What is Brand Messaging?

As therapists, coaches, and healers, marketing isn't our first language. We're drawn to quiet, impactful work, not self-promotion. Yet, when it comes to connecting with soul clients online, many practitioners are unknowingly missing crucial pieces. They struggle with understanding why is brand messaging important, and how to create brand messaging that resonates with a soulful brand mission.

Many of us fall into traps like posting endless inspirational content on social media, accumulating certifications, attending networking events, or investing in flashy websites – all without seeing the client engagement or bookings we desire.

The truth is, effective online presence goes beyond these efforts. It's about strategic soulful brand messaging and a robust online strategy.

Brand messaging refers to the underlying value proposition conveyed and language used in your content and interactions with customers. It's a way to communicate the essence of your brand consistently across various channels. Effective brand messaging shapes the way people perceive and relate to your business, helping them understand what you stand for, what you offer, and why they should care.

A Brand Messaging Guide: Key Components

Here are some key components of brand messaging:

Value Proposition: This is the core of your brand messaging. It succinctly describes the unique value your product or service provides, how it solves your customers' problems, or how it improves their situation.

Tone of Voice: This is the personality your brand takes on in its messaging. It could be professional, friendly, whimsical, serious, etc., and it should reflect your brand’s personality and resonate with your target audience.

Brand Story: This narrative gives context to your brand, sharing its history, mission, and the values that drive it. A compelling brand story can create an emotional connection with your audience.

Key Messages: These are specific points you consistently communicate about your brand, products, or services. They should be clear, concise, and easily understood.

Taglines and Slogans: These short, memorable phrases encapsulate the spirit of your brand and its value proposition.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP): This highlights what makes your brand or product different and better than the competition.

Audience Understanding: Effective brand messaging requires a deep understanding of your target audience, including their needs, desires, pain points, and language they use.

Consistency: Consistency across all channels (website, social media, advertising, customer service, etc.) reinforces your brand message and helps build trust and recognition.

Brand Messaging Frameworks

Effective brand messaging isn't just about what you say; it's about ensuring your audience hears and understands your message in a way that resonates and compels them to engage with your brand. It plays a crucial role in building brand awareness, loyalty, and ultimately, business success.

Many experienced practitioners believe they've nailed their brand messaging, yet their online presence doesn't support a scalable, passive income model. 

The key is developing your unique, brand messaging framework that helps you stand out above the rest. I learned this myself through trial and error.

After I had been winning in the online space, I had a dip in my income, until I revamped my messaging. 

The result?

Clarity in my mission values, a defined client pathway, and a substantial leap in income, jumping from averaging $4k per month to  $40k per month, in 3 years.

The missing link? 

A proprietary framework with brand messaging pillars that captured my ideal client's attention, delivered quick solutions, and sparked interest in more significant investments. Developing your own brand messaging framework and unique brand messaging pillars is truly the key to demonstrating that its not just your credentials that make you special, its how you use them.

Brand Messaging Examples

For example, when I coach other therapists, coaches and healers in business, I use my "MAP" Framework, which stands for Masterful Messaging, Automated Systems, and Profitable Offers. Within each of these three steps, there are three smaller steps that define your milestones for growth, while demonstrating what comes next.

When I work with clients in private coaching sessions, helping them to feel more securely attached in their relationships, we use the "A.C.E.S" Framework, which stands for Awareness, Control, Emotional Freedom, and Spiritual Transcendence.

A brand messaging framework helps you attract your ideal clients and build enthusiasm for investing in your services, because they can clearly see the journey you are inviting them to take, and the results are measurable.

In my program, The Soul-Smart Social Accelerator, I teach you step by step how to develop your own proprietary framework using ChatGPT prompts and uniquely tailored templates. To learn more, you can register for the free introductory training, here.

How To Come Up With Good Brand Messaging?

So, how do you know if your online presence is up to snuff?

Most practitioners that book a free 30-minute consultation with me, think they have it all figured out, but a quick 8-question evaluation of their online platforms often reveals 95% of those practitioners have gaps in their approach.

Your website or social media platforms have less than one second to capture the attention of your ideal client. Assuming you hook their attention, you now have less than 18 seconds to get them to perform an action.

To see if your online presence passes the crucial 18-second test and to discover 8 key questions that can transform your reach, make sure you read this blog post until the end.

