Six steps to developing a marketing message that sells

Too often, companies spend a lot of time and money developing their logo and the graphic appearance of their promotional materials (important aspects of effective marketing), while only giving superficial consideration to their marketing message, an equally important component of promoting your business successfully. . At least as much time should be spent developing your marketing message as developing the graphic elements or what is commonly known as “look and feel.”

Here’s a six-step process that will help ensure your marketing message sells.

1. Grab the attention of your target market with a headline that clearly defines who you’re talking to. If you’re selling to retire, your headline might be something like “If you’re 65 or older.”

2. Identify the problems, symptoms, problems, needs, and wants of your target market. You need to start with where they are and then move them to the action you want them to take. To continue our example, if you’re looking for retired people to volunteer for a cause, your subheading might read, “And looking for a way to make a difference in the lives of others.”

3. Provide a brief description of the product. These are the characteristics of your product or service. Be sure to describe the characteristics that are important to the target market you are communicating with, and to describe them from the target market’s perspective. In other words, talk about what your customer is buying, not what you’re selling.

4. Describe the benefit and value the customer will get from buying your product or service (or taking the action you want them to take). Again, these benefits should be relevant to the customer group you are selling to.

5. Give credibility to your message. This could include testimonials, case studies, or money-back guarantees.

6. Indicate specifically the action you want the recipient of your message to take. For example, “Pick up the phone now and call 111-222-3333 to register” is much more likely to lead to action than simply giving a phone number and assuming that if the person wants to register they will call the number. Whenever possible, you’ll also want to offer multiple ways for people to take action (ie phone, email, fax, snail mail, and website).

Follow these six easy steps, and you’ll have a marketing message that sells. And the best thing about investing in developing your marketing message, just like your logo, you’ll be able to – and want to – use it on all your promotional materials from your 30-second introduction to your website.