As a marketer, you know how important it is to have a marketing strategy but have you thought about the impact your marketing message can make in it?
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Your strategy has to align with your audiences needs and interests, and understand the required approach for each channel you use, whether its social media or . This strategy also informs the content you create and how to share it so your audience has a greater likelihood of seeing it.
But how do you bridge the gap between this strategy and the content itself? What you need is a marketing message, and its just as important as your overall strategy.
In this article well discuss the definition, provide real-life examples and ways to make your own excellent marketing message. But if youre in a pinch, feel free to jump straight to what youre looking for instead:
What is a marketing message?
A marketing message is the words you use to communicate with your audience to convince them to do business with you. Your message is extremely influential in helping you meet your business goals, as it can be the difference between a new acquisition or sending a customer on to your competitor.
Because of this, you should craft your marketing message with care, specifically for the audiences youre trying to reach. It should also address their pain points and present your business as a solution.
Think of it like this: if you know you want to post about a new product launch on Instagram, how will you prove to your audience that they need to buy this new product? Your marketing message. Essentially, no marketing message means no way to execute your strategy.
When your message speaks to their needs, youll build trust with your audience and inspire customer retention. Its worth investing time in crafting the perfect message, especially when 59% of shoppers prefer to buy from brands they trust.
But you may be thinking, what is messaging in marketing, anyway?
What is messaging in marketing?
Messaging in marketing is how a brand communicates what customers want to know about your brand. It goes beyond just sharing information about the product or service available; it builds your brand identity through the why of your company; its mission, vision, and values.
Marketing messaging lets customers see your brands beliefs and ideas helping the customer make an impression of your business. This type of communication can be a decision point between buying from just any company or buying from an authentic and engaging one instead.
Every business engaging in marketing needs a marketing message, whether you sell B2C or B2B, software as a service (SaaS), or clothing. Lets take a look at some brands that made clear and enticing messaging.
Marketing Message Examples
Successful marketing messages attract leads and convert them to paying customers. Below well go over some real-life examples of effective marketing messages.
As a clothing and apparel brand, Nike is committed to providing equipment to everyone who needs it, regardless of the sport they play and who they are.
Nikes marketing message is Where All Athletes Belong, and it speaks to its target audience and lets them know that they have something for everyone from professional athletes to first-time players.
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Black Girl Sunscreen targets an audience often left out of sun safety discussions: women of color. Their message lets that market know theyre there for them: Protect your melanin. Sunscreen is always in season.
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People with dietary restrictions or food preferences that dont align with mainstream ideas of nutrition are often unable to find food they can eat at fast-food restaurants.
Chipotles marketing message, shown in the image below, reads Find your plant power. The brand is speaking directly to those with diverse needs, inviting them to try its expanded menu with plant-based options and letting them know that they recognize the gap in the market for their needs.
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Ingredients in beauty and cosmetic products can be hard to understand if you dont have a scientific background or relevant experience. Lab Muffins marketing message speaks to those who want to understand the chemistry behind the products they use: The science of beauty, explained simply.
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Zoom is a virtual meeting tool that allows users to connect virtually. It markets to an audience who wants to continue having fulfilling conversations, regardless of their physical location: Meet OnZoom. A marketplace for immersive experiences.
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All in all, these marketing messages capture attention and, in just a couple of words, explain why Zooms business is the best fit to meet its audiences needs.
How to Craft a Marketing Message
As mentioned above, a well-crafted marketing message helps convert your audience into customers. All businesses should aim to have one, and below well discuss how to create a compelling marketing message for your own business.
1. Know your target audience.
Just as with most marketing practices, you cant begin creating your marketing message without identifying your target audience. When you know who they are, youre not marketing to customers you think are interested in you, but rather to those you know are interested in you.
In brief, your target audience is a group of consumers with similar characteristics and purchasing intent, and stand to gain the most value from your products. While your overall target audience is probably defined by the industry youre in, its important to have a deeper understanding.
To learn more about your target audience and narrow down who they are, you can conduct buyer persona research, analyze your competitors, practice social listening, and invite people to participate in focus groups or interviews.
Overall, what you want to learn from identifying your target audience is understanding what they look like. This can be simple demographic information, like age and location, to what they like, desire, and want from the businesses they buy from.
Having this information then makes it easier to personalize your strategies and create a marketing message that will resonate with them, especially when addressing their pain points.
2. Understand your audiences pain points.
Your persona research should tell you about your audiences pain points and challenges.
As a refresher, pain points are issues that affect your target audiences day-to-day routines, business tasks, or general life desires. These challenges are typically things that your audience is actively seeking solutions for.
For example, if youre a business selling marketing SaaS, you may discover that your audience has trouble managing their campaigns because they use multiple platforms throughout their process. When you create your marketing message, you should speak to your ability to streamline their efforts with your easy-to-use, all-in-one platform.
If youre a B2C business that sells eco-friendly clothing, a customer pain point could be that they struggle to find brands without significant environmental impact. In your marketing message, you should speak to their desire to minimize environmental pollution through sustainable shopping opportunities.
