How to Develop Effective Brand Messaging Pillars

Understand Your Audience

The first thing to do is to think about who your audience is. 

It’s a good idea to stick some feelers out and conduct a bit of market research. That involves asking the following questions: 

1. What do my target audience want to buy?

2. Does my target audience have a specific product in mind when they arrive at my site? Or are they browsing, generally? 

3. What are my target audience’s interests, hobbies, and preferred medium of communication? 

4. What demographic does my target audience belong to? 

5. Where can that demographic of the target audience most likely be found? 

Whatever answers you find will guide your brand messaging. The message you give out should get to the heart of the things your customers want, right? Which means that your brand messaging pillars should support this sentiment. 

You can use this information to:

• Determine what pain point your services will alleviate
• Think about why people might want to invest in them
• Differentiate your brand from your competitors’

These can form the basis of your messaging pillars. 

Clarify Your Brand’s Purpose & Positioning

The next thing to do is to think about how your brand fits in alongside other brands in a similar field. 

This relates to the process of ‘brand positioning’, and it’s a very important part of the process when it comes to making your brand stand out from the crowd. 

To help you with this, it’s a good idea to write yourself a brand positioning statement. That’s the elevator pitch, which gets to the heart of what your message is going to be. 

It’ll help you to understand what your brand does, and why it’s special. Having it summed up in one sentence will help you to focus, too. 

Once you have that focus, you can see how to communicate it through your messaging. You can also prioritise messages that align with that statement, so that you can be sure that your brand’s position is a big part of what you communicate with your audience.

Differentiating yourself from the crowd is, after all, the reason you do any marketing. It helps people recognise you and what you do.  

If brand messaging pillars are the heart of that marketing, it makes sense that they need to relate to your brand’s position in the market. 

Identify Core Themes

So, there’s a primary, overarching umbrella which gets to the heart of what you want to say with the content you create.

But when you look closer at that umbrella, what sorts of things come together to make it whole? When you look at your audience and your core values, are there any particular words, phrases, or ideas which come up again and again?

Group similar words and phrases together, and try to sum them up in a sentence. See how many groups of these you can create. 

The groups are going to form the makeup of your brand pillars. There should be two or three main themes that jump out at you. 

But, if you’re struggling, here are some examples: 

1. Ease and accessibility of COOL prizes

2. Customer service comes first

3. Your particular niche – be it golf, memorabilia, or luxury gadgets

4. The particular audience you have in mind – ‘prizes for women!’, ‘prizes for petrol-heads’, etc

5. “We’ve pioneered a new, innovative way of doing [X]’

Craft Clear Supporting Messages

Once you have the framework of what you’re going to say in place, it’s now time to figure out HOW you’re going to say it.

Clarity is the order of the day. 

The best thing to do is to sum up each theme you found in a single sentence. You can then mind-map this when it comes to creating new content. Are there different ways you could phrase it, or different ways you could show that particular theme? 

Validate & Refine Your Pillars

The good news is that the more you use these pillars, the more you’ll see if they work. 

Does content that leans on Pillar 1 work better than content that leans on Pillar 2, for example? 

Your audience is the best bet at validating your pillars and messaging. The proof’s in the pudding, and these guys won’t lie. They don’t like it, they won’t engage. Simple as. 

You can then use that information in order to refine your messages, going forward. 

Example of Brand Messaging Pillars

Sometimes the best way to get to grips with something is to see it in action. 

Nike is always an example of good brand messaging. People know where they stand with Nike. 

We would argue that Nike’s brand messaging is inspired by ‘Just Do It’. Their mission statement is, in their own words, ‘To Bring Inspiration and Innovation to Every Athlete in the World.’

Here are the pillars that they take from that: 

1. ‘We create innovative and high-quality products to support athletic needs.’

This pillar differentiates their sportswear from competitor brands; it’s innovative, and high-quality.

It also defines the target audience: athletes and people who do any sort of athlete

2. ‘There is an emotion related to sport: achievement in sport creates pride. We’re going to harness this to connect with audiences.’

Creating emotionally resonant campaigns, using the ‘Just Do It’ ethos, evokes a feeling of ‘YEAH, I CAN DO IT!’. 

In this way, the company is able to cultivate positive associations with the brand. That’s important in creating a recognisable, trustworthy image. 

It also implies that one of the pain points of their target audience is that they need that inspiration and support to push themselves. The implication? Their products are that inspiration, and they are there to support their athleticism. 

Even the brand’s logo contributes to this: Nike’s tick—otherwise known as the ‘Swoosh’. Without getting our nerd glasses on too much, Nike’s tick is related to a mythological goddess, whose wings came to be associated with glory and fame. The swoosh represents those wings, and therefore it represents glory. 

On a simpler level, it’s also a tick, as in ‘tick-the-box’, done-and-dusted. Smart, huh?

3. ‘Anyone is an athlete’ 

Nike’s target audience is athletes, right? But what if, completely hypothetically, everyone were an athlete. 

They say, ‘If you have a body, you are an athlete. ’ That contributes to their brand image as providing items for anyone and everyone. It’s part of creating that positive association with their brand, the messaging which screams, ‘you can do it!, yes, you, in particular’. 

But it also keeps their options open, and widens their target audience. It makes people feel included, which helps them feel that they also deserve that victory. 

Common Mistakes With Brand Messaging Pillars

1. Creating Too Many Pillars

Pillars are supposed to keep you focused, right? It follows that, if you have too many, you lose that benefit and end up losing focus, anyway. 

A multitude of pillars stops you from being able to focus on any one in particular. That defeats the purpose of a pillar. 

2. Vague Messaging

You’ve probably gathered by now that it’s all about being specific. You should be able to sum your messages up in a few short sentences, like we did with the Nike example.

3. Lack of Value-Alignment

Your pillars should focus on the value that you offer to your audience. That’s the best way to get people on your side and interest them in making a purchase. They’ll come to associate your brand with meaningful, positive change. 

Pillar-Perfect Posts

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