How to effectively implement your brand messaging

We’ve waxed lyrical about the wonders of messaging many times before. For us, it’s the keystone of successful marketing. Without great messaging, everything else falls apart (or at least isn’t nearly as effective as it could be).

But even when your company has developed amazing messaging, things can still go wrong when it comes to implementing it. You can still confuse your audience and lose their attention, making you blend into the crowd. The question is what impact does this have on your sales?

In this article, we’ll cover what you can do to make sure that your messaging will play its part for you, and by the end, you’ll clearly see the potential downfalls that can occur during implementation and how you can avoid them.

Drifting away from your original message, will lose its impact. Remember the rule of 7, now more like the rule of 15-25, which states that your audience need to see your message 7 times before they really take note and action. If you change or even just tweak your message each time it goes out, you’re effectively resetting the ‘rule of 7’ back to 1 each time (or close to it).

This is a big reason why Medical messaging often doesn’t resonate as it should, and great work is undone during implementation.

In reality, you’re confusing your audience which is a major problem. Each time you slightly change your message, your audience will struggle a little more to understand it, causing them to take time and energy to link the two versions of your message together. But what does that really mean? When your message is not resonating each time, your audience will likely lose interest and go elsewhere, or at best take longer to understand that your technology is the answer to one of their problems. Neither is optimal for a growing business.

You may not think that confusing messaging is a big deal, but its impacts are far reaching and can be extremely harmful to your audience engagement rates, whether that be on your website, at a congress or during a live presentation or webinar.

Consumers need to trust a brand before they commit to it. Inconsistent or confusing messaging can make your brand appear unprofessional and unreliable, which can damage your credibility and lose the trust of your customers.

A consistent brand message is crucial for creating a brand identity that is easily recognisable above your competition. If your messaging is confusing, it can be difficult for consumers to recognise and remember your brand, meaning they won’t be able to recall you when they’re ready to adopt your technology.

Each piece of marketing content you produce is an investment and takes time (and budget) from your team. If your brand’s medical messaging is rolled out in a confusing and inconsistent manner, these efforts will be devalued as your marketing will not effectively engage your target audience or drive the desired action of increased adoption and revenue.

Consistent Medical branding is key to building customer loyalty. If customers are confused about your brand, they may be more likely to turn to competitors with clearer messaging and more predictable offerings. As Donald Miller from Storybrand says – “People don’t buy the best products, they buy the ones they can understand the fastest.”

We’ve laid out why accurately sharing your messaging is so important, but what can you to ensure it?

This should be a comprehensive guide to your brand’s verbal identity (and visual, if included with brand guidelines). It should include details about your key messages, brand voice and lexicon (words that you use and don’t use and grammar preferences) as well as your logo usage, colour schemes, typography and imagery (if your brand guidelines are included). This document will serve as the “source of truth” for all brand communications moving forward, to ensure consistency is achieved without exception.

A great tip is to keep a document (OneNote is great for this) that has all your approved materials in one place (in image form). This will allow you to quickly compare your new materials with previous ones. You’ll be amazed how inconsistency in wording and style creeps in without anyone noticing.

Organise sessions where you educate your team (marketing and sales are a start) about the brand, including the importance of maintaining message consistency. These workshops should cover how to use the communication guidelines and provide real-world examples of correct and incorrect message usage. You can go back to your OneNote document that contains all approved materials on to show examples of good and bad usage.

This can be extended to your entire company, so your customers experience consistent message when speaking with your sales team, customer service representatives or when reading your materials online or in print.

Make sure everyone has easy access to your messaging framework and examples of how it is implemented. You could use a shared drive or a cloud-based brand management platform.

This could be someone in a senior or junior marketing role whose responsibility includes maintaining communication consistency. They can oversee brand usage, including your messaging, and help answer any queries your team might have.

If you’ve created one document with all your approved materials on, checking message and brand consistency will be a relatively quick thing to do but add significant value to the overall consistency of your message.

At Podymos this task is completed by a junior marketing team member and any inconsistences are elevated to a senior manager for review.

If there are any changes or updates to your communication (and brand) guidelines, relay them promptly and clearly to the whole team. You might need to arrange additional online or in-person training sessions in these cases, depending on the number of updates.

One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make when implementing their messaging, is failing to do it consistently across all materials. This is a big job, but it is critical if you are going to rapidly drive awareness of this new message and avoid confusion of your audience.

Here are some of the main touchpoints where your messaging should be incorporated, and it should be identical on all as you don’t know where your audience will engage with you:

• Website
• Social media platforms
• Email marketing
• Printed materials
• PR material
• Advertising
• Packaging
• Internal communication
• Customer service
• Videos
• Content marketing

Remember, consistency in marketing does not mean being repetitive or boring. It’s about creating a strong, reliable brand identity and maintaining it across all platforms and points of interaction with your consumers.

By now you probably have a good understanding of the impact of getting it wrong when distributing your message, as well as an idea of how well it can work for you when done right.

And yes, getting it right really is as simple as being accurate and consistent. You will soon start to see the rewards of your hard work.

Are you aiming to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you aspire to deliver high-quality email campaigns as part of your broader multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve landed in the right place.

Podymos is a dedicated healthcare messaging agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing. Our services might be a bit pricier than non-specialised agencies and freelance teams, and that’s because our exclusive focus on the Medical Device space equips us with specialised knowledge and expertise that others might not offer.

For impactful and compliant campaigns that align with your business objectives, we’re here to assist. Simply provide your contact details below, and we’ll reach out promptly for a no-obligation discussion.