Customers expect interactive communication. As a brand, you must create compelling, relevant content that meets your audience’s needs.

However, sometimes, you might deliver disjointed, dull, or inconsistent messages.

The solution? Create a messaging strategy to guide all your communication.

In this post, we will discuss how to create a corporate messaging strategy. We’ll also explore the elements of winning messaging and why it’s important. Then we will wrap up with an FAQ section that answers common questions.

TL;DR – How to Develop a Corporate Messaging Strategy

How should a business create an effective corporate messaging strategy?

Here are 7 simple steps:

1. Know the audience
2. Research the competition
3. Determine the unique value positioning
4. Craft the key messages
5. Establish a compelling brand story
6. Keep the messaging consistent
7. Review and update the strategy

Follow these steps to establish a corporate messaging strategy. However, it’s always best to partner with a messaging expert, like me, Nora Sudduth.

Together, we can create a corporate messaging strategy and craft compelling corporate messages that connect with the people you want to reach.

Book a discovery call with me, Nora Sudduth, and elevate your business with a well-crafted corporate messaging strategy.

What is a Company Message?

A company message is how a brand communicates with its customers and stakeholders. It helps keep customers engaged and build lasting relationships.

At the very least, the company message must:

• Highlight the brand values and align them with the objectives
• Reflect the brand’s unique differentiators
• Maintain consistency over time and throughout your communication channels
• Resonate with your customers and foster an emotional connection

Check out some examples of company messages in the next section.

Corporate Messaging Examples

Some companies are excellent sources of inspiration for creating memorable messages.

Here are two examples of brands that have done a fantastic job:

• Salesforce: Salesforce tagline — the #1 AI CRM — sends the message of authority and social proof. Their value is in trust and being a unified platform for brands and teams.
• Canva: Canva’s slogan – design for everyone — resonates with beginners and experienced creators to design entertaining graphics that grab the viewer’s attention.

Why Are Messaging Objectives Important?

Should a brand define the intended outcome for its messaging campaigns? Let’s see why it’s crucial to do so:

• Clarity and Focus: With well-defined objectives, a brand can guide messaging campaigns to increase brand visibility, sales, or customer engagement.
• Actionable and Measurable: Once a business defines its objectives, it can create focused messages that drive tangible, achievable results. Therefore, your company messages become clear, consistent, and effective.
• Alignment with Your Goals: Objectives ensure the messaging activities align with the brand’s vision. So, every message is tailored towards a common goal.
• Streamlined Teamwork: Objectives ensure everyone works towards the same goals. They keep the teams informed and reduce misunderstandings. Therefore, they foster the company’s style and enhance efficiency.

What is a Corporate Messaging Framework?

Also known as the messaging architecture, a corporate messaging framework defines how you create, deliver, and maintain your company messaging across different platforms.

A strategic framework will help you:

• Maintain consistent brand communications across all channels and build trust with your audience.
• Clearly define your value proposition and unique selling points to help your brand stand out.
• Align your brand’s critical messages with your vision, mission, and values.
• It provides clear direction to everyone involved with your brand and saves time.

Keep reading to learn the critical components of a corporate messaging framework (and other messaging documents).

Components of a Messaging Document

Each messaging document has different components because the company’s needs are different.

At the very least, these are the seven vital elements in most messaging documents

1. Differentiators

The messaging document must define what makes a company different. List three to four of them to communicate throughout every touchpoint. These could include the products’ quality, service, or price point.

2. Key Messages

The core messages should be simple, captivating, and easy to understand. They should communicate the primary benefits to an audience. They should be convincing and stimulate customers to take the desired action.

3. Brand Values

The document should include the core values, that is, beliefs and behaviors that guide how a business operates. Identify the values that contribute directly to a company and form the foundation of the messaging.

4. Value Proposition

It outlines what makes a brand unique and different from competitors. It must be persuasive and exciting to grab the prospects’ attention and convert them into customers.

5. Brand Story

Another essential element is the brand story to communicate how a brand got started, its values, and its mission. It must have an emotional appeal and resonate with the target customers. Besides, a compelling story must also outline the problems a brand solves and why prospects should choose it.

6. Brand Voice

Just as it sounds, the brand voice is the tone and style of the communication. Settle on the tone of voice that suits a brand, whether casual, professional, or passionate. The voice should also showcase the business’s personality and enable customers to connect with the brand emotionally.

7. Mission and Vision Statements

The mission statement answers why a brand does business, while the vision statement sets the company’s future goals. These two statements help shape the messaging to align with the brand’s future goals. Besides, they allow the audience to build connections with a brand.

A brand should include these key elements when creating the corporate messaging documents.

Steps to Audit Your Existing Corporate Messaging

Auditing corporate messaging helps assess how well an existing brand messaging aligns with the company’s audience, identity, and growth goals.

It reveals inconsistencies, gaps, and misalignment that need to be addressed and identifies opportunities to maximize.

