Creating a brand story that actually works can be a real challenge. How do you communicate who you are, what you do, and why people should choose you? How do you talk about your product or service in a way that sparks interest? How do you bring your values to life so they resonate with people? And how do you keep that story consistent across all your brand touchpoints? The answer lies in your brand messaging.

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When your brand messaging is clear, simple, and impactful, it becomes much easier to connect with your audience. It strengthens their overall experience with your brand—and ultimately—helps you turn interest into action.

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Many brands don’t have a solid messaging framework in place. Too often, we see vague value propositions, weak selling points, and marketing copy that doesn’t inspire anyone. The good news? You don’t have to fall into that trap.

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In this guide, we’ll break down the key elements of your brand messaging, walk you through how to write them, and share practical tips to help you tell your brand story.

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So, whether you’re refining your current messaging or starting from scratch, this step-by-step process will help you do it quickly and easily.

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What Is Brand Messaging?

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At its core, brand messaging is how a brand speaks about itself—through language, tone, and communication—to express its identity, values, and expertise. It’s what builds trust, creates connection, and sets you apart from the competition. While every business may approach messaging differently, we use a clear framework built around three key elements:

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• Tagline: A short phrase that communicates your brand promise, personality, and positioning.
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• Value Proposition: A clear explanation of the functional and emotional benefits your product or service provides to your customer.
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• Messaging Pillars: 3-5 stories you tell to underpin your value proposition and tagline (aka your main selling points).

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Together, they create a brand messaging hierarchy that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and how you do it differently to your competition.

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The elements of our brand messaging framework are intentionally ordered, from the tagline (the big idea), to the value proposition (what you do), to your messaging pillars (how you do it). This means every element reinforces the other cohesively and consistently.

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Why Do You Need Brand Messaging?

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Every piece of content you put out—your website, social media posts, marketing materials—tells your brand story, whether you realise it or not. To truly connect with your audience, that story needs to be consistent across all touchpoints. This means reinforcing the same key themes in both your content and your conversations.

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Here’s a quick test: ask three different people on your team to describe your brand. Chances are, you’ll get three very different answers. Without a shared understanding of your brand and a clear messaging framework, keeping your story consistent is almost impossible. That’s exactly why brand messaging is so important.

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When you clearly define who you are, what you do, and how you do it, it becomes much easier for everyone to represent your brand accurately. Content creators can produce on-brand materials more confidently, and your audience experiences a seamless journey at every interaction. On top of that, a well-rounded messaging framework becomes a powerful tool for brainstorming content ideas and guiding business decisions around your core messaging pillars.

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What’s The Secret to Good Brand Messaging?

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If experience has taught us one thing it’s that brand messaging is most effective when it meets three key criteria:

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1. Clarity: Keep it simple and straightforward. Avoid overly complex language or abstract ideas. Trying to combine too many concepts into a single messaging pillar—or packing your value proposition with unnecessary words—can dilute your message. Clear and concise always wins.
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2. Consistency: Your brand messaging framework should form a cohesive ecosystem, flowing seamlessly between your messaging pillars, value proposition, and tagline. Each element should reinforce the others. Don’t try to stuff unrelated selling points into your messaging pillars. Stick to a few core themes that connect and strengthen the larger narrative.
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3. Emotion: No matter your audience—B2B or B2C—emotions drive decisions. Use language that resonates emotionally or reflects the future feeling your brand delivers (e.g., empowerment, confidence, relief).

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Pro Tip: Map out your marketing personas to understand your customers’ needs, wants, and pain points. This makes it easier to identify the emotions your brand messaging should reinforce.

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What to Know Before You Create Your Brand Messaging

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Whether you’re refining your current brand messaging framework or you’re starting fresh, it’s important to have a deep understanding of your brand’s core before writing your messaging. This means nailing down two foundational elements:

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1. Your Brand DNA: Your Brand DNA captures the core of your brand—who you are and what you believe in. Without this articulated, it’s difficult to act or communicate consistently. To get clarity, try our step-by-step guide to find your Brand DNA and identify your purpose, vision, mission, and values.
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2. Your Brand Positioning: What space do you fill in the market? How are you different to your competitors? Your positioning informs every level of your messaging. To identify this, you’ll need market research and a thorough competitive analysis. If you’re new to this, check our our guide to complete a competitive analysis.

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After gathering your insights, distill your positioning into a single sentence that clearly communicates what you do better than anyone else. A useful tool for this is Marty Neumeier’s framework—our OFFERING is the only CATEGORY that BENEFIT—where OFFERING is your product or service, CATEGORY is the market or niche you’re claiming, and BENEFIT is the unique advantage you deliver to customers.

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Using a Staygold as an example, the Neumeier framework would give us a positioning statement that looks like this: Our brand development studio (OFFERING) is the only studio that helps founders (CATEGORY) build brands people love while supporting the life they want to lead (BENEFIT).

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Having this foundation ensures your brand messaging aligns seamlessly with your Brand DNA and positioning. Once you have these dialled in, you’re ready to create the rest of your brand messaging framework.

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How to Create Your Brand Messaging Framework in 4 Steps

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Before you get started, download our free Notion template. Then follow these intentionally ordered steps to build a brand messaging framework that effectively communicates who you are, what you do, and how you do it.

