Create a Strong Message
Anyone who has started their own business can speak to the importance of messaging. How we talk about our products or services can be the difference between surviving and thriving as a business.
But how do we do it? What’s the difference between an amazing message and a boring one? Indeed, it sometimes feels a little like alchemy with the secrets hidden away for only a select few to access and benefit from.
Well, there’s good news. It’s not easy, but it’s also not a secret. Building amazing messaging for your business is all about several key concepts. But before we get into those, let’s talk about why messaging is so important.
First, messaging helps you connect with your customers deeply and emotionally. It helps build bonds between you and your customers that are deeper than a simple exchange of money for a product or service.
Second, a consistent message is a stable message. As your business grows, you’ll need this solid foundation to keep your efforts and the perceptions your customers have of your business healthy.
Third, consistent messaging projects confidence and clarity to strategic partners. Your partners will be able to know and understand who you are and what you stand for quickly and easily.
How do we build it? Let’s start with a few principles:
Focus on the Problem in Front of Their Face
Keep it Simple and Clear
Keep it Consistent
Use It Everywhere
The Problem in Front of Their Face
As the people who dream up and build our companies, we know the intimate details, the huge potential to solve big problems that we’re building.
For our customers, however, the concern is what is standing right in front of them.
We find that our clients often spend a lot of time talking shop about the deeper elements of their products and services when, in reality, what they need to be doing is talking about the problem in front of their customer’s face.
The harsh truth is that no one cares about your fancy product or service if it can’t solve a burning, immediate problem. Once you address that problem, you can start telling them about all of the other great things your product or service does.
But until then, stay with the pain when building your messaging.
Keep it simple.
This one should speak for itself.
Our brains consume a HUGE number of calories each day. For that reason, we’re hardwired to avoid complexity and are always seeking shortcuts and heuristics that can help us make complex concepts simple.
With this in mind, how should we build our messaging?
Simply.
One of the challenges with messaging is creating a simple statement that encapsulates a big idea. Following on the previous section, it helps to know that you don’t have to tell customers everything about your product or service right out of the gate.
Instead, you should focus your messaging on that burning problem, then distill it into a message that is clear and simple.
Keep it consistent.
I’ve harped on this over and over during this post, but it bears repeating again: your messaging should be consistent.
Generally speaking, consistency is key to building a clear message that connects with your target audience. Now, there are some occasions when it makes sense to mix it up, but nearly all of those occasions take place beyond the startup phase, after you’ve gained some traction, and you begin to target different customer segments or even expand your product/service line up.
When you’re starting out, however, keep it simple and keep it consistent.
Use it everywhere.
You’ve put all this effort into building a strong message, so use it!
Social media, your website, during speaking and networking events, on your business card…the possibilities are endless.
The point here is, your message, as far as your target audience is concerned, inseparable from you. So lean into that and use your messaging all over the place.
This may feel a little awkward at first, almost like it’s scripted. However, it will start to feel more natural and you’ll begin to notice the effect of simple, clear, consistent, and frequent messaging sooner than later.
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We’ve covered two steps you need to take before building your software product, Test and Validate, and Build a Strong Message.
Next week, we’re tackling the third step, Start Thinking About Monetization NOW.