The 5 key steps include:

1. Defining the Objectives and Scope of the Audit

Before the auditing starts, have a clear idea of what will be evaluated, why, and what the process should achieve. Establish success metrics and be clear on who will be involved in this process. Set timelines and allocate resources needed for a successful audit.

To gain valuable insights from this exercise, consider a comprehensive assessment that includes both external and internal resources. Remember, key stakeholders have a different perception from the departmental teams.

2. Collecting Relevant Performance Data

Gather all relevant data from both internal and external sources. These can include social media analysis, sales reports, website analytics, online reviews, email marketing reports, marketing collateral, survey reports, and competitor analysis.

3. Analysing and Identifying Gaps

It’s time to examine all the collected data (both quantitative and qualitative) to identify what is working, what is not, why, where to improve, and what to drop. Conducting a SWOT analysis provides a holistic view of all the messaging touchpoints and actual performance against the objectives set at the beginning of the audit.

It clearly points out:

• Areas where the messaging excels, such as high conversion rates and high engagement, and where it consistently resonates with the audience.
• Opportunities for growth, such as emerging market trends, untapped channels, and untapped markets.
• Areas of improvement, revision, or redefinition, such as inconsistencies in messaging, unclear value proposition, content gaps, and claims that have no relevance.

4. Developing an Action Plan

After identifying the areas that need improvement, revision, or redefining, develop an action plan and assign responsibilities to the relevant team members. Ensure it includes implementation timelines, clear objectives, and well-defined success metrics.

For instance, if the audit reveals an underserved market, the action plan can assign a team to conduct in-depth research to identify the specific needs of the underserved segment and to analyze competitors.

That information can help tailor messaging that resonates with them, leading to brand visibility. If it highlights information overload from the internal team, the action plan can assign a team to streamline internal communication and ensure there is clarity.

5. Executing and Monitoring

Lastly, implement the action list starting with the most critical issues. Track all the changes and make adjustments along the way. Conducting performance reviews at 30-, 60-, and 90-day intervals and seeking feedback from the target audience can help refine strategies for sustainable success.

How to Develop a Corporate Messaging Strategy

A corporate messaging strategy helps with designing, executing, and analyzing the messaging.

Below are the seven steps to develop it:

1. Know Your Audience

Define the ideal customer based on research and data. Note their age, gender, preferences, needs, and pain points. Also, understand how the target audience receives and responds to information.

With deep insights into the audience, a brand can create genuine connections by crafting messages that speak to them and address their specific needs. A business should also develop accurate messaging styles and target the proper communication channels.

2. Research Your Competition

Conduct a comprehensive competitor analysis to understand their messaging. Gather insights to help develop a unique brand voice to distinguish the brand from others.

Consider these areas when doing the research:

• Carefully analyze what is and isn’t working for the competitors
• Compare the competitors’ key message statements to a brand’s

3. Determine Your Unique Value Positioning

The next step is to develop the value positioning — the unique value a brand offers its customers and what makes it stand out.

Consider these pointers when creating the unique value proposition:

• Research the customers’ pain points
• Develop emotional words that relate to the brand

Use these pointers to develop a strong value proposition.

4. Craft Your Key Messages

With a clear value proposition, it’s time to create core messages. They are a foundation that guides the content creation process.

When it comes to critical messages, make sure:

• They are concise and compelling
• There are four to twelve memorable statements
• They align with the needs of the audience

Remember, key messages are crucial for developing target keywords and maintaining consistency in the company’s messaging.

5. Establish a Compelling Brand Story

Every brand has a history of why it was founded. Making a brand feel personal is a great way to foster an emotional bond with the audience.

Here are areas to consider when developing the company’s story:

• Talk about why a brand exists and include examples of how it’s different
• Discuss the challenges a brand has overcome to evolve to where it is
• Carefully select words that evoke specific emotions

6. Keep Your Messaging Consistent

The messaging should be uniform across all channels, yet the content should be flexible enough to relate to each platform’s audience. Everyone who works for the brand must understand the messaging guidelines to ensure consistency and relevance.

Repeated messaging builds trust and can help transform customers into loyal brand ambassadors. Plus, consistency builds credibility and strengthens the brand’s authority.

7. Review and Update Your Strategy

As the company evolves, so should the messaging. Revisit the messaging strategy annually and adjust the guidelines based on developments, such as the launch of a new product or changes in marketing (customer) trends.

Remember to identify areas of improvement in the messaging. Gather insights from the team and feedback from customers. Remember to preserve the brand’s core identity when updating the messaging.

Aligning Teams Around Your Corporate Messaging

Aligning teams around corporate messaging ensures cohesiveness and consistency in the organization’s content.

Here are the steps to take to provide clear direction around the messaging:

Get Everyone On Board

Alignment begins when everyone from leadership, sales, marketing teams, and customer-facing staff is on board and understands why the messaging matters.

