Verbal branding, also known as verbal identity, is your brand’s top-line positioning and messaging – and it’s worth working with a messaging strategist or B2B copywriter to get it right.

Ever struggle to explain to people what your business does, and why you’re the best?

You’re not the only one. As an expert in your industry, you’re steeped in detail and knowledge, and that makes the big messages – the ones that really stand out to an external audience – slide out of view.

To explain this concisely, you need to address your verbal branding (also known as verbal identity).

When people (non-marketers) think of any sort of branding, they think of a logo.

It has long been the job of any brand expert, whether verbal or visual, to challenge that myth and demonstrate to potential clients why the logo is just one element of your branding.

It comes up regularly in my conversations with designers and brand strategists. While brands know the value of investing in their visual identity (even if to them that just means ‘getting a logo done’), often their verbal identity gets completely ignored. And if that’s the case for you, you’re missing a trick.

So what is verbal branding?

Verbal branding is not just about the way you write (your tone of voice, or brand voice); it’s what you say about yourselves, why you say it, how you say it and who you say it to. It’s the words right at the heart of your brand; the ones at the top of the fold on your website, in your proposal intro paragraphs, social media profiles and what you say about yourselves at networking events. So these words really matter.

Here’s what verbal branding can do for you:

Establishing a consistent and confident verbal brand is an opportunity to stand out from your competitors, reinforce the right messages consistently, attract more of the right enquiries, and bring multiple writers together under one brand voice.

It also delivers:

• A critique of your big messages, like your brand name and strapline,
• A strategic view of your positioning in the market,
• The chance to develop your mission, purpose and even brand values,
• An opportunity to establish your brand personality.
• A ‘script’ for your pitches and sales team that eloquently describes what you do, and why it’s brilliant,
• Development of your house style – the rules by which you and your team write,
• A focused analysis of your true USPs (‘professional’ and ‘friendly’ are not USPs!),
• Identification of the benefits of your product/service,
• A review of your market and competitors,
• An analysis of your target customers, and what their buying triggers are,
• The (very satisfying) sacking off of words and phrases that need banishing forever,

By investing in your verbal identity, you’ll get a centrally held brand messaging toolkit that’ll be used by every member of your team to make their job quicker and easier. It’ll be an extension of your brand guidelines, helping to cement your dream position in the market and inform all your future comms going forward.

I work with start-ups and growing businesses to find and refine your biggest, most resonant messages. The ones that will get you remembered and referred.

Book a free 20-min messaging audit with me for some actionable tips you can put to work today.