Developing Your Unique Marketing Message
When you sit down to develop your content calendar or write a blog post, what details do you think about? Do you think about your marketing calendar, your upcoming promotions, or topics that are coming to mind?
These are all important aspects that you should take into consideration, but they should not be the basis of your marketing message. Rather, think about the person on the other side of the screen.
Who are they? What challenges are they facing right now? What are their goals, and what will help them succeed? Where are they sitting – are they flipping through their emails first thing in the morning, scrolling social media over lunch, or trying to focus for a few minutes after dropping their kids off at practice?
That person – the human that you want to connect with – is the person you are writing for. Your messaging should include important topics and your upcoming promotions, but it should be centered around a real person with real life situations.
This is often easier said than done, though, so I would like to offer a few tips to get you started. If you would like more in-depth training, check out our newest course, Design Your Ideal Messaging! In it, you will discover the strategies, tools, and systems my team and I use to create effective messaging – and you will hear from both me and some of the members of the UYB Marketing Team!
Who Are You Speaking To?
Understanding that person on the other side of the screen – your ideal client – is key to developing your unique message. After all, if you don’t know who you’re writing for, it is quite the challenge to communicate!
Often, clients ask me why they should really drill down into defining their ideal client. After all, a sale is a sale – and sales are good! However, there is a lot more to consider. Think about the last few sales calls you have been on: have all of your prospects been well qualified and ready to work with you? Or have you felt the need to talk them into hiring you and chase after them for the sale?
When your messaging attracts the “wrong” audience, you are likely to also attract prospects who either don’t need your service or product or who are simply not ready to buy. While it’s a good thing to want to serve everyone, it’s just not possible – and spending time on a sales call that doesn’t benefit either party is a waste of both your time and theirs.
The solution lies largely in your messaging. When you have the right messaging that targets the right people, your profitability will very likely increase!
There are a number of steps in the process of defining your ideal client, but one of the most important steps is understanding who you love to work with and who you can best serve. Take a moment to consider your A+ clients – you know, the clients you loved working with. The clients you wish you had dozens of.
What are some things they have in common? Were they in similar professions or similar stages of life? Did they have any shared interests or live in a certain region of the country? Understanding these key patterns will help you a lot when you go through the process of defining your ideal client. (In Design Your Ideal Messaging, our Client Engagement Specialist will join me to lead you through each step!)
What Is Your Message?
After you have a good understanding of who you are writing for or speaking to, it’s time to craft your actual message.
One challenge that many business owners face is understanding how to communicate the value of their products, services, or team. You have spent so much time and effort to put a rockstar team together and develop the services or products that you know will make a huge difference in the lives of the right people…but if you can’t communicate that in a way that will really resonate with your audience, they won’t have a reason to follow you, connect with you, or hire you.
One lesson that I learned the hard way: it’s not enough to have conviction that your products or services are the best. You have to be able to draw your audience in and build rapport, to show them that you understand their needs and stand ready to meet them. You have to show them why you are the one that they want to work with.
Again, there are several steps to this process, but one key step is to think about what sets you apart. After all, there are a lot of other businesses in your industry; why should your ideal client choose you?
What do you bring to the table that your competition doesn’t?
One important note: when you think through this exercise, the point isn’t to one-up your competition; you are not trying to show why they are inferior. Rather, you are working through the process of what makes you and your business unique. You are figuring out why you are the best choice for your ideal client.
This will become a key factor in your messaging.
There are other steps to the process, of course (I can’t fit them all into a blog post!). In Design Your Ideal Messaging, our Copywriter will join me to bring you through the process. You will also get all the resources you need, along with some amazing bonuses to help you plan, craft, and publish the messaging that will resonate with your ideal audience!