5 Steps to a Winning Marketing Message – Part 1 of 2

You can stand in the winner's circle because of your marketing message.

A winning marketing message is the hook that causes your prospects to want to do business with you, instead of anyone providing similar services. As a student of marketing, I constantly position myself to learn from the best. Today’s post comes from something I picked up in The Marketing Bible, by David Frey. It’s a great resource for anyone who’s looking for a do-it-yourself guide to marketing your enterprise.

Since this is a two-part series, I will start with clearly identifying what an effective marketing message does. The next post will review the five steps necessary to create that message.

Let me preface this by empahsizing how important it is to develop the correct marketing message. In every case…without exception…the number one way to accelerate the growth of your business is to offer real solutions to the people who truly need what you have to offer. Learn to communicate your message in a way that pushes their button on an emotional level, and you are well on your way. Let me illustrate this with a story from one of my clients.

I met with a local real estate agent (in the Atlanta area) who wants to start marketing online. One of my first questions to her was, “what do you specialize in as a real estate agent? Why should I do business with you, as opposed to any other agent who hands me their business card? Her answer was, ‘because I’m trustworthy, and because of my knowledge”.

This kind of answer is not uncommon. Many small business owners have not learned the value of creating a message that is very specific to the people they would like to do business with. Being knowledgeable and trustworthy are both great business traits to have…but they could fit any business owner in any industry.

An effective marketing message is focused on a specific group of people, and it offers very clear solutions and benefits that those people identify with on an emotional level. Let me be more specific.

After digging a little deeper, I learned that her passion is to help 1st time homeowners. At her core, she’s a teacher. She loves to empower others. (Having gone through the home buying process myself…I understand how powerful this is when it comes to helping her get new clients.) Once I became clear about what she was really passionate about, AND skillful in doing, I was able to start outlining what her marketing message needs to look like.

Her marketing message needs to contain the following elements:

• passionate about helping assist first time homeowners
• she provides preparation in the areas of —– —–, the ————–, things to look for in a real estate attorney, and several other distinguishing factors (I’m not being too specific in order to protect her unique selling points)
• anything else that clearly states what her clients will walk away with at the end of the day

Once we finish crafting the message, the next step is promotion. What kills many business owners is…they start promoting a message that has no distinct sound. What they say about themselves sounds just like every other person in their industry. Those are the professionals who end up trying to win clients on price alone.

A winning marketing message must tell the market what pain will be alleviated, what benefits delivered, and what dreams will be realized in order to generate qualified leads.

Example…let’s say that your 37 year old aunt died of pancreatic cancer (as mine did). Ten years later, your mom gets diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. If you just so happened to receive a piece of junk mail that said on the envelope, “European doctor reveals secrets of how to survive pancreatic cancer”, what typ eof emotional response do you think you would have?

Would you open the letter? Of course you would.

Why? The message matched the market (your mom, just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer).

However, that was only the first step in the marketing message. It got you to open the envelope and read the headline of the letter. Now, let’s suppose the headline read, “New Hope for Pancreatic Cancer Sufferers — Recent Tests Point to Potential Cure for Pancreatic Cancer”.

Do you think you would continue reading the letter? Yes!

Suppose as you continued reading, you saw charts, pictures, and testimonials that produced positive reassurance that their claim to cure pancreatic cancer is true. Do you think you would be excited after reading this information? Of course you would!

Now imagine as you got to the bottom of the letter you were given a list of other research companies that were working to find a cure for pancreatic cancer, but were told that only one (the author of the letter) had unraveled the gene sequence that held a key to a cure. Do you think you would call their toll-free number to get their free report? Absolutely!

You have just witnessed a complete marketing message in action.

Tomorrow, we will review the five steps necessary to develop a winning marketing message for your business.