We'll dive into these transformative insights and start shaping your online presence into a client-attracting powerhouse.

After reading this blog post, you will have the tools to reframe your online presence with strategic and soulful brand messaging that resonates deeply with your ideal clients. This will allow you to transform your social media and website from digital placeholders to dynamic, client-attracting platforms.

Unlock the potential for a prosperous, satisfying online practice, today!

With that said, here are 8 questions to boost your soulful brand messaging today! 👊

1. Do you have a clearly identified client avatar?

Social proof is one of the biggest selling points out there. But what's more important than having a million testimonials to prove your content is good, is being able to tell ONE story, that everyone can relate to. In fact, researchers have found that donors are more likely to donate to charitable organizations, when they have seen a presentation of only one case study, as opposed to three.

The purpose of the client avatar, is to help you hone in on your soul client’s archetypal story. That ONE narrative that will appeal to the heart of your niche. It also forces you to get crystal clear on who it is you want to serve MOST...or at least, FIRST.

“I want to help women struggling with depression and anxiety” is NOT a client avatar, and far to vague. Women struggling with “adulting” ages 18-30, have VERY different problems than women struggling with empty nest syndrome, an extra marital affair, or a career plateau, at 45-50 years of age.

Brand Messaging Example

I help women ages 45+ recover from divorced due infidelity, and tap into their vitality and sensuality in new, intimate relationships.

2. Do you have clearly defined struggles and obstacles to overcoming struggles, for your client avatar?

Most therapists coaches and healers are WAY too vague when it comes to identifying the struggles of their clients, and their obstacles to overcoming them. “Do you struggle with depression? Anxiety? Are you feeling stuck?”

The problem with vague struggles like these is often times people have NO IDEA if that is what you would call what they are dealing with.

Show them what depression looks like in the morning. What about when the kids get home from school? How does an anxious person go to work? How does ‘feeling stuck’ impact a person’s work performance, intimate relationships, and sense of purpose?

Struggles should be detailed illustrations of day-to-day moments that make up what we like to call “healthy” or “unhealthy” functioning. Do not skip over these details, or try to broaden it to suit a wider audience; you will shoot yourself in the foot.

3. Do you have clearly defined concrete, short-term goals, and long-term emotional goals, for your client avatar?

Most therapists coaches and healers are as vague about the benefits of their work, as they are about the struggles and obstacles of their clients. It could be because they don’t want to promise anything, or it could be because they struggle to make things measurable. “I can’t break down what I do into steps, it’s too organic and experiential of a process.”

I’m sorry, but that is BS.

You only know how to do what you do because someone else taught you how...step-by-step. So breakdown what you do, and turn each step into a mini short-term goal. Then add them up to create bigger, long-term goals.

Once you accomplish this, your clients will start to feel like they are getting somewhere, and can see their own progress.

4. Have you identified at least one or two core misconceptions of your client avatar?

If people knew what their problems were and how to fix them, they wouldn’t be looking for you, or someone like you. We struggle to fix our own problems because we often have a misconception about what our problem actually is, or why it is that nothing we have tried so far, has worked. If you can show a potential client their most glaring misconception, and convince them of how and why it is hindering their progress, you will quickly go from in-debt to in-demand.

Brand Messaging Example

The solution to your loneliness is not to find a partner to fill the void, it's to connect to a deeper reservoir of love and transcendence that exists at your spiritual core. Then, you realize that you need not "find" love, because you ARE love, and you take yourself everywhere you go.

5. Do you have a succinct description of how your work will debunk these misconceptions and affect transformational changes?

Don’t underestimate the power of the “ah ha” moment, and make sure your client’s have it while perusing your online platform. Once you’ve identified your client avatar’s most glaring misconceptions, you want to paint a very clear picture of how what you have to offer is going to make all the difference.

If your service is off-beat or not widely understood, this is where you start dropping “truth bombs” in your marketing copy, to help educate while at the same time inspiring your ideal clients to see things your way.

Not because you are trying to persuade or force someone to buy something from you, but because on a heart-soul level you know what you are offering works, and you’d be doing them a disservice to undersell yourself and the experience they could have, if they decide to work with you.

6. Do you have a qualifying question or statement on your website, in your marketing copy, or on other digital platforms?

