Marketers, do you know your target audience?
Without skipping a beat, most of you will say “absolutely” – but let’s dig a bit deeper before you answer. Sure, you can rattle off some demographic information: where they live, a loose age range, their gender, maybe the life stage they’re in. What about their interests, behaviors, and lifestyle? How they engage with brands, as well as other consumers, on social and digital channels? How your brand fits into that lifestyle, and what they expect from their relationship with you? So, do you really know your audience?
Always Audience First
There’s a good chance you’ve heard Vert talk about our “audience-first approach” if you’ve spent time perusing our website, exploring our social media, or speaking with our team members. Understanding who your customers really are – not just who your executives think they are – is the cornerstone of our approach to brand strategy. It’s fairly easy to say what you think your brand should mean to people, but often times what it actually means and how it fits into the lives of your target audience will surprise even the most seasoned marketing professionals.
Vert's Brand Strategy Services
Vert’s brand strategy and messaging services always start with a detailed audience analysis, leveraging both first- and third-party data. We investigate who your target consumer is, what makes them tick, and the value your brand can provide to them. We also think about who your brand could appeal to based on the value props of your organization, and use all of those insights to define a core set of personas based on real data on real people. We also look closely at your competitors’ activity and strategies to determine where your brand fits into the overall landscape. With this context in mind, we build a totally unique, totally effective brand messaging strategy that can be leveraged to inform everything from your social media responses to much broader market messages, even on non-digital channels. We’re best in class at pinpointing the intersection of your audience’s needs and your brand story, then bringing that to life across channels and mediums. After you know the who and the why, you can move onto the where of your messaging framework. What are the platforms you should use to share your brand promise and engage your target consumer? How should your message and creative approach vary from platform to platform? If you’re doing things right, it’s going to look pretty different on your social media vs. your website vs. your email campaigns and even vs. your product packaging – and our strategy consultants are great at helping to define what those nuanced differences are and how to execute them for a cohesive-yet-segmented strategic approach. That’s where establishing messaging pillars comes into play. There are (approximately) ten-thousand ways in which to slice and dice a brand messaging strategy, and it can get complicated, fast – but having a limited set of categories can help to focus your story but still accommodate enough variety to keep things fresh. How you bring those pillars to life might vary from platform to platform, but defining them and tying them back to business goals is key. At Vert, brand strategy is woven into just about every campaign we execute, regardless of where it’s being executed. From digital media campaigns to landing pages to CRM strategies and all of the touchpoints in between, having a consistently strong brand message that leverages audience insights and platform strengths and capabilities is key. Want to learn more about our approach to brand messaging strategy and talk about leveraging our team for brand strategy consulting support on your next campaign? Get in touch.