Your Brand Has Evolved. Has Your Messaging Kept Up?

In fast-growing businesses, every day is a learning experience. A sales strategy that might have worked well three years ago may no longer be relevant now. And while bold brand colours may have been all the rage when you were a startup, you might want something a little more grounded now that you’ve found your feet.

So if your business has changed, why hasn’t your brand book? You may not realise it, but outdated messaging could be silently damaging your performance and integrity. From misaligned teams to falling short of competitor offerings, here are six signs to revisit your brand guidelines…

1. Your brand is inconsistent across channels and teams

Is your sales team using completely different terminology to client services? Does your website ‘About’ page list three other values to the ones on your pitch deck? Any kind of inconsistency in your brand messaging could create confusion amongst customers.

Take action: Ensure your brand guidelines clarify things like your value proposition, and the key messages and tone of voice your team should be using across various channels. Remember: it’s okay to take a different approach on LinkedIn to, say, Instagram – or when you’re speaking to a prospect vs a client. Just make sure you explain what those differences are in a document that everyone can refer to.

2. Your customers don’t understand you

The customer is always right. So if you’re constantly getting enquiries that refer to your “enterprise intelligence SaaS tool” as a “task manager”, it’s your brand guidelines that are in the wrong. It might be time to translate your products or services into a language your customer actually speaks.

Take action: Investigate support tickets or sales call transcripts to understand how customers are talking about your products or brand, then update your official terminology and descriptions to meet them where they are – not where you wish they were.

3. You sound like your competitors

It can be hard to stand out from the crowd when you’re all wearing the same red T-shirt. But while you may be able to detect the subtle difference between your own maroon tee versus your competitor’s crimson, your potential customers may not have the same eye for detail.

Take action: Collect customer feedback to identify key areas of confusion, then identify where your brand book could be improved to clarify these. This could be as simple as a tonal change or as drastic as a total rebrand.

4. Your messaging isn’t evolving with the market

When you wrote your brand guidelines back in 2020, AI still stood for Adobe Illustrator. You should be updating your messaging in order to address key industry changes. For example, if you’re running a voice casting agency, your value proposition may not reflect growing client concerns about the use of artificial intelligence and copyright infringement.

Take action: Stay up to date with regulations and trends that may affect how you (and your competitors) talk about what your business does, and recontextualise your offerings to better address audience priorities.

5. Your team can’t get content over the line

Is your team repeatedly getting stuck in the content creation process? Perhaps you’re finding that basic marketing that used to take a week to churn out is now being sent back for endless rounds of revisions and approvals. This could be a sign that your messaging guidelines are growing staler than that packet of crumpets at the bottom of your bread bin.

Take action: Check that your brand guidelines are up to date to prevent team misalignment. This will also make it easier to brief external content partners that may not always be part of in-house conversations.

6. Your information is incorrect

“Wait – aren’t you still just a B2C app?” “Didn’t you only work with startups?” Organisational changes like shifting to enterprise clients, repositioning after a merger, or expanding into new markets fundamentally reshape what your brand stands for. If your messaging guidelines haven’t been updated to reflect those shifts, teams will fill in the blanks themselves – often inconsistently.

Take action: Revisit your messaging framework whenever there’s a significant change in company direction. Ensure the updated brand story filters into how you talk about your audience, your value, and your vision – so every team is aligned and every customer hears a coherent narrative.

Ready for a refresh?

When you’re so close to your business, we know it can be hard to step back and see the bigger picture. That’s why the key to a brand guidelines update is a fresh pair of eyes. 

Involve stakeholders, team members, and even existing customers in the audit process, and repeat at regular intervals to ensure vital messaging changes don’t slip through the cracks. 

Need some expert guidance? MYC offers brand workshops to help you pinpoint your brand essence, key messages, and tone of voice. Book yours today.