When you understand pain points, you dont have to guess why your customers need you youll know why they need you. As a result, you can create a marketing message that addresses their needs.
The first two steps on this list involve gathering the necessary background information, and the following steps will help you begin crafting your message.
3. Define value propositions.
Value propositions highlight your product or services unique value and tell customers that your brand is tailor-made to meet their needs. It clearly says why they should do business with you instead of a competitor, and that is precisely the point of a marketing message.
When creating your message, present your product or service as a cure for their pain points, and prove it. Continuing with the eco-friendly business example, you can specifically mention that your clothing is locally produced, separating you from the competition that mass produces its goods abroad.
For more information, please visit Message Notification Service for Improving Marketing Effectiveness.
This message tells consumers that youre solving their pain point, which is a lack of sustainable clothing brands, because you design ethically produced and environmentally friendly products.
4. Prioritize clarity and concision.
Your marketing message needs to pack a punch, you need to say a lot in as few words as possible. You shouldnt beat around the bush. Instead, get to the point and explain how your product is a solution.
Customers should read your message and find answers to their questions without needing to overanalyze your statements. Prioritize being clear, concise, and easily understood, as you want your words to speak for themselves. To reiterate, get to the point.
You can think of it like this: I said a lot in this explanation just to tell you to get to the point. If this were a marketing message, you wouldve moved along already. However, if I wanted to follow the tips Ive mentioned, I would simply say, Tell me why youre the best no ifs, ands, or buts.
5. Use familiar, conversational language.
Even though your customers are in your industry, you shouldnt assume that they know or understand the technical jargon related to what you sell. Therefore, its important to sound conversational and use familiar and palatable language to most audiences. Your message copy should be simple, straightforward, and not require an industry-specific dictionary.
For example, you can use technical terms to describe the features in your latest automobile model. Still, car enthusiasts would be the only ones that genuinely understand what it means to have a 600 horsepower engine and AAA uniform tire quality grading (I certainly dont know what this means).
Aim to write as people speak during conversations, maintain a friendly tone, and make customers feel welcomed. Robotic and technical language may be confusing and lead them to think that doing business with you will be complicated and confusing as well.
In sum, by being conversational and familiar, youre reaching everyone, from first-time industry customers to seasoned CEOs.
6. Showcase your brand's originality.
Your marketing messages overall intent is to attract your target audience, but its also to set you apart from your competitors. Given this, a key pillar of your final message is originality.
Run-of-the-mill marketing messages seem like they could belong to any of your competitors, and original ones showcase what makes you unique. This can be your brand's personality, the features that set you apart from your competitors, or a combination of the two.
Your marketing message is unique to your business, your solutions are unique to your business, and your words should prove that.
7. Use user-generated content (UGC).
Consumers are 14% more likely to trust recommendations from someone like them (another consumer) over a brand employee. With that in mind, using UGC in your messaging, like testimonials and reviews, can help you support your products value.
As your target audience likely shares the same challenges, seeing that someone like them has benefited from your product can help them make their final decision. For example, you could say, 95% of our customers love [xyz], and you will too.
8. Appeal to customer emotions and logic.
There are a variety of consumer behavior models that explain how people make purchasing decisions. Some models say that its through logical reasoning, and others say that its purely emotional. In reality, its probably a combination of the two, and you should use this to your advantage.
Through tactics like humorous copy, you can showcase your brand's uniqueness to appeal to customer emotions, and use value propositions to appeal to logical reasoning and show customers how youll solve their problems.
Reach Your Customers through Your Marketing Message
The key takeaway here is that your marketing message should convince your audience to do business with you.
Focus on showcasing your brands individuality, creating an emotional connection, and clearly showing your customers whats in it for them. If you do this, youll likely find yourself with a marketing message that speaks directly to your target audience and helps you grow your list of clients.
Customers of all types are inundated with information and pleas for attention all day long its true whether your ideal customer is a retail consumer, patient, or decision-maker at a company youd like to pitch. With every brand vying for attention, how do you ensure your companys voice is heard? Beyond that, how do you ensure that what they hear actually resonates with them? The answer to these questions lies in effective messaging. In this blog, well discuss the what, why, and how of messaging, unpack the different types, its importance, and strategies for clarifying your message.
What is marketing messaging?
Lets start with the basics here. Marketing messaging is your brands way of communicating it's value proposition to the right audience. Its the words, tone, phrasing, and personality that your team uses to convey what your brand stands for, what it offers, and why that should matter to your target customers. If you take only one thing away from this blog, let it be this: in order for messaging to be effective, it must be clear, consistent, and audience-specific. Youre probably heard the saying, if youre talking to everyone, youre talking to no one. The same line of thinking applies here. Marketing messaging should be specific and tailored for the audience segment youre engaging.
