When you’re building your brand strategy, you’ll hear a lot of terms being thrown around — some are pretty straightforward, but others can be a little complex. It’s helpful to have a base knowledge of the most common brand terms ahead of time so you can be as prepared as possible throughout your strategy process. Plus, no one likes to panic-Google on the side of their Zoom call during a strategy session!

Ready to learn the words that will help you speak “brand” a little more fluently? Let’s go!

Brand Strategy

Since I’m all about brand strategy, let’s define this first (yes, it’s that important to me, we’re going out of alphabetical order for this one)!  If you think of your brand like a person, brand strategy is about what kind of person you’d like to be — your core values, the things that make you special and unique, and how you help people. Basically, how you feel about yourself as a person, on the inside.

Brand strategy is the articulation of that for your business and brand. It includes your mission, audience strategy, brand position, message strategy — all the things that make up what your brand is and what it stands for.

It’s the foundation for your graphic identity, copywriting, and marketing, too. Finally, your brand strategy is the expression of your brand differentiator. It distills what your special sauce is and helps you articulate it to your audience.

This internal strategy serves as a compass by which you measure your brand material so everything is consistent and builds upon what you’re sharing.

I’m certainly not keeping any secrets about how important brand strategy is to both understand and have for your business! And if you want to learn more about what brand strategy is not, take a look at this two-minute tip!

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the outward expression of your brand strategy — or how you’d present yourself to the outside world if you thought of your brand like a person.

It’s made up of your logo, fonts, colors, photography style, graphic elements, etc. Think of it like the clothes and accessories you put on your brand to really showcase your brand’s personality. If it were a person, what would your brand wear? What colors would look best? Would it have a preppy streamlined style? Or a funky eclectic style?

These core identity elements help you reinforce your strategy and are some of the most important elements of your brand. They help your audience create a visual, emotional connection with your brand. The pieces of your brand identity also help guide the tone for your messages (we’ll define that, too, don’t worry) and just about everything else you do.

After all, how many times have you chosen a brand because of how the logo makes you feel? Or how many times have you chosen a bottle of wine just based on what the label looks like? (Please tell me I’m not the only one who does that!)

Your brand identity boils down to how your brand makes people feel. The emotions that your brand evokes, its personality, and the visuals you use to convey that to your potential customers…those are all part of your brand identity.

Brand Position

Brand position is an essential part of your brand strategy and is ultimately about your brand’s perception in the mind of your target audience. 

It’s derived by looking at all of your brand elements — like vision, products, mission, audience, and so on —- and distilling it down to define how you want to be situated in the market and differentiated from your competitors. 

It’s the stake in the ground that you want to have for your brand and the anchor for all of your external efforts. In other words, the thing you want your business and your brand to be known for, which is then expressed in your positioning statement (more on that below, too). 

Related Resource: Two-Minute Tip: What Type of Brand Position Do You Have?

Brand Style Guide

Your brand style guide is a roadmap that guides all of the visuals of your brand. It can also include things like your core values, differentiator, mission, and identity so all of your key branding drivers are collected in one place.

At a minimum, your brand style guide will contain the specifics like your typography, logo and submarks, colors, how/if you edit photos, and how it should all be used. That way, anyone who comes into contact with the visuals of your brand (like your graphic designer, for example) knows exactly how they should be presented.

Related Reading: Brand Strategy and Branding: What’s the Difference?

Competition

This term you probably are familiar with already! Competition means the other people in your industry or niche who offer the same (or similar) services and/or products to the same audience you are trying to attract.

Core Values

Core values are the main set of beliefs that you/your company/your brand stand for — your non-negotiables. Along with your audience, vision, and overall strategy, your core values serve as a compass for decision-making. They’re a great benchmark to measure your actions against to see if they line up.

Do you want to offer that program? How does it align with your values? What is the onboarding process? Let’s check the values and see if this process embodies the values you want your customers to feel when they interact with you.

Differentiator

Quite simply, your differentiator is the main way your brand is different from your competitors. It’s your unique “special something” that helps you stand out from others (often doing similar things) and what draws your audience to you. AKA the reason they want to be in your world, not someone else’s.

It’s also the foundation for your brand position and a critical element of your positioning statement. 

TIP: As a business owner, it can sometimes be hard to nail down your differentiator on your own. Luckily, you can always count on the honesty of your clients to help! If you’re not sure what your differentiator (or your “special sauce”) is, look at what your clients say! Check to see if there’s a common theme in your client testimonials, or simply reach out to a handful of your clients to ask them why they chose you over someone else.  

Elevator Pitch

If you’ve ever prepared for a networking event, you know about elevator pitches! An elevator pitch (sometimes referred to also as an “elevator statement”) is a memorable statement that quickly and concisely describes what you do and for whom. Think of it as an expanded version of your positioning statement. 

Picture riding in an elevator with someone and you only had about 10 seconds to answer the question “What do you do?” The answer to that question conveys the sentiment of your business. So, it’s important for you to have a thorough understanding of your brand position to answer this question quickly, clearly, and powerfully! 

Plus, the bonus is that once you nail your elevator pitch, you can use the content in other places — like in part of your tagline, social media bios, podcast bio, and other snippets of copy to help your audience clearly understand and remember your brand.

