‍Source: Sureify

‍Unfortunately, engagement is often vaguely understood because it is an overused term. It’s time to bring justice and return engagement the value it deserves.

‍An engaged customer is one who is actively experiencing the brand and is willing to go the extra mile, showing loyalty and advocacy (e.g., recommending the brand to friends and family members).

‍That willingness to take action is the key difference between motivation (passive) and engagement (active).

‍What does it all mean for brand messaging? To turn awareness into action often takes extraordinary measures on the content marketer’s side, for example:

• Targeted content: not just a vague and standardized communication, but targeted one that addresses the customer’s interests and pain points.
• Storytelling: stories are easier to remember; that’s why content marketing guided by cohesive brand messaging principles needs stories to build engagement.
• Interactive experiences: encouraging users to engage with the brand through surveys, feedback forms, contests, and polls.

‍Be careful, though, as more engagement is not always better, and the shortest pass to engagement may lie through triggering fear and anger, as argued by Yuval Noah Harari — the author of Amazon bestseller book Nexus.

3. Conversion: Moving from Desire to Action

‍That’s where all the magic of moving from awareness through desire to action happens. Content marketers call it conversion, i.e., when a prospect performs the desired action, be it clicking on a button, watching a video, subscribing, answering a question, or buying.

‍Strong brand messaging at this point must guide users to take the desired action. It does so by utilizing a variety of techniques:

• Clear and persuasive CTAs: using persuasive messaging to prompt users to take action (e.g., “Buy Now,” “Sign Up Today”).
• Social proof: for building trust, nothing works better than social proof signals, such as testimonials, reviews, interviews, and user-generated content (UGC).
• The brand promises: at this point in the customer journey, it is critically important to be consistent with your initial brand promises. i.e., the expectations you set for the customers during the awareness and interest stage.

‍A curious fact: Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees rather than the brand itself. It’s an important call to action for brands to utilize word-of-mouth and user-generated content in their brand communication strategies.

‍The ultimate goal of a strong brand messaging strategy is to develop customer loyalty and advocacy. Even in times of crisis, when volatile forces dominate the markets and competitors are breathing down your neck, loyal customers will stay with your brand and actively advocate for it.

‍Source: Wallstreetmojo

‍Brand messaging strategy is an indispensable part of content marketing. Moreover, it precedes many other elements, such as content creation, optimization, and distribution. Why? Because brand messages are at the core of content, they are the fundamental part that requires priority attention.

‍To illustrate, take a look at these brand messaging examples from famous brands:

Example 1.

‍Nike – Key strategic message: “Just Do It”

• Strategy Focus: Empowerment and motivation.
• Messaging Strategy: Inspiring people of all athletic levels to push beyond limits.
• Impact: Built a lifestyle brand identity associated with personal ambition, discipline, and victory.

Example 2.

‍Apple – Key strategic message: “Think Different”

• Strategy Focus: Innovation and individuality.
• Messaging Strategy: Celebrated creativity and challenged the status quo, targeting thinkers, creators, and rebels.
• Impact: Reinforced Apple’s identity as a premium, innovative, and human-centered brand.

Ensuring a Unified Voice Across All Content

‍Corporate messages must follow a unified brand voice to produce the desired effect on customer inspiration and engagement. When a unified voice is heard across multiple channels (e.g., social media, news portals, blogs, video platforms, podcasts, etc.), customers are more likely to associate this voice with your brand and form a unique brand portrait.

‍Social media’s role is hard to overestimate in this respect. For instance, 63% of consumers say they are more likely to trust a brand that has a strong social media presence.

‍However, consistency doesn’t just happen — it must be cultivated through unified content marketing strategies, for instance:

• Developing a brand voice manual (guide, brand voice book, you name it) outlining tone, key terms, guidelines, dos and don’ts, and sample language.
• Onboarding all content creators to use the same brand voice in customer communications. For example, run a joint workshop where you train your content creators on using the brand voice guide outlined above.
• Producing templates and content frameworks that guide, instruct, and motivate.

‍The beauty of repeated exposure to the same brand voice is that it becomes viral. Customers begin to use your language, repeat your brand messages, sing the songs that you create for your ads, and so on.

Educating with Value-Driven Corporate Messages

‍One of the main functions of content marketing is to educate the audience. Content marketing operates with intangibles like copy and visuals, which are meant to engage and educate, warm up the audience, and prepare it to make a desired action (purchase, view, subscribe, etc.).

‍However, education, in this case, isn’t just about delivering useful information and facts; it’s about bringing real value, explaining things, and solving real-life problems.

‍Some brand messaging examples that aim to solve problems include:

• Canva – makes design accessible with messaging such as “Empowering the world to design.”
• Slack – highlights ease of communication and workflow alignment with the message “Where work happens.”
• Notion – removes complexity from productivity tools with the promise “One workspace. Every team.”