The leadership establishes a unified direction that promotes collaboration and encourages responsibility. The rest of the team will feel connected to the strategy and speak the same language, creating a cohesive experience for both prospects and clients.

Create a Comprehensive Messaging Framework

A messaging framework serves as the communication anchor, providing a common basis for everyone (from executives to frontline employees) to communicate consistently and accurately.

A comprehensive messaging framework includes the core messages, proof points, value proposition, the target audience, and the pain points.

Train and Implement

The point is not to have everyone sound the same. However, it is essential to ensure they can use the messaging framework as a reference and adapt it to their specific audience.

Training sessions for team members ensure everyone understands how to use the messaging framework as the foundation of their communication, regardless of their role. It also helps maintain a consistent brand voice and tone.

Monitor Impact and Improve where Necessary

Have a capable individual who can review any content before it’s published. They should also monitor the team to ensure messaging consistency.

Key marketing teams should conduct regular audits to help identify areas of improvement.

Future-Proofing Your Corporate Messaging

A messaging that felt perfect 3 months ago after launch will feel way off 2 years later. Future-proofing means adapting messaging that develops as the business grows.

Here are the steps to take:

1. Focus on Value, Not Trendy Features: Don’t build messaging around current hype or trend. Instead, focus on offering lasting value. For instance, a SaaS company that focuses its messaging on product features will need to update its messaging with every upgrade or improvement.
2. Build Flexible Messaging Frameworks: Messaging frameworks that offer guidance while allowing room for adjustment, and adapt quickly to market shifts. If offerings expand, teams can easily update them to accommodate those changes. It should include the key elements but allow different departments to adjust it to their specific context.
3. Adapt to Market Changes: Review competitors’ performance regularly, conduct regular customer surveys, and monitor conversations across different channels to identify areas where the messaging needs adjustments and when to revise.
4. Build Messaging with Evolution in Mind: Products and services are prone to change over time. As the world advances, new features will launch while the old become obsolete. So, creating messages that highlight the products or services’ outcome is easy to modify to reflect the latest product updates.
5. Test Against Real Future Scenarios: Test the messaging against realistic scenarios, such as potential market expansion, acquisitions and mergers, industry shifts, product or service upgrades, and increased competition. Create messages that adapt to market shifts and changes in customer priorities.

Looking for Corporate Message Services?

With my professional message strategy expert services, you can take your corporate messaging to the next level. We can collaborate to create a well-executed strategy that combines all the elements that matter to your business.

Book a call with me and let’s discuss how to establish creative corporate messaging that attracts quality leads.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

In this FAQ section, we’ll answer the common questions about developing corporate messaging.

What Are the Key Elements of Effective Corporate Messaging?

As discussed above, the critical elements of effective corporate messaging include value proposition, differentiators, brand values, vision, and mission statements.

Other vital components are the brand story and core messages.

How Can Companies Measure the Impact of Their Corporate Messaging?

You can measure the effectiveness of your corporate messaging using metrics such as conversion rates – viewers who take the desired action and engagement — these are comments, shares, and likes your posts get on social media.

Another way to evaluate the success of your messaging is to measure the overall revenue and gauge your customers’ sentiments with your messaging.

What Role Does Brand Voice Play in Corporate Messaging?

A well-defined brand voice lets your business express its personality and values at every touchpoint.

Therefore, your messaging becomes memorable and relatable to your audience. Your brand voice also helps you craft messages that foster an emotional connection and enhance customer engagement.

How Can Companies Integrate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Into Corporate Messaging?

Incorporating CSR into your company messaging requires you to start by developing a strategy that outlines the CSR initiatives, the brand’s mission, and the objectives. The next step is to craft simple, straightforward, memorable, and charming vital messages and stories that convey your CSR efforts.

Once done, you should analyze the impact of the CSR messaging through metrics such as social media engagement.

Who Should Be Involved in Corporate Messaging Development?

Almost everyone in the organization plays a key role in corporate messaging development from internal stakeholders.

• The top leadership plays a critical role in setting strategic direction and ensuring the messaging aligns with the organization’s goals and objectives.
• Sales teams come in to provide a detailed overview of the client base and the market in which the organization operates.
• The marketing team focuses on all aspects to ensure the message resonates and aligns with the set objectives.
• The finance team then ensures the messaging aligns with the organization’s financial strategy.

Note: the marketing and sales teams are usually the most engaged teams throughout this process.

Conclusion

For a brand to create winning corporate messaging, it should start by researching the target audience and the competition. It should then establish the value proposition and key messages. Remember to develop a brand story and keep the messaging consistent. And finally, review the corporate messaging regularly and make the necessary adjustments.

If you are looking to create or refine your corporate messaging and need expert guidance, consider working with a messaging strategist.

Together, we can audit your existing messaging to identify the gaps in your copy that are impacting your brand perception and performance. We can tie all your brand elements together to set up a winning corporate messaging strategy.

Schedule a discovery call to assess your current corporate messaging and how to refine it.