How does a small Norfolk business build a recognisable brand?

If you missed our free June workshop and meet-up, you'll never know what The So Solid Crew, Carl Jung, Yoda, and ignoring ChatGPT have to do with small business marketing in Norfolk.

But don't despair. This blog is a whistle-stop tour of some of the highlights.

If you've never joined one of our small business meet-ups before, they take place once a month from 9:30am–12:00pm at the Cliftonville Hotel in Cromer. They're friendly, welcoming and  completely free to attend. They follow a simple format: a presentation from the Coastal Media team or a guest speaker, followed by an opportunity to meet fellow Norfolk business owners. There's even free tea and coffee courtesy of the Cliftonville.

So, on to this month's workshop.

June's meet-up started life as a messaging workshop. However, as we developed the content, it became clear that messaging is often part of a much wider challenge for small businesses.

Anyone who has worked with us before knows how much emphasis we place on getting the fundamentals right before jumping into tactics. (If you're new to Coastal Media, Gabs recently wrote a handy blog about our approach.)

Rather than focusing exclusively on messaging, we decided it would be more valuable to explore the bigger picture and look at how small Norfolk businesses can put a framework in place to build a recognisable brand.

It's also a topic that's front of mind for us at the moment as we redevelop our own website over the summer (keep your eyes peeled for more on that). Like many businesses, we're working hard to practise what we preach and ensure our own messaging is as strong as possible.

Why messaging matters

The original idea for the workshop stemmed from a common problem we encounter when working with businesses across Norfolk.

Quite often, businesses are attracting decent traffic to their website or building followers on social media, but those visitors aren't converting into enquiries or sales.

There can be many reasons for this, some of which we'll cover in future workshops and blogs. 

One of the most common is that businesses naturally focus on generating awareness.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a good example. When you're juggling a hundred different priorities, it's appealing to think there are a few simple steps you can take to drive more traffic to your website.

The challenge is what happens once people arrive.

Sometimes visitors leave because they can't find the information they're looking for. Sometimes they leave because the website doesn't clearly explain the value of the business. And sometimes the content simply doesn't resonate with the audience it's trying to reach.

That's where messaging comes in.

Messaging and proposition

In a nutshell, messaging is how a business communicates its value.

The challenge is that it's difficult to communicate your value if you're not completely clear what makes your business different in the first place.

This is where proposition comes in.

Your proposition is the reason customers choose you over other options. It sits underneath your marketing and influences everything from your website copy to your social media content.

Developing a strong proposition often requires businesses to step back and view themselves through the eyes of their customers. That's not always easy, particularly when you're immersed in the day-to-day running of the business.

To make matters more challenging, most people's time and attention are limited, especially online. In many cases, you have less than ten seconds to explain why somebody should care.

At the workshop, we used a series of practical exercises to help participants think about the outcomes they create for customers rather than simply the services they provide.

For example, a solicitor may provide legal services, but the outcomes they create could be clarity, confidence, security or peace of mind. Once you understand those outcomes, it becomes much easier to build messaging that resonates with potential customers.

Bringing your messaging to life

Even when your proposition and messaging are in good shape, many businesses still face the same challenge:

"What should I post about?"

It's one of the most common frustrations we encounter when working with small businesses.

To help address it, we introduced a framework we've been developing behind the scenes. Rather than constantly searching for new ideas, we encourage businesses to identify three to five content themes they can return to regularly.

The benefit is simple.

Instead of asking:

"What should I post about?"

The question becomes:

"Which of my content themes should I focus on today?"

Using our solicitor example, those themes might include:

• Legal guidance

• Common myths

• Client stories

• Life events and planning

  
  

Not only does this approach help bring proposition and messaging to life, it also makes content creation far more manageable.

Those themes can be used across websites, newsletters, social media and even networking conversations. A single story or insight can often be adapted for multiple channels, helping businesses get more value from the content they create.

This is a theme we'll be exploring further in our next workshop on 16th July (details at the bottom of the page)

It's not just what you say…

By this point in the workshop we'd explored what businesses want to be known for and the topics they should be talking about.

The final piece of the puzzle was personality.

Because two businesses can communicate exactly the same message and discuss exactly the same topics while creating completely different impressions.

That's where brand archetypes come in.

Rather than focusing on logos or visual identity (watch this space for a future workshop on those), archetypes help businesses define their personality and tone of voice. They provide a simple framework for understanding how a business wants to be perceived and how it communicates across its website, social media, email marketing and customer interactions.

In our workshop, we simplified traditional brand archetypes into six broad personalities: Guide, Expert, Creator, Caregiver, Explorer and Challenger.

The goal isn't to put businesses into a box. Instead, it's to help them understand the role they naturally play for their customers.

A business may be known for helping people navigate complexity (Guide), providing trusted advice (Expert), creating something unique (Creator), offering support and reassurance (Caregiver), encouraging discovery (Explorer) or challenging conventional thinking (Challenger).

When messaging, content themes and personality are aligned, marketing becomes more consistent and recognisable. 

Customers not only understand what a business does, but also what it stands for and what it's like to work with. This consistency builds trust, strengthens recognition and makes it much easier to create marketing that feels authentic rather than forced.

Or, to put it another way:

Messaging tells people what you're known for. Content proves it. Brand personality makes it memorable.

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This blog only scratches the surface of what we covered during the workshop.

Our next free Small Business Meet-Up takes place on 13th July. This’ll be a practical session designed to help small businesses identify content themes, uncover stories within their business and make marketing more manageable. It builds on some of the ideas we explored in today's session.

To reserve your place, head over to the Community page on our website. Our workshops are free to attend but spaces tend to fill up quickly. if you'd like to hear about future workshops first, sign up for Navigator, our monthly newsletter. Subscribers are the first to hear about upcoming events, training opportunities and practical marketing advice for Norfolk businesses.

And if you're ready to take the next step, we currently have three places remaining on our next Marketing Bootcamp on 6th July. This hands-on training day is designed to help small business owners build a stronger marketing foundation and leave with practical actions they can start implementing straight away.

We'd love to see you at one of our upcoming events.