The value of an elevator speech in digital marketing

Successful businesses are built from careful research and a good knowledge base; knowledge of your audience, your competitors, your brand the services you offer.  Many people think digital marketing needs a whole different set of skills, but actually, the requirements are exactly the same: research and knowledge are the basis on which to build a successful campaign and strategy.

Building a Brand Image Online

In digital marketing, your focus is online, your online audience, your competitors’ online activity, and how your brand appears online.  In this blog post we will address the importance of your brand persona and how you can weave this personality throughout your digital marketing communications.

Your Elevator Speech

You should be able to apply your existing brand knowledge to your digital marketing activity, but it never hurts to review what you think you know, and to take the time to craft that knowledge into an ‘elevator speech’ or brand value proposition:  a description of who you are and what you offer in one or two short sentences.  The term ‘elevator speech’ comes from the average time spent in a lift with someone: that is the time you have to deliver your speech and make your impression.  Being able to express your brand identity in a few concise sentences is more important than ever, as online attention spans shrink, people flick through Facebook posts and Instagram pictures, gloss over websites, and advertising banners assault the senses.

In order to craft that elevator speech, or value proposition, you need to answer some basic questions:

• Who is your customer?
• What is your value to that customer – or what problems do you solve, which solutions do you provide?
• What makes you different – list three to five benefits you offer to your customer when they chose you over your competitors
• Do you have, or can you create, a brand promise – along the lines of ‘never knowingly undersold’?

Using your answers to the above questions, you can now create your ‘elevator speech’.  It is worth spending some time on this, and seeking the opinion of your team, others who know your product or service and even potential customers.  Rewrite, review, refine again and again, until you are perfectly happy with this short description of who you are and what you do in no more than one or two sentences.

Keep it Consistent, and Repeat Often

Having created your value proposition, you can flesh out your brand persona by identifying the terminology and descriptive wording to be used in all communications, whether digital, in print, or in oral presentations.  Consistency across all marketing channels is paramount.  Social media communications in particular can be a little more casual than your website or printed literature, so be sure that your digital marketing team is aware of exactly how you want your brand to be presented, the descriptive words to be attributed to it, and how to use your newly created brand value proposition!  Avoid, at all costs, putting the work into creating the description, only to have it ‘filed’ and never used.