Whether you are launching a company, a nonprofit, a product or a service, creating a brand messaging framework that communicates the value of what you are offering is one of the most important tasks your leadership team will take on.

1. EVERYTHING YOU
NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT BRAND
MESSAGING
www.sugarbirdmarketing.com

2. Whether you are launching a company,
a nonprofit, a product or a service,
creating brand messaging that
communicates the value of what you
are offering relative to competitors
is one of the most important tasks your
leadership team will take on.
Why is brand
messaging impotent?

3. Why? If people don’t understand what you do, why it is unique and, why it is
important to them, they will not engage with you. They won’t buy, donate, partner,
fund or anything else you want them to do.

4. A brand messaging framework is a
structured representation of the
value promises your organization,
product or service is making to its
audience. It is less about who you
are and what you do and more
about why you are doing it.
What is a brand
messaging
framework?

5. Six steps for creating messaging
Describe the big idea
that is driving your
work.
1.
Define your audience
and develop personas.
2.
Audit your existing
messaging.
3.
Analyze your
competitor’s messaging.
4.
Discover your unique
value proposition.
5.
Create your elevator
pitch.
6.

6. What
How
1. What is your big idea?
Simon Sinek says: Start from why
Why

7. Discover your “why”
What change are you trying to enable?
What new reality are you trying to create?
What impact are you looking to deliver?
What is the spark that is inspiring you?

8. Identify all your
audiences
Are they mutually
exclusive?
Do they have different
problems?
Do they use your
product/service in
different ways?
2. Who is your audience?
Messaging is always audience-specific because it
communicates the value you are delivering to an identifiable
group.
Volunteer Beneficiary
Customer Partner Investor/donor

9. Create a persona for
each audience
A persona a character who best represents
the audience.
What is the character’s name and
demographics: age, gender, job, location etc?
What problems does the persona have that
your organization solves?
What are their goals?
What is important to them in the decision-
making process?
How to reach this persona: magazines, blogs,
special interest sites online etc?

10. 3. Review your existing
messaging
How you have been talking about your offering to date?
Gather all existing audience-facing or audience-
focused materials
Reverse-engineer your messaging if possible.
Compile aspects of your messaging that you
think works.
Check to see how consistently you have been
talking to this audience.
Ask people who talk to this audience what works
best.

11. 4. Stand apart from competitors
What are your
differentiators? What is
unique/ special about
your are offering?
How do your
competitors describe the
value they deliver?
What is your unique
position in the market?

12. 5. Discover your value
What are you offering?
• Describe your offering in a few sentences.
• How does it work?
• What problems does it solve?
What are your differentiators vs competitors?
What value are you delivering?
• How are you delighting this audience?
• What transformation can they expect
when you engage with your offering?
• What is in it for them?

13. Value promise
Short description
Problems solved
Supporting capability 1
Supporting capability 2
Supporting capability 3
Measurable benefits
Real world person
Metaphor/analogy
Define your value promises

14. 6. Draft your elevator
pitch/brand narrative
Your ingredient list
Name
Category
Promise
Impact
How
Problem

15. Did you know?
86% of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when
deciding what brands they like and support (Stackla, 2019).
81% of consumers said that they need to be able to trust
the brand in order to buy from them (Edelman, 2019).
It takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for people to
form an opinion about your website (8ways, 2019).
Consistent presentation of a brand has seen to increase
revenue by 33 % (Lucidpress,2019).
86% of consumers prefer an authentic and honest brand
personality on social networks. (HubSpot)

16. We are Sugarbird Marketing
Connecting audiences with your higher
purpose
We are a purpose-driven marketing and
communications firm specializing in brand
messaging, content marketing, website design
& development and digital marketing solutions.
WWW.SUGARBIRDMARKETING.COM
hello@sugarbirdmarketing.com

17. Ready to get started developing brand messaging for your
company, product or service but need help?
This is how we will work together:
• Step 1: Kickoff meeting - we will schedule a virtual meeting (using Zoom,
Skype or Google Meeting) to get to know you and your business.
• Step 2: We will review your existing communications including your
website, collateral and any emails, newsletters etc you use to reach out to
your audience.
• Step 3: We will schedule a Value Proposition Discovery Meeting with your
team which will last about 2 hours.
• Step 4: We will review the messaging of 3 of your competitors.
• Step 5: We will send you a clean version of our Value Proposition
Workbook to review and approve.
• Step 6: We will draft your brand messaging narrative for your review and
approval.
This process takes around 2 weeks - depending on your team's availability
and the length of review cycles. Once you brand narrative has been
approved, we can use it to create or update your website, create customer
presentations, collateral as well as to inform your content marketing and
social media strategies.