Inside a brand messaging guide: two coaches who couldn’t say why someone should choose them

A real brand messaging guide example, from two coaches who could describe their work but not why someone should choose them. What went into their Guides, and what changed once they had them.

A brand messaging guide is the document your marketing works from. It sets out who you help, the words they use, why they should choose you and how you sound saying it, so every page, post and proposal tells the same story. Executive coach Susan Sutherland and relationship coach Krystle Hearley each used theirs to write the copy they’d been stuck on.

“My brand is in a shift mode,” Susan told me. “I know who I work with and what I stand for, but my message hasn’t caught up.”

Susan Sutherland had spent nearly three decades in corporate leadership, climbing every rung of the ladder until she left as a senior vice president, and was now coaching executives standing at the same crossroads she’d once faced. She was very good at it. Most of her clients came through referrals, which meant she’d never needed words that could travel further than a conversation (referrals are lovely like that, right up until you want to grow beyond them).

Then she started planning a new website and a bigger presence on LinkedIn, and the gap got very hard to ignore.

“I can describe what I do,” she said, “but not why someone should choose me. I’m not bold or explicit enough.”

Krystle Hearley put it differently when she came to me with The New Way To Date: “I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.” Her business couldn’t have been more different from Susan’s, and the problem sitting underneath was exactly the same.

What is a brand messaging guide?

A brand messaging guide is the reference book for everything you write. It sets out who your clients are and the words they use, how you’re different from everyone else they might be considering, how you sound, and the key messages you’ll repeat across your website, emails, social posts and proposals. Once it exists, you stop starting every piece of writing from a blank page.

Mine are called Brand Messaging Guides (capital letters and all), and the two in this post are real ones.

Why do coaches struggle to explain why someone should choose them?

Most coaches can describe their work in detail, because they do it every day. Saying why someone should choose them is harder, because it means looking at every other coach a client might find and saying out loud what makes you different. Referrals hide the gap for years, because someone else has already done the explaining for you.

Susan’s version of this was a tone problem as much as a positioning one. She’d been torn between sounding “corporate enough” for the executives she serves and “authentic enough” for herself, and every time she sat down to write (on her website, in proposals, even in conversation) she’d pick one and feel she’d lost the other.

Krystle’s was louder. She had a therapist’s understanding of emotional safety and a properly different idea about how dating could work, and like a lot of people launching something new, she was trying to say all of it at once.

Neither of them was doing anything wrong (I promise). It’s just very hard to read the label from inside the jar.

What’s inside a brand messaging guide? Susan’s, section by section

Susan’s Guide works from the outside in. It starts with her audience, then her competitors, then her voice and personality, then the brand statements and key messages she uses everywhere, and finishes with the search phrases and content ideas that carry her message beyond referrals. Each section feeds the next one.

Her audience

We started with the two clients who turn up most often in her work. Alex, the Established Executive, is late 40s to early 60s, accomplished and privately wondering whether this is all there is. Jordan, the Restless Leader, is mid-40s to mid-50s, on the edge of a big shift and unsure what comes next.

Demographics are part of the story, sure. But a small part. The client interviews gave us the tension Susan sees every day (success without fulfilment) and, just as usefully, the exact phrases her clients use to describe it. We took some of those phrases straight from the Guide and put them on her website, so the right visitors knew within seconds that they were in the right place.

Her competitors

Next we looked at the rest of executive coaching, plus the therapy and wellness people her clients might also be weighing up. Susan spotted something straight away: almost everyone focused on performance or on healing, and hardly anyone did both. That became the heart of her differentiation, coaching the whole human inside the executive role.

Her voice and archetype

I map voice using Justin Blackman’s framework (I trained with Justin, who is frankly the king of brand voice), which sorts writers into nine voice types by cadence, rhythm, tone and vocabulary. Susan is a blend of the Yogi, calm and contemplative, and the Translator, clear and precise.

Then I use the twelve Jungian brand archetypes to get at who you are underneath how you sound. Susan’s dominant archetype is the Sage, the truth-seeker and mentor, which suits an audience of experienced executives looking for meaning.

This was the section where everything clicked for her. Once her voice had a name, the corporate-or-authentic tug of war stopped. “It gave me permission to sound like myself,” she said. “Before, I kept wondering if I should be more corporate or more spiritual. Now I don’t have to choose.”

Her brand statements

Built on that voice, the brand section gave her an elevator pitch, a USP statement, a social bio and a brand story, all ready to copy and paste, plus example phrases she can use as prompts for emails and social posts.

Her key messages

With the audience and voice in place, the messaging almost wrote itself. Three of her key lines:

• “Holistic executive coaching that looks beyond your KPIs.”
• “You don’t have to burn everything down to be happy.”
• “It’s lonely at the top. I’ve felt it.”