Message Strategy

Messaging often gets confused with copywriting. And while the two are dependent on one another, they’re two distinct and different things. Your message strategy is the INTERNAL foundation for how to express your brand position. And your copywriting is the EXTERNAL representation of this strategic foundation. 

Your message strategy is also a vital part of your brand strategy — it’s the summation of how you’d express your brand strategy, distilled down to a core thought and support points. It answers the questions “What is the one thing you want to make sure people understand about your brand” and “How can you back that one thing up?”.

Ultimately, it’s how you express your brand position from a strategic point of view. It guides what you say in your marketing and how you say it. 

There are a few different terms that also go along with your message, so let’s get more specific.

Umbrella Message

“What is the one thing you want to make sure people understand about your brand”

Your umbrella message (sometimes referred to as a key message, core message, or key benefit) is a single statement that encapsulates the most important thing you want people to understand about your brand. It represents the main benefit someone will experience when they work with you. 

Like brand strategy, it’s an internal strategic statement, but it’s the foundational sentiment that all of your external copy is built from. Your umbrella message brings together all the pieces of your brand strategy and bridges the gap between internal strategy and external marketing. 

Message Pillars

“How can you back that one thing up?”

Your messaging pillars (sometimes referred to as sub-messages, secondary messages, feature support, or content pillars) are the things that help support your umbrella message. In other words, if you stake your claim on your “one thing” in your umbrella message, message pillars are how you back that up so you feel confident making that claim. I.e.: The things that help you prove it to be true, and the features of your business that you talk about all the time. 

Similar to your core values, they’re what you want to be known for. And they make up the foundation of your brand messaging strategy. While your umbrella message is often benefit-oriented, your message pillars are feature-oriented — things like your products or services, your background, your process, etc. 

Your messaging pillars will be your key talking points in your marketing. When you expand upon them, they should include your core values, differentiator, and the ideas you want to be associated with.

Related Reading: 6 Simple Steps for Project Management Success

Mission

A mission statement is your brand’s raison d’etre, a summary of your brand’s purpose. It’s why you feel called to serve your audience, and why you wake up every day ready to continue making a difference. 

It should clearly state what you do, why, your goals, and how you uniquely help your customers. It’s like an elevator pitch with a little more detail and thought behind the “why” of your brand.

Positioning Statement

A positioning statement is the summation of your brand position in a memorable, meaningful, and simplified statement. This internal document is a critical element of your brand strategy as it encapsulates your brand strategy and guides your strategic brand efforts.

Your positioning statement will be made up of: who you are, what you do, whom you serve, and what makes you unique. Sometimes, there’s a 5th element that supports everything in your positioning statement and gives meaning and context for why this is valuable.

And if you want to see a few templates and examples to help you write your own positioning statement, check out my two-minute tips video on over on my resources page!

Target Audience

Your target audience are the people you’re speaking to about your product or service. They’re the ideal people you want to reach and work with. You could have many different audiences, all slightly different from the other, but whatever you say to your primary audience shouldn’t alienate anyone else — this is where your audience strategy and your message strategy intersect.

Your audience could be broken into demographics (age, region), psychographics (values, goals, interests), socioeconomic groups (income, education), etc. Dig deep on your target audience and get to know them as deeply as you can — the more fully you know and understand the details and motivators of your target audience, the more powerful and clear your brand strategy (and marketing!) can be. 

TIP: Download the Audience Cheat Sheet for an in-depth guide to creating your own target audience. It’ll help you think through the key elements you’ll need to define for your brand. Plus, you’ll now have this information at your fingertips while you build your audience strategy, brand strategy, and more!

Primary Target Audience

Your primary target audience is the main audience you’re speaking to. And while you might have multiple audience segments that you’d like to attract, the most successful brand strategy has the anchor of a primary audience. 

Your primary target audience should be the most ideal audience made up of your top dream clients you want to work with and the top people who will get the most out of what you offer. In other words, this is the audience that most ideally supports your business growth, aligns with your mission, and helps you hit your goals so you can eventually support a secondary audience.

TIP: When building your primary target audience, refer back to your business goals. Think about the audience segment that can sustain your business growth and help you hit those goals while also not alienating your secondary segment(s). If you can find that sweet spot where your goals, your audience, and then eventually your message strategy intersect, you’ll have a solid brand strategy to build from! 

Secondary Target Audience

Once your business has a handle on your primary target audience, you can expand into secondary, tertiary, etc, audiences. A secondary target audience is simply the second most important consumer segment you’d like to target. It’s not your primary customer base, so they may have fewer demands (or maybe just different types of demands) for your product.

Again, even though your primary and secondary audiences have different needs, whatever you say to your primary audience should also resonate with your additional audiences, so you’ll never be alienating these groups when you speak to your primary audience.

Related Reading: Audience Strategy: The Most Important Part of Brand Strategy

Vision

A vision guides the direction and decisions your business takes to get to your goals. It’s like your big “why” in Simon Sinek speak. Where are you going, what do you hope to achieve, what is the mission or driver of your business, and what impact do you want to make?

Now that you have this brand terminology down, you can speak “brand” a little more fluently! This means you can easily communicate with your brand strategist as you hone in your own strategic process.