Messaging plays a very important role, it’s the the glue that holds your brand together.  This is where you state your benefits, claims, promises, and your mission. Sure your visual brand convinces them (hopefully!) that you are a quality brand that they want to partner with, but your messaging tells them if you are providing the services they need. This is where they find out if you are a good fit.

When you think about one of your favorite brands, you almost instantly get a mental picture (and that gut feeling we talked about here) of that brand.  With the big hitters it’s easy; Target, Starbucks, WalMart have spent countless dollars on making sure that when you see a communication vehicle with their name on it – you know instantly who is trying to get your attention.

Some interesting research came out recently that validates the importance of a completely integrated marketing and advertising effort. Crown Peak conducted a study of holiday advertisers and discovered that 66% percent of online ads simply redirect users to the website home page, or a generic search result page rather than a landing page specifically tied to the ad content, message or call to action.

Branding, you may know what it is. Even scarier, you might think you know what it is, and you are wrong.

According to The Brand Gap, which I highly recommend reading, your brand is the gut feeling your customers have when they think about you. It’s not (only) your logo, corporate color scheme, the photography and copy you use in your brochures and website.  Your logo (or mark), and other assets are very important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to your branding strategy, but we will get into that more another time.