The Real Cost of Confused Messaging for Behavioral Healthcare

How would you describe your behavioral health organization?

Do you think every member of your team would say the same thing?

Brand messaging is easy to overlook, but it’s often the part of a brand people interact with most – even a brand in behavioral healthcare. Any language used in a public-facing venue can count as messaging, and reflects on the brand. That means websites, annual reports, brochures, emails, social posts, posters, forms, and more all may factor into the perception of the brand overall.

With so many moving parts it’s easy for a brand’s core message to become confused, and with so many other life-saving objectives it’s easy for brand messaging to fall off the priority list. But there’s a cost to letting your brand message be unclear.

What is confused messaging?

Confused messaging is just what it sounds like: when a brand’s written and verbal communications don’t line up across all the channels (or, the ways someone might encounter your brand). Confused messaging is inconsistent, partially on-brand, and sends mixed messages to viewers.

Many people think brand messaging is some special category. In reality, all direct communication to your audience is messaging. This includes:

- Your website pages
- Your social media posts
- The intake forms you use
- How your staff describes your business in day-to-day conversations
- How your executives communicate about the brand

Some of these things may be the least of your concerns most of the time, and we definitely understand that. However, when your brand is being represented differently in different places, it gives an overall confused impression to your audience(s). This impression is a self-reinforcing cycle, where inconsistent messaging creates more confusion.

What does this look like in practice?

It might be hard to identify confused messaging in the moment. Over the years, we’ve seen brand confusion in many forms. Here are just a few of the most common symptoms:

A powerpoint that isn’t using the corporate branded template
Outdated printed materials with old logos or outdated messaging
Different responses from people answering the phone or at the front desk depending on who’s working
People using multiple competing taglines or other major message elements
Different terminology used across different channels (email, social, website, etc.)
Making changes to the brand message based on in-the-moment needs

The cost of confused messaging is connection.

Plain and simple, if your brand isn’t on-message, your overall connections with your clients, your staff, your leadership, your referral sources, and your donors will all suffer.

CLIENTS: Connecting with clients is key to maintaining census at a behavioral health organization, and that connection often comes at a crucial moment in someone’s life. A person seeking behavioral healthcare for themselves or a loved one is likely already stressed and emotional, laser-focused on finding care. If your language is confusing, a portion of people won’t dig deeper – they’ll move on. No one can afford to lose potential clients to confusion.

STAFF: Connection with your staff is equally likely to suffer. In fact, in an organization with clear brand alignment, your staff should be the first to notice when your messaging isn’t working. If your team isn’t able to explain your (hopefully unique) purpose and mission, they won’t be able to help you represent your brand consistently.

It’s important to consider your organization’s connection with potential staff, as well. Without clear, consistent language to tell the story of your organization to potential new hires, attracting the right talent and keeping them gets much more tricky. Plus, if a job seeker searches you online and sees a place with mixed messaging, that could easily impact their interest without leaving a trace.

LEADERSHIP: Relatedly, leadership is essential in creating and connecting with on-brand messaging. Organizations rely on their leaders to set the tone in many areas, and message is no different; your staff won’t care about consistent messaging if your leadership isn’t aligned behind a single brand message.

Beyond that, someone influential in your organization needs to truly own your brand, overseeing the message (and appearance) over time. The ideal brand champion is a passionate advocate for the brand with the time to review outgoing messages for consistency, the motivation to get key messaging clear, and brand guidelines to guide the process. Without messaging being top of someone’s mind, it’s easy to overlook.

PARTNERSHIPS (REFERRAL SOURCES, GRANTORS, FUNDING SOURCES, ETC.): Connection with your referral sources and with any potential grant or funding sources is another way we’ve seen confused messaging cost behavioral health organizations dearly. These key partnerships rely on mutual trust and reliability, and clear communication is absolutely essential to maintaining them.

DONORS: Connection to your donors depends upon on-brand, consistent communication, too. Your donors are all deeply aligned with your organization’s values. Anything communicated with donors must reflect your values – which means your values must be clearly defined and aligned with your mission in the first place, and then communicated clearly at every step.

Consider how many different times the average donor encounters your organization before making the choice to support. This includes events where they may speak to staff or leadership, digital encounters on your social and website pages, emails, newsletters, postcards, and more. If your values aren’t consistently communicated through the entire donation process, donors may doubt your commitment and back out.

How can on-brand messaging fix confusion?

Doing something about your brand messaging is definitely easier said than done. We appreciate just how many different responsibilities staff often volunteer to take on. Here are a few tips an organization could handle that are more focused on gradual shifts, instead of large change:

Clarity can start small. Take the easy opportunities to be consistent. One key place to start is naming. Have consistent names for your programs, products, and services, and use them! That makes a difference, not just to your audiences but to LLMs (Large Language Models) and search engines as well.
Brand guidelines are hidden gold. Before you begin from scratch, check what already exists! Is there a brand guidelines document somewhere nobody has looked at for a while? An existing document, even if it isn’t right, can be a great way to get the conversation started about the tone of voice you SHOULD be using in messaging.
Know who you’re talking to. Audience awareness is another key way to clarify your message. If you’re speaking to a specific group, make sure the information is tailored to their needs without sacrificing your essential brand voice.
Brand clarity starts at onboarding. It’s easier to build good habits than break confusing ones. Start as early as you can, and make consistent language part of your training process, especially for staff who represent your organization outwardly.
Consistency, consistency, consistency! We’ve told clients and often reminded ourselves too – YOU are the first person to get sick of your messages. Before you make a change because you think content is too old or stale, consider the frequency of your brand communications to even the most engaged audiences. It takes an average of 7 times for a brand to make an impression. Make sure you’re giving your brand messaging that chance!

Confused messaging leads to a downward spiral.

While gradual shifts can create an impact over time, again we want to stress – leadership in your behavioral health organization needs to take responsibility for the organization’s brand message. Alignment comes from the top, and carries through when executives lead by example.

To recap, confused messaging is a cycle that’s often the result of internal confusion, and a symptom of important misalignment internally. It can cost organizations their connections. Consider your brand messages carefully. See what you can do that’s a minor, easy shift to consistency rather than a wholesale change.