You’ve probably already heard about the 5-minute (or 30-second) elevator speech proposition. A speaker or coach might ask you to write down a few words or phrases to capture what your company does and what you offer your customer. It has to be short and pithy, but it also has to get straight to the point. It’s what your brand is all about, but it’s often the first step toward defining your marketing strategy and developing your messaging framework.
What Is Messaging?
If you don’t have a sense of what’s most compelling about your brand, it’s time to figure it out. What’s your blurt-out-loud statement that defines how you want your customers to see you and your brand? It can take time and energy to figure out what you stand for, but it’s important. You will not succeed if you continue to believe that you’re able to target everyone and everything.
You need to have a marketing strategy, with a messaging framework, to achieve the kind of success you need and want. Carefully consider your customer segmentation/targets. How will you segment your audience members, and how will you target your messaging to those customers who will respond and buy your products and services?
How Does Messaging Help You Position Your Brand?
You offer a unique product or service, and that’s something to celebrate. It’s exciting to consider how your unique value proposition will resonate with your audience. How will you solve their problem(s)? What is it about the offer that sets you apart from other brands or products? With the right strategic positioning and messaging, you’ll be able to deliver what your audience needs for the brand’s message or content map.
A content map is also an excellent tool that effectively leads your audience through the buying journey. Look at it as a Positioning Pyramid and Messaging Map, starting at the top with the brand name and logo. You get the following segments as you move down the pyramid:
The Strapline: This is a short statement that tells your audience what you’re about.
The Positioning Statement: Here’s where your elevator pitch comes in. You describe why you’re special and what sets you apart.
Website Homepage: What’s that 15-second pitch that could reassure your audience they’ve landed in the right place?
Reasons to Believe: Here’s the proof statement. It’s what might make your audience believe that what you’ve said up until now is true.
If your messaging up until now has been effective, you’ll get them to respond. So, how does that happen?
How Will Your Audience Respond?
As you position your brand messaging and begin to target your ideal audience, you also need to get into their heads. What are they looking for? Is your messaging clear? Think about your best customer and then focus on whether they really would respond to your messaging. Will they be confused, or will they just think that it’s not for them? If you’ve crafted your message map in the right way, you should know how it’s most likely to be effective in leading your audience to become buyers.
Why Is a Workshop Important to Messaging?
Even if you’ve thought about your company’s strategic positioning and messaging strategy in the past, just thinking about it is not enough. You need to refine that strategy. Then you need to put it into practice.
The best way to make your strategy succinct and powerful is to get input from a room of fellow marketing gurus in a workshop setting. You need that outside perspective to ensure your pitch is not vague or myopic.
Why Do You Need the Positioning and Messaging Workshop (PMW)?
The Positioning and Messaging Workshop (PMW) is the best way to delve into the basics of positioning and messaging in an interactive work session. Even if you’ve been thinking about adjusting your messaging strategy for some time, this is the opportunity to really work out the nuts and bolts of what you need to do, say, and even how you need to think about it.
What Is This Messaging Workshop All About?
It’s simple. We start at the very beginning with our Messaging workshop. We go over value propositions, focus areas, and themes with your branding and messaging, but we also discuss your target audience and how to segment your target market. Then, we talk about how you’ll align your messaging with your ideal target market.
How Do You Position Yourself to Reach Your Audience?
You don’t just reach your audience by “magic,” although sometimes you might get lucky. To reach your audience in a strategic way, you need to focus on the big picture. Why might they be interested in your products and services? But, also, what personae or brand voice will best resonate with their needs and desires? It’s how they see you and your brand.
You can use a content map as a plan that takes into account your audience and then delivers your content to the right people at the right time. You can use your content map to target your current content to your customers, but you can also look at your content map to fill the gaps.
What Does Messaging Have to Do With Reaching Your Audience?
As you focus on reaching your audience with the “right” brand voice, you’ve got to deliver the right mix of content to the right group of people, ideally at the right time. If you’re done your job right and really put thought and research into your delivery, you will convert those audience members into customers.
Whether or not you succeed comes down to how well you’ve delivered on determining those customer segmentation/targets. Your strategic positioning and messaging really matter in your overall marketing strategy.
Sign Up for the Positioning and Messaging Workshop (PMW)
It all sounds easy, even simplistic. But you probably won’t get it right the first time. That’s why our Positioning and Messaging Workshop (PMW) is so important. We walk you through the process, talk through some potential pitfalls, and offer moral support as you figure out the best way to create and deliver the right messaging to your audience in a way that just works.
Book a workshop with Fifth & Cor today!