Dear FACTS marketer,
Most marketers are not aware of the importance of crafting a persuasive marketing message that resonates with their target market.
The first step is to identify who you’re trying to reach and what they want or need from your product or service. Once you understand this, it’s easier to create a compelling story that will resonate with them and compel them to take action. This article will provide some tips on how to craft an effective marketing message for any type of business.
How many times have you heard that marketing is more than just marketing tactics? That it’s about understanding your target market and fulfilling their needs or desires? This is marketing 101 stuff but often overlooked– even by experienced marketing professionals.
It’s not that surprising. Many business owners focus on trends and what’s in fashion instead of understanding their target market first. Then they try to force-fit marketing tactics to the marketing message that doesn’t really match. This is marketing suicide!
That’s why in our last newsletter I emphasized the importance of studying your target market and creating a buyer profile BEFORE you do any advertising.
This is the “research data” that we are going to use to create our message. It’s the marketing foundation that allows us to create a persuasive marketing message.
Crafting your marketing message
The key to creating an effective marketing message is to focus on the biggest pain or deepest desire that you uncovered during your research.
What is the biggest pain or deepest desire of your target market?
Are they worried about their financial future and trying to figure out how to retire early?
Or are they looking for an all-in-one marketing solution so they can get rid of the 5 other services they are paying for?
Chances are, the biggest marketing pain point or deepest marketing desire is probably something you can solve.
What about your product or service solves that problem?
How do you package it to fit this marketing message?
Every marketing message has a primary focus. It should be the biggest claim you can make.
It’s what you want to communicate to your audience. Most marketing messages have multiple marketing benefits but only one of these gains top-billing in the marketing message.
This marketing primary focus is a marketing claim. It’s the basis for crafting your marketing message.
Marketing claims are based on benefits or features of the product/service itself but they can also be about what your product has done for other people or how it might do something for them in the future.
Since you’ve done your homework and you know your avatar, knowing what your marketing claim should be is EASY.
Simply promise to solve their biggest, most urgent problem. Or promise to provide them their greatest and most desired outcome.
The marketing claim is promising to give them what THEY SAY THEY WANT MOST.
But, how do you make it compelling?
It’s your hook, or as others call it, your unique mechanism.
What’s the hook that turns them from a prospect into a buyer? What makes them take action and respond to your marketing call to action?
This is where your USP comes in. Textbook definition of USP is Unique Selling Proposition.
But I like to call it the Unique Solution to Problem.
How is your solution to their most pressing problem unique to all the other solutions out there?
Is it:
… Cheaper?
… Faster?
… Stronger?
… More durable?
… More complete?
… the process?
… the fact that it only available from you?
… that is has the best guaranteed?
Remember: all of the above are compared to the currently available solutions aka the competition.
How is your solution to their problem different that all the others available?
Sit down with your team and list out all the ways you are different, better.
Then rank them in the order of importance to your ideal audience because that’s what really matters.
So if you’re with me so far… you should have noticed that a winning marketing message is a process of:
Step 1.) knowing your target market intimately. Discovering what they really desire.
Step 2.) promising to give them that result.
Step 3.) and explain to them how you deliver that result uniquely and superior to other options they have available.
For example:
Let’s say we are an accountant offering bookkeeping and tax returns.
Step 1. Research: Through the research of our target market we discover that our ideal client:
- hates overpaying
- has fears that every time they ask a question, they are going to get billed an hourly rate of the cpa. So they don’t call them. They think that should be included as part of the job of an accountant.
- Feels like their accountants don’t understand their particular situation.
Step 2. Make the most important claim (promise): We get to know your business and have fixed priced accounting.
#3 How we do it uniquely:
The Club Med Of Accounting.
The Only/First Accounting Firm With All-inclusive Pricing
And A We Get-to-know Your Business Guarantee.
This is a subject that we could go on about for days.
But I hope this article gave you enough insight into the importance of understanding your target marketing and how to create a unique, effective marketing message.
Until next time…
See you at the top!
Jeff Paro
