5 Signs Your Brand Message Isn’t Working for You and Surefire Ways to Fix IT

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Written By: Michaela

How to know if your brand message is struggling You’re message, your voice, your content. Your brand message is the essence of what you put out in the world. And it is incredibly hard to nail on the first, second or third try. I should know, I’ve worked through my messaging trying to find the right message to get across at the right time targeted at the right people. It’s quite a process.

I decided in January 2016 to start my business officially and full-time. I adjusted my website and changed my copy slightly from what I was applying for jobs with to being a business site to attract clients. Some visitors were coming to my website but I wasn’t getting any inquiries for new jobs…like Zero! By June I was getting really nervous. This just isn’t working but why I’ve got my website up, I say what I do and I’ve got my packages listed. Why isn’t anyone interested??

It all came down to my messaging. My brand message was struggling, it was cluttered and trying to appeal to literally everyone. I’ve got skills in everything from design to content marketing so I created packages at different prices levels for all of these skills. It was overwhelming for people to come to my site. They didn’t really understand how I could help them if I was the right designer/developer for their project. And it had me stuck and sending clients looking elsewhere.

It took someone pointing it out to me to see it even though I help others with this type of work but I couldn’t see it myself. Once I realized this, I made the adjustments to my messaging and cleaned up my website clutter. Within 4 days and I had 4 inquires about working on projects with potential clients that found me online.

How can you tell if your brand message is struggling?

In this post I am going to dive into the 5 signs that your brand messaging is struggling. It takes a lot of time to figure out your brand messaging. There is testing, researching, evaluating and it doesn’t go from working hard for you to struggling overnight. You might even feel like something isn’t quite right in your business but you don’t know what it is exactly. It might be that your brand message is struggling and it is time for you to clean it up and make some adjustments.

Attracting the wrong clients

Maybe you are attracting clients to your business but they aren’t good fits. They either want services that you don’t offer, aren’t interested in paying you or can’t afford you…or even worse they do pay you but they drain the energy right out of you and you start dreading getting an email from them. Those my dear are the wrong clients for you.

I was so thankful and excited for any project that came my way when I first started. You could turn down a client project, I didn’t realize that. I also didn’t realize that you didn’t have to take on clients that weren’t lighting you up to work with them. That resulted in several projects that dragged on and on (think 12 months for a website) and several times where I doubted if I could even do this whole entrepreneurship thing.

It was time to adjust my brand message, figure out what I stood for and who I wanted to actually work with. Then make a commitment to myself to no longer work with clients who drained me and wanted work for free. But it all started with my messaging. Clients started saying things like “it’s like you were in my head”, “this is exactly what I need right now”, “I’m interested!”

Attracting new clients and getting them to convert from followers/visitors to clients became easy. I remember telling my coach… I can’t believe that just happened, it was so EASY!

Your personality surprises clients once they sign with you

Another sign that your brand message is struggling is that your client is surprised when they finally get on the phone with you. Your clients have decided based on your skill set and results that they want that you can solve their problem. Then they start connecting with you personally to decide if they want to work with you. If you are a good fit for them based on your personality.

Your brand messaging helps establish who you are in your business and how you will be when you interact with clients. It’s how your potential clients can authentically connect with you when your first interactions are online. If your messaging says one thing and you get on the phone and come across differently you’ve broken your potential client’s trust. And they will be less likely to convert to a paying client.

Your message doesn’t feel good to you anymore

This is a big one. If your messaging doesn’t feel like it is in alignment with your skills, your goals, or the kind of business you want to run. It’s time for a change. When you try to write your content and it is out of alignment it’s going to be 100X more difficult to write. Your energy is going to be blah and it is going to come across to your potential clients. They will notice trust me.

It’s much better to get your message back in alignment than put out poor quality content that you aren’t excited about.

Your messaging is boring/bland/vanilla

You have to dig deep when it comes to creating messaging that is in alignment with you, targets your ideal clients, and helps you stand out online. Sometimes your messaging is bland because it’s too shallow, it’s generic, and it’s what everyone else is putting out there. So how can you spice it up? Take some time to journal responses to these questions.

What can you help her with? Can you identify her problems?
What are her main struggles? (from what she says they are not you as the expert, this is important!)
What are her deepest desires?
What experiences do you have that are unique and relevant to what you do?
Why should someone come work with you over any other creative?

You aren’t sticking with your message

It’s incredibly tempting to jump on the bandwagon with any messaging that seems to be working better than yours. But this is dangerous for several reasons. This doesn’t help you differentiate yourself in a busy online space. You, more importantly, confuse your potential clients and break their trust.

Now, this doesn’t mean your brand message can’t evolve or that you can’t make adjustments. It just means that you should avoid jumping from message to message every week. You may think no one will notice but they do and the best thing you can do stay consistent and make adjustments that make sense for you not what is trending that week.

Now it’s your turn!

If you are saying yes this is where I’m at with my messaging let me know what your biggest ah-ha moment about your brand messaging is in the comments.