You’re two years into running your company. Business has been going a-ok. Sales are coming in, but they haven't been stellar. You adjusted your product offering, added upsells and incentives, and overhauled your look and feel. It hasn’t worked: it still feels like you're in a slump.

Chances are, your messaging hasn’t been resonating with your consumers. Messaging can define up to 80% of your conversion rate. It’s a huge factor in grabbing audiences and building interest in your product. When there is a lack of consumer conversion to your stated brand offerings, this is known as brand misalignment.

Brand Alignment is a condition in which both internal and external stakeholders understand a brand’s purpose and promise. Internally, this means that your employees, partners, and shareholders all understand why your brand exists and its customer promise.

Externally, it means that consumers understand your brand’s purpose and believe your company is upholding its claims. So in return, they are reacting accordingly (i.e. buying, sharing, and spreading the word).

When you are facing a disconnect in either of these areas, take the below steps to strengthen your brand positioning so customers can magnetize to your brand effortlessly.

In a crisis situation like slumping sales, you’ll likely be forced to do an identity audit as part of the brand rescue effort. But ideally, you won’t reach that point before doing key identity-building work.

Here are core elements to examine for areas of misalignment.

Brand Purpose - Is your “why” truly accurate to what your organization’s purpose is?

Brand Vision - Is your overarching purpose still cohesive and meaningful?

Brand Mission - Is the method in which you carry out the vision accurate?

Brand Values - Are your brand commitments and how you carry out the organizational mission clear?

Value Proposition - Are you delivering value to the client? Does this need to be evolved to meet different customer needs?

Target Audience - Is your messaging targeted to the right audience? Is there a misalignment or change in demographic?

Locations and channels - Finally, is the messaging consistent across platforms (i.e. website, social media, etc.) and are you utilizing the correct mediums to advertise the business? Are you interacting with customers in unique places?

Once you run a full report examining these areas, it should reveal insights into which areas need the most fine-tuning. During this process, it helps to conduct interviews with internal stakeholders and customers to corroborate this information. Steps to take include:

Dig into where there are the greatest differences in perception of the brand and compare notes to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of current messaging. Are there commonalities? These insights will guide you with the next part of the process, which is revising the messaging.

You can fine-tune your messaging by improving on the following aspects. With each round of messaging revisions, make sure that the strategy becomes sharper and closer to answering any disconnects from the prior research round.

1) Clarity - Were there areas of your product messaging that could seem vague? If so, can you improve the specificity and meaning of the messaging? This can be any area (Brand About Us, product pages, instructions, etc.)

2) Relevance - Is the product or service made to feel relevant to your unique customer profile?

3) Value - Does the messaging encourage consumers to take action and encourage the willingness to pay for the service?

4) Differentiation - Are the product/services’ unique traits being emphasized? Have you differentiated yourself from your competitors’ products?

Once draft revisions are done, it’s time to do some testing. Add the new messaging to select web pages and social media posts. Are they getting engagement? If so, figure out what is working (is it the medium, channel, or storytelling method?)

Once these tests are done, you’ll want to unveil the final messaging strategy teamwide to ensure internal alignment and remove any old content that doesn’t fit with the new image. Be proactive about improving your public presence and get experimental with this new image to find what works for you!

As your company grows and evolves, you may need to periodically revisit this brand messaging to ensure it can grow with you and that everything is being implemented consistently.

Once you have made the changes above, you should be able to see results!

A Gallup research study in 2012 found that when customers are aligned with a brand, they can give double the wallet share (size of consumer usage) than those who aren’t aligned. This means that brands whom consumers were familiar with were rewarded with nearly double the rates of future consumer consumption.

In fact, even in the case of future purchasing power, this alignment remains powerful. Despite all-around decreased levels of purchases, the group with stronger brand alignment still had a higher percentage chance of supporting the brand versus the non-aligned group.

The lesson? This is an incentive to create more aligned customers because once they’re in your corner, they tend to continue supporting you and can help future-proof sales.

A standout brand mission not only attracts revenue but improves the internal atmosphere for your team. A good workplace is beneficial for revitalizing internal team members and whatever internal culture is created from within will make its way outward.

Being able to showcase good culture is a great connecting point for consumers as well. They want to believe that they’re supporting a place that aligns with their personal values. And this positive perception has a ripple effect on your entire business.

Brand alignment is a series of efforts that take place internally and externally to create the right inner chemistry and external revenue results. If you find your messaging and results misaligned, take these steps to course correct.

Do an extensive messaging audit and conduct research.

Finetune your messaging.

Test the messaging before mass adoption.

Rinse and repeat.

Step back and see the benefits!