Creating Content That Fits Your Brand

When creating content for your marketing, it is important to use strategic words and images that will best illustrate your brand and key messages. It is the images and words that elicit the emotion and response you want to draw from your audience. It is this emotion and response that will leave the audience with a positive experience with your brand and help clearly communicate your message.

Images
The images you choose need to be visual representations of your brand. Whenever possible, use images to communicate your key points. For an example, the company, Molson Canadian has a beer ad that shows the beer being made in Canada.
Photo from: http://www.creativeroots.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/canadian_beer1.jpg

They have communicated many key points with only a single image and 3 simple words.

We are all familiar with Molson Canadian’s key message “We are Canadian” and we can also see that they are conveying the message of natural, straight from the farm wheat – directly to the tap at your local bar. They are also demonstrating the simplicity of their beer with a clean, simple image (wheat and blue sky) – it is not covered in people enjoying their beer as so many ads do or splashed with a celebrity endorsement on it.

Through this image, we get the feeling of clean, simple, Canadian beer and this also brings to mind their TV ads and social media communication. They are all congruent with one another.

I usually recommend using images from a photographer, whether you hire them or use their images. Original images are always better than stock photos you can purchase off Istock. When you purchase from Istock, anyone else can use the exact same image. Think of the woman wearing the headset – she is often the smiling face of good customer service. If you are on a budget, try to work out a deal with an up and coming photographer who is looking at building their portfolio.

Words
The words you choose will come from your key messages and align with the language of your brand.

In the Molson Canadian example, the “Made from Canada” text comes directly from their Canadian messaging and instills a sense of patronage in all Canadians who see it. It is right in line with their banding voice and hits their target audience – Canadians.

Tips
1. Using your brand and key messages as a guide, sit down and map out a framework of the main ideas you want to include. This will also help you establish a flow of ideas. The size of this can differ depending on what medium you are creating content for.

• If you are creating an ad such as the Molson Canadian ad, the ideas will be driven by the emotions you want to instill and key points you want to convey.
• If you are doing text for a website, think of the objectives and map out ideas for each page.
• If it is an email campaign, print advertisement or blog post, think of the main thing you are trying to communicate – what is in it for the reader? What will make them want to read it?
• If you are writing a social media post, think about what emotion or response you want to invoke. What type of interaction do you want?

2. Under each idea, start adding the key points you want to include – don’t worry about spelling and grammar at this point – just get the ideas on to paper.
3. Sit back and review your roadmap and ideas.

• For social media or ads, does it all fit together? Do the ideas have a flow to them without being overwhelming with information? Is there enough whitespace?
• For longer pieces such as website text, read it aloud: Does it flow cohesively? Is it in a logical order? Does it convey all you wanted to say?
• Most importantly, is your key messages clear and branding voice apparent? Is it apparent, what it is in it for them? Have you been engaging? Have you achieved your marketing goal?
• Now start putting it all together into the correct format ensuring proper branding standards and spelling and grammar.

4, Last but not least, use a copywriter. Have an experienced writer or editor review the final product. This is a step too many business skip and nothing looks worse than a brochure or website with spelling mistakes. That second set of eyes will catch the “a” you missed or the space you forgot to include. They can also be the judge of whether your message is clear and that your branding voice is apparent. Ensure your copywriter understands your brand and key messages. If you need help finding one, please feel free to contact me at amanda@themarketinggirl.com.

What is your favorite ad? How do you think they created their strategy?