How to Most Successfully Communicate With Prospective and Existing Customers
Use this marketing strategy to maximize the perceived value (what prospective and existing customers are willing to pay) for your business or organization's product or service.
Note: Key messaging is one of the many frameworks featured in Growth Marketing SuperBoost.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this article on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Once you have your brand essence (purpose, vision, mission, credibility, and values) in place, you can deepen and extend it with external-facing key messaging — including online assets like your website and social media accounts, as well as packaging, events, advertising, and everywhere else you promote and position your business or organization.
Some businesses and organizations are tempted to skip straight to designing their visual identity (logo, colors, et cetera) once they have their brand essence, but at the Growth Marketing Institute, we believe that there are a few crucial steps to complete before a visual identity.
Don’t get us wrong: Things like your logo, colors, and typography are vital to your brand, but they are ultimately a visual translation of your brand’s essence and messaging. If you do not know what you are trying to communicate, it is difficult to create a visual identity that embodies it.
That said, you may already have created your visual identity before you solidified these elements. But if you are doing this work now, it is important that your brand essence, messaging, and visual identity align — regardless of the order in which you tackle them.
Your key messaging consists of your brand’s personality, tone of voice, what we call “making the story bigger,” key messaging pillars, key messaging, and origin and conversion stories, as defined by:
1) Brand Personality
This is how a business or organization expresses itself. There are 12 brand personality types. Most businesses or organizations choose one or two. At the Growth Marketing Institute, we chose Hero (strength, redemption, mastery) and Sage (wisdom, intelligence, knowledge). Be sure to Google “brand personality types” to read about the 12 different ones and select one or two that align with your business or organization’s brand.
2) Tone of Voice
This is the way that your business or organization speaks to its prospective and existing customers, and affects how people perceive and respond to it. Nike is positive and inspiring, Harley Davidson is strong and aggressive, Tiffany & Co. is elegant and sweet, Old Spice is absurd and weird, and BMW is proud and exclusive.
At the Growth Marketing Institute, we use Nielsen Norman Group’s four dimensions of tone of voice to map where a business or organization falls within four categories: funny versus serious, formal versus casual, respectful versus irreverent, enthusiastic versus matter-of-fact.
Be sure to Google “Nielsen Norman Group’s four dimensions of tone of voice” to read about each one and determine where your business or organization falls on the scales.
3) “Making the Story Bigger”
Branding works best when you "make the story bigger" than your business or organization and its product or service.
Think about the overarching story you are telling your customers today. Then think about how you can make this story “bigger” so it can better relate to and connect with customers.
For example, Elementor is a website building software. Their overarching story is: “Build, manage and host stunning websites.” To make this story bigger, Elementor could say: "Grow your business online."
4) Key Messaging Pillars
These are the main topics or subjects of your “bigger” story, and they will guide the themes of all your key messaging, such as social media content, website copywriting, advertising, and so forth.
To use the example above, Elementor's “bigger” story is now: “Grow your business online.” Therefore, its key messaging pillars could be growth, business, and the internet.
5) Key Messaging
Key messaging is most effective when you understand what unique value your business or organization provides. The first framework consists of two parts that help uncover the unique qualities of your brand, so you can translate them into key messages.
Start by making two columns, one titled “Highlight Feature” (the most outstanding features of your product or service) and the other “Customer Benefit and Description,” and fill them in. Then, make another two columns, one titled “Customer Benefit” (from the previous two columns) and the other “Key Messages,” and fill them in.
Finally, make two more columns, one titled “Force to Address” and the other “Key Messages.” In the “Force to Address” column, list the two forces that prompt customers to switch a product or service, as well as the two forces that prevent customers from switching (four forces in total).
The first force is “push from the current solution” and your key messages should answer why the current solution that the customer is using falls short of satisfying them. The second force is “magnetism of a new solution” and your key messages should be your highlight features.
The third force is “anxiety of the new solution” and your key messages should describe what makes customers anxious about switching solutions. Lastly, the fourth force is “habit of the current solution” and your key messages should address specific ways that your offering improves on a core feature or attribute of their current solution.
6) Origin Story
This gives your brand a soul and emotionally connects with its customers. Write your brand’s origin story as the narrative of your business or organization’s journey to where it is today.
7) Conversion Story
This wins the trust and confidence of your customers, by highlighting the transformation customers undergo when they buy, use, and/or engage with your business or organization’s product or service.
(Think: “jobs to be done” and “elements of value.”)
Write your brand’s conversion story as a narrative of your customers’ journey to where they want to go or who they want to become with the help of your business or organization.
There’s more where this came from at the Growth Marketing Institute.