A Guide to Creating Corporate Messaging that Stands Out

Corporate messaging is a company’s backbone.

This messaging communicates a company’s core mission and value to their employees, stakeholders, and customers. One of the biggest challenges companies face is figuring out how to properly tell their story. Messaging that is confusing, fails to properly position products and services, or doesn’t speak in a way that resonates with the intended target audience can turn off media interest and customer engagement. 

Messaging workshops can help create clear, consistent messaging. By understanding where your messaging stands today, what you don’t want to be known as, what you do, and what needs to change in order to get there, you can develop clear corporate messaging that helps your company stand out. 

If you know your message, so will your audience

Because journalists look at messaging through a storytelling lens,  companies must be strategic about the messages they transmit. The first step toward creating clear corporate messaging that tells your brand’s story is to identify what’s not working with your current messaging. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What have you been saying up until now that never felt true or authentic to our brand identity?
• What still resonates?
• What part of our messaging still sticks?
• What needs to change or be addressed?

Let’s talk about you

As you dive into the meat of your corporate messaging, you need to understand your core identity — the who, what, and why. Start asking yourself why you do what you do, who you do it for, and what makes you unique to competitors. 

In order to understand your core identity, you need to delve into the true passion behind why you started your company, the audience its intended for, the demand for your product or service, the impact it’s making, and what makes you unique. What problem are you solving in the market that no one else is doing? 

Be sure to keep your messages simple and easy to understand, without inserting too much industry jargon. We often see messaging with jargon that means next to nothing and does little to define differentiators, defensibility and disruption. Keeping it simple when describing your business, product, or service will go a long way and more easily resonate with the audience you are trying to reach.

How to keep your messaging consistent in your company

So, you’ve figured out the story you want to tell, finalized your messaging with a solid mission statement, short-form description, and long-form description.

Now what? The key to keeping this up is consistency. Ensuring your messaging is consistent across all platforms and materials will go a long way. Not only does it help your sales team market your product or service correctly, but it also helps your PR team create compelling storylines to pitch to media that are different from your competitors’. Finding unique ways to stand out not only starts with the product or service itself, but how you tell the story.