Mixed Messages: Is your Message Consistent With Your Brand?

There are so many avenues of communication available nowadays that seamlessly staying engaged with your customers’ needs and wants and desires is easier than ever.

That also opens up the opportunity to get lines crossed and send mixed messages. The more hands in the pot, cooks in the kitchen, and formats your marketing takes, you wind up opening the door for the creation of confusion. Mixed signals don’t do you or your brand any good. Before lines get any more crossed, take a step back and evaluate whether or not your messaging has been consistent with your brand. If it’s not, you can follow these steps to create a more consistent experience for your consumers.

Refresher Course: What is Your Brand?

Your brand is your entire business. Everything involving everything you do is a part of your brand voice. Your reputation, your packaging, your employee communications, your logo. It’s all a part of what makes you special. This is what defines your company.

Consumers trust a brand that they recognize anywhere they see it: TV ad, storefront, radio spot, press release. They can easily get confused if everything you do is not a melded part of the whole. They’re attracted to consistency and can lose faith if you appear to be too scatterbrained across your messages.

Your brand is more than just your name, logo, and product. Your brand is the entire customer experience, from first awareness through your customer’s final last breath. Well, hopefully not. But you get the point. It’s the feeling they get when they hear your name. It’s the emotion that comes with experiencing your commercials, with using your products, with chatting with your customer service teams, and by visiting your website.

What is Consistent Messaging?

Consistent messaging is how you impart those feelings that surround your brand. What the consumer sees, what they hear, and ultimately what type of experience they have with you, is all putting forth a message about your brand. Your messaging supports your brand and needs to remain consistent.

Consistent messaging conveys a precise theme (feel, color, texture, sound) throughout all your content and marketing, through all marketing channels. You must avoid any unclear or confusing communication. A confused mind always says “no.” Without a consistent message, you risk losing those valuable customers and traffic.

Consumers generally have to be exposed to a message so many times before they respond. That’s the “effective frequency.” A very unique value proposition is created in their mind every time an audience is exposed to your brand’s message. Seeing it in a consistent format (color, tone, voice) helps to drive longer term retention. If there is no consistency in your messaging, consumers have a difficult time keeping up with and recognizing your brand.

How to Ensure Your Messages Aren’t Mixed

In order to ensure your messages aren’t mixed, you need to understand what makes you you, and then take steps to focus your efforts on maintaining that remains the same across all channels.

1. Make sure you, yourself, understand what your brand is all about. Revisit what sort of problems you are trying to solve, how your service or product can help your target audience, and what your business goals are about. The stronger your identity, the more it will resonate with your customers. This includes outlining what sort of tone you will use, your language, key visuals or feel, and your color scheme in a style guide. Focus on all the little details.

1. Every team member within your company needs to be on board and understand the message you’re trying to convey. Consistent messaging isn’t just a one-man job. You’ve got to get all departments on the same page. It just doesn’t do to have small inconsistencies across all your channels. What your storefront looks like should be the same as your website, your social media marketing platforms, your digital marketing strategy, blogging, and all other aspects across the board. Even your customer service team and sales force should maintain a consistent tone and phraseology when speaking with customers.

1. Make sure that all of your older content is updated to match this newly-found consistent image.

1. Make sure that you’re able to deliver on your brand’s promise. Defining your message to consumers also means that they will foster expectations of you. You have to make sure that you deliver on your promises, or the consequences could be disastrous. It’s not just about maintaining a consistent message. Staying consistent with how you treat your customers is just as important.

You’ll be well-remembered if you can maintain a consistent message across every channel and platform. With the right messaging, you’ll be able to better steer customers towards wanting to do business with you, as you’re improving their entire experience.