‍You may want to take a look at some examples of educational content that drives value:

• Thought leadership articles that establish authority and inspire trust.
• How-to guides and tutorials that help understand concepts, processes, and ideas.
• FAQs that increase customer knowledge.
• Forums and review portals that reduce customer uncertainties.
• Case studies that show real-world situations and guide by example.

‍As a brand, you must fight to fill in the customers’ knowledge gaps and win their loyalty. Educated customers will stay with your brand and will help you spread the word of knowledge to others.

‍Source: Siegemedia

‍Imagine brand messaging is a clear voice present in the crowd. However, it’s not loud enough, and it cannot be heard more than a few hundred meters away unless one uses a loudspeaker.

‍In the digital world, this loudspeaker is search engine optimization (SEO).

‍The brand messaging strategy does mention that for maximum output, there must be good PR coverage. But PR and conventional ads were a viable strategy in the analogous world of the 20th century.

‍Today, we live in a hyper-digitized era where all marketing activities have gone online. This is the SEO realm, as SEO is the ultimate tool for enhancing online visibility, building trust, and driving conversions.

‍When brand messaging and SEO work hand in hand, they can achieve a level of productivity and impact unimaginable for the conventional ads of the 20th century.

‍Here’s how SEO content can help amplify your brand messaging:

• Targeting keywords that reflect brand values and are aligned with the mission, vision, and values.

‍Example: a sustainable brand targeting terms like “eco-friendly skincare,” “zero-waste production,” or “environmentally-safe ingredients.”

• Utilizing link-building to drive authority. Links work like small portals transporting not only real users’ attention, but also authority (in SEO language, called link-juice).

‍For example, The North Face (outdoor gear) earns its backlinks from adventure blogs and outdoor magazines that reference its expeditions and environmental campaigns.

• Embedding brand language into optimized copy – a key messaging framework that stipulates SEO-optimized copy (high-intent and high-value copy for the target audience) aligned with brand voice.

‍For example, using consistent brand tone, key phrases, and vocabulary in a blog post.

• Aligning on-page SEO with off-page messaging. On-page SEO deals with both the language (content) and the code on a given webpage to make it rank higher in search engine results.

‍Here is an extended brand message example: A skincare brand, Glossier, in its on-page SEO, uses friendly, inclusive phrases like “skin first” and “beauty inspired by real people.” However, for the off-page messaging it utilizes influencer marketing and earned media to support the brand’s philosophy of authenticity and minimalism.

‍There are no trifles in SEO. Even small details like meta titles and descriptions can also effectively tell a brand story and amplify its online presence.

‍Additionally, images and videos should also come with brand voice-optimized alt-text descriptions to help search engines like Google “understand” and rate your content higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

‍Did you know? The power of storytelling lies in their ability to appeal to emotions. Case studies and how-to guides may effectively appeal to logic, but storytelling gives something that becomes hard to forget.

‍Source: Medium

‍A corporate message in the form of a story doesn’t just entertain; it educates and inspires people to become advocates of the brand, especially if the interests and pain points of these people are somehow interwoven into the story.

‍Key elements of effective brand storytelling include:

• A relatable protagonist – ideally, should be your customer, facing a distinct and nascent problem;
• A central conflict – representing the challenge your product or service helps overcome;
• A resolution – a clear solution to the challenge to inspire the audience;
• Emotion and tone – can be fine-tuned to align with each particular audience;
• A clear takeaway – reiterate your statement of the problem and its solution.

‍Storytelling helps to humanize your brand by relating to personality and displaying authenticity. This is especially helpful for high-tech companies, science brands, or anything that has to do with data, information, and the computer industry in general.

‍Here are some real-life brand message examples of storytelling in action:

• Dove (beauty brand) – empowers individuals through stories that question societal beauty expectations.
• Warby Parker (eyewear brand) – tells the origin story of affordable eyewear with a social mission.
• Airbnb (housing & apartment renting brand) – uses personal stories to bring out the emotional value of feeling at home anywhere.

‍In all honesty, not all content marketing strategies require storytelling. For example, white papers, technical documentation, and press releases rely heavily on facts and don’t need stories.

‍If your personal brand, organization, or business lacks a solid brand messaging strategy, you cannot expect it to be effectively recognized by customers. You need to integrate this article’s brand messaging approaches and best practices into your content marketing.

‍Where do you begin? We suggest a comprehensive review of your existing strategic ambitions and the communication your marketing team conveys to customers.

‍If you find discrepancies and gaps, facilitate a joint task force comprising content marketing, SEO, and strategic teams to work out a joint brand messaging strategy and allocate responsibilities across all members.

‍Show them some of the brand messaging examples from this article to ignite inspiration and hunger to seek more information on this topic, brainstorm, and experiment.

‍Begin the transformation now, and let your content work harder for your brand!