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Step 1: Write Your Value Proposition

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Even though your brand messaging framework ultimately builds from your messaging pillars up to your tagline, we recommend starting with your value proposition. Why? Because it captures the essence of who you are and what you do.

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At it’s core, a value proposition explains both the functional and emotional benefits your product or service delivers. It spells out how you solve a problem and why people should choose you. You can also think of your value proposition as an elevator pitch. For this reason, It should be short and sharp—one or two lines is often enough.

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A useful tool for this is Steve Blank’s XYZ framework, we help X do Y by doing Z—where X is your target audience, Y is the goal or problem they want to solve, and Z is the method by which you achieve it.

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Following our previous example, Staygold might say: “We help founders (X) build brands people love while supporting the life they want to lead (Y) by translating who you are, what you do, and what you believe, into compelling brand visuals, messaging, and expertise.

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However you articulate yours, remember: your value proposition sets the tone for everything else. It should reflect the benefits that show up consistently across your brand—whether that’s directly on your website homepage or indirectly through your content.

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Pro Tip: Start by writing down every functional and emotional benefit your brand delivers. Then, cut it down to the most impactful. Draft a longer version first, then keep refining until you can distill in into a few sentences. And if you really want to nail it, check out our step-by-step guide to writing a value proposition.

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Step 2: Write Your Tagline

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Once your value proposition is clear, it’s time to distill that into a tagline (a short phrase that captures your brand’s personality and positioning). Think of your tagline as the “headline” for your brand story: it’s the first thing people read, remember, and repeat. A strong tagline sets the tone, reinforces your value proposition and helps your audience connect emotionally with your brand.

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For our own studio, we chose the tagline “Own Your Brand. Own Your Future.” It reflects our belief that taking control of your brand is the first step toward shaping the future you envision—and that we are the studio to help you do just that, creating an intentional brand that supports your goals.

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Pro Tip: Keep it short (this is a tagline, not a paragraph). And focus on emotion: how do you want people to feel when they ready it? To dive deeper, check out our guide to writing a memorable tagline.

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Step 3: Identify Your Messaging Pillars

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Messaging pillars are one of the most important parts of your brand messaging framework. Think of them as 3–5 core themes, benefits, or selling points that capture what makes your brand stand out.

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When developing yours, identify three main selling points and the supporting ideas behind each. By distilling them down into short, memorable talking points, you’ll also uncover keywords and phrases you can consistently weave into all your content—from your website to sales decks to social posts.

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At Staygold, we distilled our top three pillars into:

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• Intentionally built brands
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• Developing unique perspectives
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• Lifestyle-Brand Alignment

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These simple themes show up across our website, proposals, and branded content.

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Pro Tip: If you find yourself with too many selling points, focus on your strongest differentiators. Look for opportunities to merge similar ideas into a single pillar, then sense-check them against your competitors to make sure they highlight what truly sets you apart.

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Step 4: Polish Your Brand Messaging

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Now it’s time for a final review and polish of your brand messaging. This step ensures everything works together as a cohesive, compelling story that resonates with your audience. Consider the following questions:

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• Does your tagline, value proposition, and messaging pillars reinforce each other cohesively and consistently? Each element should feel like part of the same story, not separate messages.
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• Is the language in line with your brand voice? (If you’re unsure, check our guide to find your brand voice.) Your messaging should reflect the tone and personality you want people to associate with your brand.
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• Could any of your messaging be simplified or condensed? Trim unnecessary words and make sure your audience can understand your message at a glance.
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• Are the functional and emotional benefits clear, consistent, and easy to understand? Every pillar and supporting idea should point back to the value you deliver.

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Finally, document your polished messaging in one central location (like our free Notion template), so you can “see” how it all connects, and reference it easily. This ensures every piece of content or conversation stays on-brand, helping you build recognition, trust, and impact over time.

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Pro Tip: Revisit your messaging every 6–12 months. Brands evolve, and a quick check-in ensures your messaging continues to reflect your values, differentiators, and most importantly, growth.

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How to Use Your Brand Messaging Framework Once You’re Finished

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You’ve done the hard work and now it’s time to make your brand messaging work for you.

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Here’s how to put it into practice:

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• Document it in one place. Add your tagline, value proposition, and messaging pillars to your workspace or brand guidelines so your team and collaborators are always aligned.
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• Use it to guide everything you say. From website copy to proposals to social captions—every word should tie back to your framework. If it doesn’t, it’s off-brand.
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• Use your messaging pillars to brainstorm. Each messaging pillar can fuel entire content themes, helping you generate ideas that stay true to your story while keeping your marketing fresh.
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• Align your customer journey. From awareness to conversion, ensure your messaging evolves naturally, speaking to the right motivations at the right time.
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• Revisit and refine. As your brand grows, so will your messaging. Revisit your framework every 6–12 months to make sure it still feels accurate.

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When your brand messaging becomes part of how you think and communicate every day, it stops being something you refer to and starts being something you embody. That’s when your brand truly connects—consistently, confidently, and with purpose.

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And if you need help at any stage of your brand journey, don’t be afraid to bring in support. If that’s where you’re at, hit us up. We’d love to help your brand succeed.

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