Different Types of Messaging: Marketing Message vs Brand Message
You might hear the words message and messaging in different contexts, the top two of which are likely marketing and branding. Lets break those down because there are some key differences:
- Marketing message: This type of messaging is directly tied to your customers pain points and your solution or services ability to address those pain points. Marketing messaging typically speaks to what your company offers, its unique differentiators or competitive advantages, and builds rapport and engagement with your audience. Really strong marketing messaging does all of that, and has an unwavering understanding of their audiences situation, speaking to and empathizing with their needs ultimately telling a story in which the customer is the Batman, and your company is Robin. Out-of-this-world marketing messaging, does all of that in a clear, very concise, and consistent way. Looking for more? Read: The Ultimate Guide to Messaging: Crafting your companys voice for impact and alignment.
- Brand message: On the other hand, brand messaging zooms out to tell your brands overarching story. It communicates your mission, vision, values, and the core promises you make to your target market or customers. While marketing messaging should vary based on circumstances like platform, audience, current events, or consumer trends, brand messaging tends to be more enduring its designed to build long-term relationships and brand loyalty. Looking for more? Read: What goes into a brand identity? Understanding the components of a brand and defining the ROI of a strong brand identity.
Overarching Messaging vs Audience-Specific Messaging
Overarching messaging communicates the core messages of your brand it communicates the key differentiated value that you bring to your target audience, and its what your team should beat the drum on over and over again. Conversely, audience-specific, or targeted messaging, zooms in and addresses the unique needs, pain points, and aspirations of different segments of your market. Not sure what differentiates your company or solutions for each audience? You might benefit from value mapping take our quiz to find out.
Example:
For example, lets say youre a health technology company, focused on delivering technologies that streamline and ease health journeys for a wide range of patients, while maintaining a warm and approachable brand so that customers feel comfortable and safe reaching out to customer support teams. Your overarching message might be: "Easing Your Health Journey with Compassionate Innovation."
This message captures the essence of a healthcare company focused on using technology to improve patient outcomes and experiences without adding additional stress or complexity. It speaks to a broad audience by emphasizing "easing" the journey and "compassion" in innovation, which are values that tend to be universally sought after by several market segments in the healthcare industry. More specifically, the message is designed to resonate with both tech-savvy individuals and those less familiar with technology, highlighting the benefits of innovation in a way that's accessible and reassuring to all patients.
Lets say your target audience tends to be split between tech-savvy, younger adults, and tech-wary older adults. For tech-savvy millennials, targeted messaging might delve into the specifics of the technology, showcasing apps, wearables, or online platforms that empower patients with data and connectivity. For less tech-savvy audiences, like some aging populations, the communication could focus on the ease of use, personal support, and the tangible health benefits of the technology, ensuring the message is relevant and comforting to those who might be wary of new tech.
Why is Messaging Important?
Most markets are teeming with choices and information, and its easy for consumers to get overwhelmed or to simply ignore marketing efforts instinctively. Clear, compelling, and consistent messaging helps your brand and your solutions stand out. Messaging is crucial for:
- Building brand recognition and loyalty: Clear and consistent messaging across all platforms (website, socials, video, print, etc.) strengthens your brand identity, making it more recognizable, memorable, and credible to your audience(s).
- Driving customer engagement: Well-crafted messages resonate with your audience, sparking interest and encouraging interaction with your brand. This is important for a few reasons. First, it begins a customer funnel in which someone begins to trust your brand and nurtures them as a future customer. Second, customer engagement fuels the customer feedback loop that every brand needs in order to successfully serve their target market. Hearing from and engaging with your audience allows you to build better services and solutions, and to create stronger messages that resonate.
- Supporting business goals: Effective messaging resonates with your audience, solving their problems and addressing their personal objectives, and aligns with your business objectives, whether its boosting sales, increasing awareness, or fostering loyalty. Looking for more? Read on:
How to Clarify Your Messaging
Clarifying your message means refining it to be as clear, concise, and impactful as possible. Heres how you can achieve clarity in your messaging:
What is Messaging Strategy?
A messaging strategy is a plan that guides how you create, deliver, and maintain your messages across different contexts. It ensures that all communication is clear and aligned with your brands goals and resonates with the intended audience(s). The importance of a messaging strategy lies in its ability to:
- Align your team: A clear messaging strategy ensures everyone in your organization communicates in a unified voice, amplifying your brands message cohesively. Keeping your approved messages readily accessible across teams and departments is a huge part of effectively maintaining alignment and message consistency.
- Measure Effectiveness: An approved strategy allows you to set benchmarks and assess how well your messaging resonates with your audience, enabling continuous improvement.
Messaging is how your company communicates with its target audience. There are different types of messaging (brand, marketing, advertising, even socials), but ultimately your message will dictate your audiences understanding of your company, product, or service, and either lead to a positive connection with potential customer, or not. Crafting clear, consistent, and impactful marketing messaging is not about making noise and drawing attention to your solutions its about making a connection with your audience. Its an essential component of your brands identity and a crucial driver of business growth and success. By clarifying your messaging, maintaining team alignment for message consistency, and employing a strategic approach, you ensure that your brand not only speaks but also engages, converts, and endures.
Is your brand's message getting lost in the shuffle?
EnticEdge can help you clarify your marketing messaging, ensuring your brand's voice is effective. Contact us today to refine your messaging and make every word count!
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