Is your messaging struggling to make an impact?
Updated: Oct 24, 2022
Revenue growth and marketing efforts can all but be lost if your messaging isn’t making the impact it should be. Whether that be because your tone of voice isn’t aligned correctly, the hierarchy of your messaging doesn’t stack up, or you could even be speaking in the wrong places! It’s frustrating we know, but there is a clear formula to follow to get you on track.
It’s helpful to consider that your business and target audience is constantly changing, that’s why marketing research is an ongoing process. Today, large companies use social listening to keep them in the loop with the thinking of their customers. And so, the burning question is, how can you create messaging that provokes action and engagement, thus driving revenue?
We believe in clear and concise messaging that isn’t trying to be overly clever, doesn’t make your audience work hard to understand what you offer and importantly, is customer-focused. To achieve this you’ll need to really understand your target personas. This will then allow your business to create messaging that aligns correctly with potential customers.
What to do first? Step back and look at your data.
Using google analytics, ad campaign data and any data available from your website backend should be able to help you find the all-important conversion statistics. By assessing the conversion rate of your marketing and then the conversion rate of your website, you’ll be able to see if there is a problem. Shopify states that conversions below 3% are average, top e-commerce stores sit at 5% plus. Even though you might be a service-based business, you can still figure out how many enquiries per number of websites visits you achieve.
Using this data, you can uncover valuable information about your audience to determine which channels drive the most traffic to your website. Understanding the channels that perform best for your business will help identify new opportunities and weaknesses. As an example, if LinkedIn is delivering more referrals at half the effort of Instagram, then perhaps, LinkedIn is where your focus should align.
Market Research
The aim of your marketing research is to create a clear picture of your target audience and personas. In practical terms, you’ll already feel you have a very good understanding of general demographics such as age, location, gender etc. But you might not have thought about the personas, for example:
Andy (Consumer persona)
Owns a dog
Enjoys sports
Very conscious of the environment
Works from home
Drives an economical car
By understanding your personas you can put yourself in their shoes and start to understand the challenges your product/service is solving in their day to day lives.
Create Your Powerful Messaging
If your messaging can’t be understood by someone with very little knowledge of your industry, then it’s too complicated or missing the point. And because of this, you’ll see low conversions on your website and a high bounce rate from your home page. We can help!
1: Explain clearly what your customer is buying from you
The customer shouldn’t have to work hard to understand what you are selling. For example, a shoe made with recyclable materials shouldn’t say “Every time you buy our products you are contributing to sustainability” as this is a benefit. But instead “Shoes made from recyclable materials helping you to make green footprints”
2: What problems are you solving?
People relate to problems and often buy because they need a problem solved. With your persona research, you hopefully understand the problems your audience are facing. Make sure to include these in your messaging.
For example, An accountancy software could state “Spending too much time on spreadsheets that always go wrong?” or a Healthy Food business could state “Not sleeping well or feeling tired a lot of the time” etc.
3. How are you improving their life by using this?
And then the key benefit of your solution. For example, the Healthy Food business would finish with “Our foods will energise your life” or for a Renewable Energy firm “Carbon-Free Energy Supply”.
Is your messaging consistent in tone of voice - creating trust and legitimacy? The tone of voice can be evolved with the choice of words, brand personality and emotional tone. Without negating the relevant use of emojis to inject human feeling. Assess the messaging you’ve developed and make sure it is relatable to your audience, if not, tweak it and tweak it again until you are hitting the right tone.
Where is your audience?
Traditionally B2B conversations take place across LinkedIn and Twitter, with more consumer-based conversations happening across Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. However, depending on the age demographic you may also want to consider TikTok or more niche platforms that are developing. The key takeaway, create the content to suit your audience and deliver it in the places your audience spends the most time.
Create your funnel
Now you’ve really honed in on your target audience, developed powerful messaging and researched the channels that will be most effective for you, don’t let that effort go to waste by deploying a half-baked marketing funnel.
We’ll leave the bulk of marketing funnels for another blog, but for now, let’s just state a couple of quick considerations. Your customer will go through three phases pre-sale, these are discovery, enlightenment and conversion. The top of your funnel, middle and bottom will need content and messaging that correctly aligns with your customer as they move through these stages.
To summarise
If your marketing messaging isn’t working, look at the data and confirm your thoughts. Research your target personas and sharpen your messaging and ensure it is focused on what the customer is getting, the problems you are solving and the benefits they’ll receive. Apply the powerful messaging in a marketing funnel that delivers content to where your customers spend their time.
Book a free 30 minute ‘holistic digital marketing’ session today or download our latest guide ‘5 step plan to transform your business with holistic digital marketing.