The qualifying question is what allows your soul clients to self select. It will highlight their struggles in a nutshell, and ask them to consider their desires.

This follows the formula…

Are you looking for _________(desired benefit/outcome), but find yourself struggling with _______ (obstacle/pain point)?

You can also add in an avoidance of a particularly strong pain point.

Are you a ________(client demographic) who struggles with __________(pain point), and wants to ________ (benefit/gain), all without __________(obstacle)?

Brand Messaging Example

Are you a coach struggling with a floundering practice, that wants to make authentic connections with clients, expand your influence, and become a leader in your field, all without having to sell your soul, or adopt “salesy” gimmicks?

7. Do you have one clear hook and focus for your service or specialization? This is your "big promise" and explains what makes you different from anyone else.

Most therapists, coaches and healers think wracking up a million certifications will make them appear more qualified and thus appealing to a wider audience.

But the truth is, too many certifications and specializations communicates confusion and a lack of focus; you want to be seen as an expert in the one biggest pain point your ideal clients are struggling with, not a jack-of-all-trades.

Think of it this way, when you have an injury or severe illness, if you had a choice, would you go to a general practitioner, or a specialist in that area of expertise? I rest my case.

This doesn’t mean you have to throw out all those hard earned certificates or the money you spent on them. All of that experience has culminated into the fantastic practitioner you have become, and can even be introduced later in the work...just don’t let it clutter up your marketing copy, and dissuade someone from opting into your mailing list.

For example, my clear hook and focus is my trademarked method, The MacWilliam Method™.which is a psycho-spiritual approach to healing attachment wounds and injuries. Instead of fostering "secure attachment" my approach goes one step further, to foster "Soul-Centered Security™" - this is when we reorient our primary attachment proximities to the transcendent, instead of towards other people, including our partners.

8. Have you outlined a clear brand mission and elevator pitch for your services?

The elevator pitch is an extension of the audience qualifier and gives a smidgen more detail about what you do, and how it will benefit your soul clients. In the elevator pitch, you might also include struggles, and methods of solving them.

Brand Messaging Examples

I teach therapists, coaches and healers how to create, launch and scale an online practice in 90 days, using my unique "MAP" Framework. This framework will work for you, even if you have never made a dollar online, created a single lesson, and/or have no marketing list... all without having to waste a ton of time, money and effort on duct-taping a bunch of different programs together, or shooting darts in the dark.

I help successful career women over 40 struggling with fibromyalgia, experience more energy and less pain, in six months time, all without sacrificing their work performance using EFT Tapping techniques. 

I help thriving women in their 30s grappling with past sexual trauma, reclaim bodily safety and autonomy so they can fully engage in sexually intimate relationships, in six months time, using somatic experiencing techniques and dance/movement therapy.

I help successful, gender fluid individuals over 30, improve their romantic communication skills, so they can attract loving partners, in 90 days, using creative arts therapies approaches and non-violent communication techniques.

In 12 weeks, I take professional women over 40 from relationship struggles to romantic bliss, without compromising their values or ambitions, using a creative, psycho-spiritual approach to healing attachment wounds. 

This should be at the very top of your homepage on your website, on your sales pages, and you should have it memorized so you can rattle it off the cuff, at any and all conferences and networking events.

How to Develop Brand Messaging Strategy

There you have it: 8 Questions to assess your brand messaging.

How did your brand messaging and platform fair?

Are you ready to align your practice with your soulful mission and attract clients who resonate with your unique expertise?

If you're wanting to learn more about how to develop your own brand messaging strategy, I invite you to take the next step, and book a free 30-minute consultation with me.

Let's discover together how you can transform your practice, elevate your brand, and connect authentically with those you're meant to serve.

The strategy session includes:

• An assessment of your marketing messaging and the delivery of your brand values.

• An overview of your social media presence and recommendations on how to systematize your approach.

• A strategic evaluation of your marketing systems and how you might generate passive income streams through online course creation.

If you are interested in exploring these topics on a no-pressure call, you can hop onto my calendar through this link.

Remember, aligning your practice with your true purpose is not just about being visible; it's about resonating with those who need your unique gifts the most.

Book your session now, and let's embark on this journey of transformation together!

In love and abundance,

Briana MacWilliam MPS, ATR-BC, LCAT