Tell your brand story: aligning your online and offline communications

No matter what your company does, one of the most important elements of your internal and external communications is your brand story. This is a narrative that tells the world what your brand is all about and why you do what you do.

As with all branding efforts, communications around your story need to be consistent across all channels, both online and off. We asked 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council the following question:

What is one thing to keep in mind in order to ensure the communications of your brand story aligns both online and offline?

Their best answers are below:

1. Review your mission frequently with the team

Repetition is the key to consistency. We begin every team strategy meeting with a recap of our mission statement and company goals. It helps to keep everyone on the same page and cohesive with what we’re working on and why it’s important. – Nathalie Lussier, AccessAlly

2. Use branded links for offline campaigns

Many marketers make the mistake of not tracking their offline campaigns. Instead, create branded links in your offline marketing that takes the viewer to a destination website. This will create more synergy between your offline and online brand story while capturing data to measure the success of the campaigns. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

3. Define your brand persona and apply it consistently

Having a clearly delineated brand persona is essential for ensuring that your online and offline communications stay on brand. A well-constructed brand guide should inform all your messaging: visual, written and spoken. Take the time to educate your team and any third-party content creators on brand-appropriate communication styles and maintain consistency across all channels. – Thomas Smale, FE International

4. Focus on your brand’s core concepts

If your brand story is complicated enough to cause difficulty in maintaining consistency across different channels of communication, it may be a good idea to simplify it. Focus on one to three core concepts and avoid making things any more complex than that, and you should find it much easier to keep your brand consistent both online and offline. – Bryce Welker, Crush The PM Exam

5. Control the narrative

Ask a dozen random prospects to tell you what they think your business does. If their responses are not clear and consistent, you don’t have a powerful brand story. As a result, you’ll have different (often misaligned) interpretations of your business both offline and online. You must control the narrative by providing a simple, clear brand message that puts everyone on the same page. – Charles E. Gaudet, Predictable Profits

6. Create clear brand guidelines

If you never fully document your brand’s voice into a guideline document, it might as well not exist. This should be your team’s bible for understanding the details of how the brand’s voice should be represented and shared across all marketing, PR and sales channels. Anyone creating content should be required to read and sign off on the guidelines before they start working. – Jonathan Gass, Nomad Financial

7. Share the inspiration behind your brand

Build a genuine brand story and stick to it. What is it about your brand that drew you to it? Why do you do what you do? Share the inspiration that drives you every day and package it into a brand narrative. If something is inspirational or revolutionary enough to make you work hard every day to achieve, then chances are it will also inspire others. – Shingo Lavine, Ethos

8. Be transparent in all things

We run on transparency, plain and simple. That means there is no fluff or beating around the bush in our brand story, and that is parallel to how we approach offline events and meetings. If it’s not clear what our brand story is, people will not understand what we do and they won’t connect with us on a personal level. Our goal is to create a positive customer experience online and offline. – Reuben Yonatan, GetVoIP

9. Plan campaigns together

All campaigns should be planned together to ensure the same message and overall ideas are being communicated in a consistent way. By designing them at the same time, this also makes it more efficient. – Angela Ruth, Calendar

10. Practice what you preach

A smart entrepreneur will build their businesses around their own lifestyle and desires. So, practice what you preach, and most of all, make sure it works before you teach it. Don’t tell people to get up at 5 a.m. when you get up at 10. Don’t tell people to kill it in sales if you are too shy to sell. Basically, be honest with yourself and others, and the rest will fall into place. – Jason Criddle, Jason Criddle and Associates

11. Build offline systems that mirror your online messaging

It is very easy to write language online and make an impressive first impression. However, the challenge is to align your work team so that their appearance, behavior and attitude align with that online language. I ask my team to look at this online mission when they work and gradually put systems in place so that all aspects, both online and offline, align together. – Julian Montoya, JM11 Investments