Jean McIntyre
By Jean McIntyre
As I sat down to write this post today I have to confess I had a blank mind – nothing to write about.
Those of you who know me well know that it’s unusal for me to have writer’s block – I’ve always got something to say. I started to think then, what do I tell my clients when they aren’t sure what to write on their website, on a blog or in a newspaper advertisement. It’s pretty simple – GET BACK TO BASICS!
What do I mean by that? I mean that every business should have a positioning statement and key messages that communicate to its market exactly what benefits that business can deliver for the customer and how it is different from its competition.
Once you have developed these messages then they go absolutely everywhere. You use the same messages whether you are writing a radio ad, updating your Facebook page, writing an email to a prospect or introducing yourself at a networking event.
How to develop your key messages
“But how do I go about developing my messages?” You might ask.
The answer to this is pretty simple – ask your friendly marketing manager to help you 
If you want to have a go at doing it yourself there are a few key steps to the process that you need to work through to make sure your messages will work for you in your market.
- Understand your business
- Get to know your market
- Articulate its needs
- Identify what you can deliver
- Make a statement
Understand Your Business
The first step is to get clear about who you are, what your strengths and experience are and why you do what you do. Understand what your goals are and how much money you are prepared to spend to achieve them. This helps you to be able to match your offering to the market. Your skills, knowledge, experience and your brand are the things that attract customers to you and start to form your offering to the market.
Get to Know Your Market
Research, research, research. That’s the marketer’s catch cry. First, get a picture of what your market looks like. How big is it? That will help you work out if it can deliver your financial goals.
Use the ABS and industry reports to get an idea of the size and makeup – age, gender, location, income, family situation etc. This helps with planning.
Next, find out what makes them tick. You can do surveys, read studies, hold focus groups or even sit and watch them in the shopping centre. What and how do they buy? How do they choose their suppliers? What do they read and watch? What activities do they participate in? This starts to tell you how you can reach them and get your products to them.
Articulate the Market’s Needs
This is probably the most important step. Once you know what your market looks like – it’s time to get inside its head and heart. Marketing is all about feelings – so you need to have a good idea about what’s important to people and what they need. If for example you find out that the most important thing to your market is that they are well liked by others – then you can start to think about products you can offer them (within your expertise) to help them acheive this.
Marketing is about making people feel good so that they’ll buy your products.
Identify what you can deliver
Once you know your market and what it needs you need to examine your business’ strengths and see what products you can develop to meet their needs. Part of that is about how you package what you do to appeal to them.
Let’s say for argument’s sake that your expertise is Human Resources and you offer a consulting service. You might think that all HR services are pretty much the same. That’s not the case. If you understand your market really well and know where the gaps are in meeting its needs, you can develop specialist HR services that are delivered in a way that better does it better than your competitors.
Make a statement
The last step is to write it all down. Come up with on short statement of 5 to 7 words that encapsulates what’s special about your business with regard to meeting your market’s needs. That’s your positioning statement that goes with your logo.
Then write down some short supporting statements about what you deliver and how it makes your market feel – how it will make its member’s lives better. Use language your market is comfortable with and make it brief and simple.
Use it Everywhere
Once you have developed your key messages you can then apply these to every communication you have.
That’s how you develop your brand to be recognisable as one that will meet your market’s needs.
I’d be interested to hear your experiences of how you developed your company’s key messages. If you need help, don’t hesitate to give me a call.
Jean Mc
PS: If I don’t talk to you beforehand – have a great Christmas. Check out my Christmas video!!!
