What are key messages – Creating purposeful key messages to strengthen your brand
What are key messages?
The clue’s in the name. Key messages are the aspects of your business you most want your audience to know about. They’re what make you different – what makes someone choose you above all others.
Why should I use key messaging?
- Users connect with and invest in you
- Streamline your strategy
- Identify values within your business
- Strengthen your brand by communicating values clearly
Who are they for?
Key messages form the backbone of your comms and reflect your ethics, values and goals – they’re the summation of who you are so they’re for everyone that comes into contact with you.
How do I formulate key messages?
Key messages come from your brand story. When you start telling your story, you’ll spot emerging and recurring themes – things about you and your business that ring true for everything you do. Some of those themes you’ll distill into values and from there you build your key messages. Extracting messages from your brand story makes them powerful and purposeful and totally true to your business.
When the GP brand story was told, the theme of ‘treating each other like actual human beings’ came up a lot. We knew very firmly a big corporate vibe was not ours and we wanted to work with clients that felt the same. Quite a few of our ‘family values’ stem from this aspect of our story: be open, no BS, support each other and be yourself. From this disseminates the GP key message: ‘We measure our success on client happiness’.
‘We measure our success on client happiness’
This key message, because it comes from the story of us, speaks directly to everyone in our team. We all believe in it and know instinctively what it means for us. It makes us different, it sets a tone and, when we allow it to inform everything that we do and produce, it speaks clearly to the right audience for us.
Where do my key messages live?
Practically, the key message sits within your messaging matrix. Each of your messages is laid out (have as many as you feel covers your business succinctly), each with practical examples of how you back it up e.g.
‘We measure our success on client happiness’
- Hold monthly client focused meetings to discuss how we can go over and above for our clients
- Curate knowledge-sharing network events for our clients
- Dedicated Account Manager (in addition to Project Manager), to keep clients in the loop and communication open 24/7.
Key messages are facts. They form a significant part of your strategy – what you do and how you move as a business will be very strongly connected to what your key messages are.
When do I use key messaging?
- Content strategy: Key messages are a great way of planning your content in a way that has your brand at the heart. For each message, plan campaigns and advertising, schedule events and speak effectively about the things that really motivate you and your business.
- Copy: Use key messages to inform the copy on your website, within mailings, in blogs, in social. Take the key message and convert it into a version appropriate to the platform.
- Motivate your team. Key messages should always be communicated within staff manuals and permeate the company. Each person can bring a new meaning to the message and contribute their take on it.
- Structure your business. Knowing that client happiness is one of our key messages informs how we structure our team – what’s the best way for the client to get full access to us at all times? How can we make things better for them? How can we give them more?
The exercise of identifying and formulating key messaging will refocus your direction as a business, highlight values and shine light on areas you didn’t realise were important to you and your team. Once you have them in place they streamline and simplify your strategy and get everyone moving in the same direction.
If you need help telling your story or getting it heard, we’re ready to take you to the next level, give us a shout.