The Four Pillars of Messaging to Jumpstart Your Marketing
Marketing experts, startup founders, C-level executives and beyond frequently ask what the secret is to creating effective messaging that lands strategic stories and ongoing news cycles. With so many companies looking to break through the clutter and stand out, the approach has to be strategic as well as thoughtfully developed and executed. At the end of the day, it’s all about messaging and how you tell your story in a way that sets you apart from the competition.
There are four key pillars in communications and messaging that need to be explored before seeking coverage in a world where reporters receive about 100 pitches every single hour of the day. Your messaging has to be different, defensible, disruptive and direct.
Honing in on the four pillars will not only help you land more stories and interest from the editorial community, your efforts will also help to inform your marketing and sales messages as well. The four pillars will also gain you more visibility online and drive revenue.
So What Makes You Different?
Understanding what makes you different and better than the competition is one of the most important elements in messaging development and something that the editorial world will drill founders and CEOs on all of the time. People often think they know what their key differentiators are, only to learn that their competitors are saying the exact same thing.
This is where research comes into play. Check out the competition and scour their marketing materials, press releases, newsletters and editorial placements to better understand how they are positioning their products and what they believe makes them different. Then take the time to use this intelligence to inform how you set yourself apart from your competitors with a message that communicates differentiation.
Is Your Message Defensible?
We conducted an exercise recently for a new client, only to learn that their top three differentiators were being claimed by the competition as well. Our two teams went back to the drawing board. We looked more closely at the products and the team behind the organization, and uncovered a unique blend of proprietary technology paired with human intellect.
Then, we asked whether this combination was actually defensible. Could they own this message for an extended period of time without the competition sweeping in and claiming the exact same thing? The answer was yes. The client’s technology is loaded with patents. That gives their team of analysts the power to look at data in a very different way and convert this data into unique insights that are used by marketers and media buyers.
Patents represent one of the best ways to defend a position, but there are other ways too. You can be the first to market with a new technology that could take a long time to replicate, own a majority share of customers within a specific category or have the ability to beat out competitors on price because of design and production efficiencies. The key here is to pinpoint the differentiators and then ensure that you can defend that position when called to the carpet.
Are You Disrupting the Marketplace?
Disruption is also a key element in creating and defending your position in the marketplace. While not every company will fully disrupt a market, there are many examples of companies and products that have successfully changed key categories and shifted consumer behavior.
Some of the most notable examples include sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb. Apple changed the way we communicate with the introduction of the iPhone. Now, according to TechCrunch, the global app economy is estimated to be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021.
Not every company is disruptive, but look very closely under the hood as you delve into messaging development. Maybe your disruption lives within a patent, maybe you are changing the way consumers are behaving or you’ve completely altered something in a person’s daily life in some unique way. Work to identify your disruption. This focus helps to define the leaders and stragglers in an industry, set you apart and deposition you from the competition.
Are You Being Direct?
You have taken the time to identify what makes you different, you are now able to defend that differentiation and also define why it is disruptive. Now you need to be sure that your messaging is direct. Get to the point without flowery marketing speak, buzzwords and claims that cannot be defended with actual data. Stay away from marketing terms such as seamless integration, robust technology platform, and harnessing strategic insights to drive optimal ROI. We see and hear them all of the time and editors, customers, and the business community at large have become immune to hyperbole.
Write it down, read it out loud and then ask yourself, “Is this how I would explain my company, product or service in a way that a layperson would clearly understand?” Share it with your friends, clients and partners to ensure when you hit that send button, publish that blog post or print that marketing material that the words are different, defensible, disruptive and direct.
Be confident the story you are telling is the right one and hits on all four key pillars. There are millions of other emails waiting to be read and marketing messages dying to be heard. So make sure that your positioning and messaging rises to the top, because you have limited chances in this vast sea of noise.
