Building Your Marketing Message

Building Your Marketing Message

Are you willing to spend a little time to make your marketing message better and more productive?  I know you are very busy but this exercise can be a lot of fun especially if you can get others involved.

For any business owner to become successful today, they must provide their prospects with an experience focused on the basic fundamentals of human nature. Let’s quickly review these basic 10 human fundamentals:

#1 – All prospects want the “best deal.

#2 – Always market to the negative

#3 – Prospects buy based on emotion and only use logic to justify their purchase.

#4 – Prospects want to buy from a business that’s “unique”.

#5 – Prospects buy “extraordinary value”, NOT price.

#6 – You must communicate your uniqueness and extraordinary value to your prospects.

#7 – Prospects buy what they want, not what they need.

#8 – An undisturbed prospect will never buy.

#9 – Prospects will do anything to avoid pain, but little to obtain pleasure.

#10 – Prospects don’t care about you or your business, they ONLY care about themselves.

Keeping human nature in mind let’s get started building our Marketing Message.

First, we need to Identify who your target market is and what are their pain points.

• Who is your target customer?
• What are the problems they have that they wish they didn’t?
• How does your product or service provide a solution to their problem?

Second, write a clear and concise Unique Selling Proposition (USP) statement.  Also called a Marketing Dominating Position (MDP).  This is an area that you always want to be working on adding value to the customer, so you can brag about it in your message.  Always check your message by asking, could anyone say, “so what”, or “I should hope so”, about your message.

• What makes your product or service different than the competition?
• What can you do that isn’t being done by other companies?
• Use specifics like; 30 minutes or less, lowest price, will cut your cleaning time in half.
• Avoid platitudes like; been around since 1966, best, or largest, no one really cares.

Third, expand your USP into a value proposition.  This is a longer statement that explains how your product or service delivers on your USP.  It should include the features, benefits, and proof points that support your claim.

• For example, “Our cloud hosting service is powered by state-of-the-art technology that ensures 99.9% uptime, lightning-fast speed, and unlimited scalability. You can choose from a range of plans that suit your budget and needs and enjoy 24/7 customer support and security. Plus, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee and a free trial.”

Forth, use your value proposition to create a marketing message.  This is a catchy and memorable phrase that captures the essence of your value proposition and appeals to your target audience. It should be simple, specific, and relevant. You can use it as a headline, slogan, or tagline for your marketing materials.

Examples:

• “Cloud hosting made easy. Try it for free today.”
• “15 minutes could save you 15%”.

• “Stop wasting your time with conventional mops!”

Okay, this has been a fun exercise so far, hasn’t it?  You have now created the foundation for all future marketing to your customer.  The nest step is to write your ad(s) using a formula that we call the “conversion equation” while keeping the Value Proposition that you’ve already identified in mind.

The Conversion Equation has 4 parts:

• Interrupt: Use a catchy headline, a compelling image, or a curiosity-inducing question to grab the attention of your audience. We also want to identify the pain point our customer has in this headline.
  • Are You Sick and Tired of XYZ?
  • Ever Feel Like XYZ?
  • Four Proven Techniques to XYZ
• Engage: This sub-headline promises the prospect the relief they seek and urges them to keep reading, watching, or listening to learn more.
  • Here How to Insure XYZ
  • Learn The Secrets of XYZ
  • What if We Could Guarantee XYZ
• Educate: This is usually the body of the marketing piece that tells the prospect HOW your company is in a unique position to deliver the benefits and later the features of what you do and how you can help. Remember that Features tell, and benefits sell, so focus on what they want more than how much they need it.
  • Although the body copy is the longest portion of your ad, you should still resist the temptation to include every bit of juicy information, instead focus on only one hot button at a time.
• Offer: The offer is a crucial part of the marketing piece. You are asking them to take some kind of action without establishing much trust at this point.
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Whether using radio, print, social media, television, or other, these four components are the building blocks of any successful ad.  When done right it can exponentially increase prospects and sales.  But don’t write it and forget it.  Always be refining it.  This is one place that it is okay to second guess yourself because you are always testing new ads against old ads and whichever gets better results is the direction you go in.

I know we have discussed a lot of components to building your marketing message, but outlined like this it should be straight forward and a fun exercise.  So, get your trusted employees and advisors together in a room with plenty of pizza and enjoy the process… How about a new tradition of Monday Night Marketing?

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