Brainstorm Your Brand: Your Message

As a solo or micro busi­ness own­er, you may not have con­sid­ered how impor­tant brand­ing is to your busi­ness. A brand is more than just a logo. A brand is your busi­ness iden­ti­ty. It encom­pass­es the Big Why of your busi­ness. The Who of your busi­ness and the What or How of your busi­ness. And noth­ing con­veys that more than a con­sis­tent message.

Under­stand­ing why you do what you do, who you do it for, what prod­uct or ser­vice you’ll be pro­vid­ing, and how you’ll be pro­vid­ing it, is imper­a­tive to grow­ing a long-term sus­tain­able busi­ness. You also have to under­stand how you stand apart from your competition.

Com­pe­ti­tion in busi­ness is relent­less and fierce. I don’t say that to scare you away. It’s sim­ply a fact.
Per a NAICS Asso­ci­a­tion report updat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2022, in the US there are 14,283,732 micro-busi­ness­es mean­ing busi­ness­es with less than 10 employ­ees. That makes up almost half of all of the small busi­ness­es operating.

Many of those busi­ness­es are in the same field, niche, or indus­try as your busi­ness is. With­out a way to stand out against all that com­pe­ti­tion, you face a los­ing bat­tle before you ever get good and start­ed. Find­ing a way to set your­self and your busi­ness apart is cru­cial to your suc­cess. Sounds easy right? It’s not!

That is unless you already know the answers to why you do what you do? Who you do it for? What prob­lem are you solv­ing? What prod­uct or ser­vice are you pro­vid­ing? And how are you pro­vid­ing it? Hav­ing these answers allows you to cre­ate a con­sis­tent mes­sage that cap­tures your core audi­ence’s atten­tion and builds a tribe vibe.

Your Message

Your mes­sage is what cre­ates your tribe vibe and helps you stand apart from your com­pe­ti­tion. Your mes­sage encom­pass­es the sto­ry of your busi­ness, your vision state­ment, your mis­sion state­ment, and the solu­tion your prod­uct and/or ser­vice pro­vides your tribe. When you can clear­ly and con­sis­tent­ly con­vey these mes­sages you’ll cre­ate a rav­ing fan base that res­onates with that mes­sage and becomes loy­al to your brand.

Mes­sag­ing isn’t just about your con­tent. Your con­tent and how you share it is extreme­ly impor­tant. But your mes­sage also encom­pass­es your vision, your mis­sion, your logo, your col­ors, your pho­tos, and your over­all design. It’s through this mes­sag­ing that you cre­ate a tribe vibe that in turn builds your brand.

Social media, the 24-hour news cycle, and web­sites like Open Secrets.org give the aver­age con­sumer far more insight into brands, what they stand for, and who they con­tribute to than at any oth­er time in his­to­ry. If a con­sumer wants to know any­thing about a busi­ness that infor­ma­tion is lit­er­al­ly at their fin­ger­tips. And they don’t hes­i­tate to use it. Peo­ple still want to do busi­ness with those brands they know, like, and trust. But an evo­lu­tion has tak­en place. Now con­sumers want to sup­port those brands that res­onate with their core values.

Word of Mouth

When you give your tribe a mes­sage that they deeply res­onate with, they will become the voice of your brand. They will share that mes­sage all over social media. It’s the new “word of mouth” but this time instead of just shar­ing with a hand­ful of friends they can lit­er­al­ly share your brand with thou­sands or even mil­lions of peo­ple instantly.

The way your tribe expe­ri­ences your brand deter­mines whether or not they’ll take that brand to heart. Your brand has to become per­son­al to them. In order to make this hap­pen, you have to share per­son­al things about your brand. When it comes to brand­ing there are two busi­ness­es that do this so well. Lulu Lemon and Penzy’s Spices.

Both of those busi­ness­es stand apart from their com­pe­ti­tion because of the expe­ri­ence they cre­ate for their tribe. Peo­ple not only want to buy from these busi­ness­es they want to feel that these busi­ness­es con­nect with them and share their core val­ues. When you can cre­ate this type of expe­ri­ence for your tribe, you’ll have a rav­ing fan base that will take your brand to celebri­ty level.

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