Everything You Need to Know About Brand Messaging Guides

Brand messaging guides might seem like something that only “big brands” would need, but there’s so much value in them even for small businesses or solopreneurs! 

I love creating these for my clients and I’ve done them for industries ranging from coaching and personal development, small eCommerce business, hospitality, nonprofits, and more. In this article, I’m going to lovingly convince you why you need to get one of these created for yourself! So come along with me on this online marketing nerd’s journey through the wonders of brand messaging guides. 😉

What is a brand messaging guide?

A brand messaging guide is like your brand “Bible.” It’s the go-to resource for everyone who creates content for your brand. Actually, anyone who comes into any kind of contact with your brand, internally, can benefit from reading through one of these bad boys. 

It’s where your brand personality is defined.

And that definition is the foundation of your business. Having this guide in place makes creating marketing content so much easier for everyone involved. It takes out the guesswork, inspires creativity, reduces rounds of approvals, and speeds up the creative process.

Who should have a brand messaging guide?

I’d argue that everyone with a brand should have a messaging guide. No matter how big or small, there’s value. Here are a couple of specific examples of scenarios where it’s incredibly helpful to have a brand messaging guide:

• If you are creating online marketing content for your business, or you’re the marketing manager for someone else’s business.
• If you are thinking of outsourcing your content to a freelancer or marketing agency.
• If you are just starting out and need to really define who you are as a business to feel confident moving forward.
• If you are pivoting in your business and want to redefine your brand persona to the public and specifically your audience.
• If you are expanding and opening your business up for investors or new business partners.
• If you are ready to add new team members.

What’s the benefit of a brand messaging guide?

These guidelines allow you to clarify your messaging so it’s easy for your customer to understand and also easy for you to understand! Sometimes when we are the visionary of our business it’s easy to get caught up in the inspirational side of things and the big, romantic vision of your business. All this dreaming, while beautiful, might be confusing to everyone else who isn’t inside of your head. 

BMGs are also a great way for your team to form an emotional connection to your brand. The founder obviously is going to give a sh** about every aspect of the brand, but will a content creator that’s also working on 5 other brands really give a sh**? Yes and no. They’re a good person, hopefully, but if they don’t know the “why,” or the personal story as to why this brand came to be – or the deeper value of the service it provides to its customers – they’re going to make good content rather than GREAT content for you.

Who will be using the messaging guide and what for?

Everyone who works on the brand should have access to the messaging guide. The people who will use it regularly might include:

• Copywriter
• Content manager
• Social media manager
• Designer
• Marketing manager
• Marketing strategist
• Content writer
• Creative director

What’s included in a brand messaging guide?

Each guide is a little different depending on the needs of the brand. I like to make mine really customized so that they’ll actually be used. You can include visual elements in the guide, like brand colors and correct logo usage, but those can also be found in a separate visual branding guide. Big companies like to make one large master document and have it designed all nice and pretty with ALL the info in one place, so if that sounds fun to you, have at it! Here’s the general outline of what I include in the BMGs that I create for clients. It’s actually the literal table of contents from one of the guides I did for an eCommerce brand.

1. How to Use the Guide
2. Mission Statement
3. Brand Story
4. Brand Promise
5. Brand Values
6. Brand Voice
7. Brand Tone
8. Brand Buzzwords
9. Audience Personas
10. Elevator Pitch 
11. Social Media Bios
12. Strategic Hashtags
13. Headlines
14. Email Subject Lines
15. Content Buckets
16. Pull Quotes

Start putting together your own brand messaging guide!

If you want to start putting some of that “this is a real business” energy behind your brand, or if you’re expanding and want to make it easy for your team to stay on brand, we should chat about creating your own brand messaging guide. Contact me today to get started!

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