They now run through her homepage, sales pages, emails and LinkedIn, so her audience gets used to her themes and knows exactly what they’ll get from working with her.

Her search phrases and content ideas

Finally, we mapped the search phrases and blog ideas that carry her message beyond referrals, like “Beyond KPIs: how holistic leadership drives both personal and professional success”. (No keyword stuffing. Susan wasn’t interested, and neither am I.)

Feeling extra nosy? Flick through Susan’s Guide below.

What does a brand messaging guide look like for a brand-new idea?

For a new business, the Guide has to define the thing before anyone has heard of it. Krystle’s pinned down what made The New Way To Date different and gave her ready-to-use copy for press, profiles and podcasts, so she could explain it the same way every time.

Krystle Hearley, a therapist-turned-coach, knew dating apps weren’t working, for her clients, for the people she saw repeating the same patterns, or for herself. So she built The New Way To Date, an online community that blends personal growth with meaningful connection. Less swiping, more self-awareness.

Over four weeks we worked through founder-led discovery (unpacking her vision and her own experience), voice of customer research to find the real pain points and the right language for them, and a competitor analysis to find the gaps The New Way To Date could own. Her Guide included:

1. A positioning statement and the tagline “Dating with Depth” (I’m still really proud of that one)
2. A warm, grounded brand voice
3. Customer avatars built around the emotional and practical reality of dating today
4. Messaging that holds emotional safety and self-trust alongside the wish for connection
5. Copy templates and bios she could use in press, on profiles and on podcasts

What changed once they had a brand messaging guide?

Both coaches started writing the things they’d been putting off, and stopped second-guessing how they sounded while they did it. Krystle wrote her website, email funnels, blog posts and event descriptions from her Guide, in language that finally matched the care behind her offer.

“It finally gave me the language I’d been reaching for,” Susan said.

She’s used her Guide to finish a website she’d been stuck on for too long, write new email sequences and content themes, keep her tone consistent across LinkedIn and client proposals, and get better results from ChatGPT, which now has her voice and messaging to work from. She also spends less time writing content and proposals, because the lines, phrases and whole paragraphs are already there to copy and paste.

Krystle said:

“You helped me go from having the whole world of dating and personal development to talk about – to having something clear and focused to say. That made a huge difference in my confidence, and in what I share now.”

Her audience noticed as well. The new positioning gave people something to believe in, and something to connect with.

How is a brand messaging guide different from a brand voice guide?

A brand voice guide covers how you sound: your cadence, vocabulary, tone and the phrases that are recognisably yours. A brand messaging guide covers what you say and who you say it to: your audience, your positioning, why someone should choose you and your key messages. My Brand Messaging Guides include both, because a voice with nothing clear to say is just a nice tone.

If voice really is the only gap, a voice guide on its own can be plenty. I wrote one for a founder who was spending hours rewriting his team’s content, and it saved him ten hours a week.

Where does the Regenerative Story Framework come in?

The Regenerative Story Framework is my messaging framework, built on the Heroine’s Journey. It treats the change your clients go through as something collective and ongoing, and it shapes how every Brand Messaging Guide I build now maps your audience and your messages.

Most story frameworks in marketing (StoryBrand included) are built on the Hero’s Journey, where one person conquers one problem and claims the prize. That’s an odd fit for coaching, where change is usually slow and rarely happens alone. I’ve written more about why the Hero’s Journey is the wrong model for your brand story, and the Regenerative Story Map is a free way to try the framework on your own messaging.

Questions people ask about brand messaging guides

How long does a brand messaging guide take?

Usually about four weeks, from the first discovery session to the finished Guide. Most of that time goes on research: client interviews, competitor analysis and listening to how you talk about your work. Two rounds of revisions are included.

How much does a brand messaging guide cost?

My Brand Messaging Guides range from $1,350 to $3,450, depending on how deep the work needs to go. We scope it together on a call, so you know the price before anything starts.

Do coaches need a brand messaging guide or a brand voice guide?

If you know what you want to say and just can’t make it sound like you, a voice guide may be enough. If, like Susan, you can describe what you do but not why someone should choose you, you need the messaging, and a Brand Messaging Guide includes the voice work too.

What do you do with a brand messaging guide once you have it?

Write from it. Use the key messages on your website and sales pages, the bios on your profiles and the example phrases as prompts for emails and posts. Give it to anyone (or any AI tool) writing for you, so everything sounds like the same business.

Ready to sound like the business you’ve grown into?

If you’ve built a business you’re proud of and your words still sound like they belong to an earlier version of you, a Brand Messaging Guide is where I’d start.

You can have a look at the Brand Messaging Guide packages here, or book a call to see if we’re a good fit.