So, what is brand message and how do you know if you have one? Look at your school’s marketing communications. What do they say – and say about your institution?

Your brand message is what makes your school important to the reader’s life. It’s the real, active, repeatable and engaging (RARE) benefits you offer. We call it rare, because that’s just what having a strong brand message is: 

Real means grounded in market-based research and true to the experiences real people have. You must be able to deliver on the fundamental promise of your brand.

Active means prestige is not enough. Your message has to matter to the lives of your prospective students and community. Your message is not three words separated by periods.   

Repeatable means you are able to prove your results using both real-life stories and hard numbers, even if you’r not always having to produce them. People are often nice. Nice is not your message. Measure everything.

Engaging means it has to lead people to do something. Your brand has to be so good that people can’t help but notice it and are excited to take the next step. 

This isn’t stuff you can just wing it on. You need to fundamentally understand your brand and what people do and do like about it do deliver it purposefully. A message is only as good as it can be communicated. The first place to start is with what people are already saying about you. It’s not for you to create a brand. It’s for you to manage it.

A brand message has to be appeal to people’s logic, but compelling enough to get their attention. To do this, you have to understand how your audience connects to your brand emotionally.

Never treat your message as a one-way conversation. An essential part of any message strategy should be how you listen to your audience.

This is why writing your brand message down is so important. It’s easy to get confused and forget your message when work is busy or an unexpected change has complicated your path. Write it down. Use specific words that resonate and terms that stick. Use them over and over. 

Remember: A good message is a focused message. The human brain can only hold on to so much information. Your message needs to be simple, memorable and easy.

Does your higher ed brand have a clear, R.A.R.E. message? Email darren@dwhiteandco.com to talk more.