How do you go beyond basic messaging to create messaging that converts and wins?
It all leads back to business goals but also the where/why of your messaging. What I mean by that is messaging plays a key role in a multitude of assets, resources, and content. It would be unfair to ask your sales enablement messaging to 'convert' whereas you absolutely would have that expectation when it came to demand generation right? I think what spans any 'use' is something that is compelling, intriguing, thought provoking but relevant enough to have an end consumer/customer want to take that next step. They want to learn more! So ensuring you have that 'hook' is key!
Research!
Basic messaging is usually written quickly, based on what is believed to be true or what a business wants customers to know about their company and product.
Messaging that has an impact comes from understanding your audience the customer research, and speaking their language.
Find trends in your top-performing messaging that you can reuse in a new way.
Create a list of 2-3 components that your messaging always has.
Customize for each demo, considering everything from user journey to age to gender to location
Test, test, test!
It depends how many cycles you can afford to spend, but my ideal flow is a five-step process:
Draft positioning strategy and possible positioning angles
Draft creative copy with the support of AI tools, colleagues, and copywriters
Test different succinct messages against each other in a market survey, ideally using a methodology like MaxDiff
Revisit your Strategy and Messaging Framework, with the full marketing funnel in mind
Test messages in product or in ads
I covered most of these steps in other answers, but the part that I haven’t mentioned yet is how to revisit your strategy and messaging framework with the marketing funnel in mind (bolded above). What I mean by that is, some value props and messages will be a stronger fit for a consideration stage, vs. a trial stage, vs. a purchase conversion stage.
If you spend a good amount of time conversing with your customers and prospective customers, you’ll likely have some intuition on this. We are currently refreshing our messaging and I’ve just gone through this sorting exercise. Here's how it went:
Top of Funnel: As I was thinking about our brand level messaging, I reflected on what I know about some of the common “objections” or reasons for not choosing to use Quizlet (at least in our priority markets). In deciding on which of the top messages would be strongest in building awareness and consideration, I wanted to choose value props and benefits that combatted some of those perceptions among non-users and lapsed users that Quizlet is not good for certain subjects. This helped me pick brand level messaging that was more expansive and told a story that goes beyond our typical subjects served and beyond our current target customer.
Middle of Funnel: Then, once you’ve garnered initial interest with a bigger picture narrative that expands what you're known for, you build your mid-funnel messaging to drive engagement. For this, I leaned more on past A/B test results in our product to hone in on clear, simple, functional messages and CTAs. We've found that it's important not to oversell at this stage and to mainly do whatever you can to get out of the customer's way.
Bottom of Funnel: Lastly, no messaging journey is complete without an actual purchase conversion. Since Quizlet is a freemium business, we need to focus on distinctive premium messaging that sells features and benefits that you can’t get with the free product. This type of messaging often has a stronger promise built into it, with clear and compelling reasons-to-believe.
Once you’ve scaffolded your full-funnel story, you can still continue to do testing to validate your hypotheses, but it’s also important to make sure to look at it all together to make sure that it coheres. There are absolutely scenarios where your messaging should be pretty similar through all those phases. It depends a bit on your audience, your product purchase flows, and your business model.
Your messaging should always aim to influence and shape the market's perception of your product. Good messaging accelerates trust between your company / product and your buyer, which in turn leads to demand, adoption, revenue, etc. Your audience is multi-faceted and so your messaging should be as well.
Strong messaging addresses the following points in a clear and compelling way:
Persona: Who is the target audience?
Job to be done: What is their "job to be done"?
Pain points: What's their challenge to accomplishing that?
Differentiated solution: How can you help them solve that problem in a unique and better way than anyone else?
Features: What technical features prove that solution?
Benefits: What's the value they get?
As your go-to-market evolves and matures, you can layer on additional lenses such as regional nuances, business size, and industry. The more personal and relevant your messaging is, the more impact it will have on your buyer.
Identify the problem you're aiming to solve (their pain point), discuss the ideal state (what could it be like if it were solved), and how you can solve it. Then distill this down and down and down until you have a short statement that you can use in marketing.
When thinking about your marketing as a whole, it's helpful to think about the key questions your customers may ask and need to have answered before buying your product. Make a list of these and break them out into groups: 1) essential and must be answered to buy, 2) helpful, and 3) nice to have. Then, make sure you are addressing all of the essential questions throughout your marketing funnel, and sprinkle in as much of the helpful and nice to have as you can.
For example, your top-of-funnel message (maybe it's a social ad) may start with an attention-grabbing statement that addresses their key pain point, then start to address their key questions (how much is it, how does it work, does it work for other people, how can I pay, is it safe, etc, etc) throughout all of your marketing messaging as the user moves from that first interaction into other marketing material (landing pages, emails, etc). You want your buyer to have all of their information so that when they get to the conversion button, they are ready to hit "buy".
Here's a template I like for ad copy:
(Insert Clever Hook)
(Social Proof)
✓ Benefit 1
✓ Benefit 2
✓ Benefit 3
✓ (optional) benefit 4
(Social Proof)
(CTA)
Example:
We’ll let you in on a little secret—you don’t have to go to the salon to get salon-quality hair color.
Our 55+ shades are:
✨Vibrant and multi-dimensional
🌿Full of luxurious, nourishing ingredients
👏🏽Quick and easy to apply
“I’m so happy with how my results turned out. Feeling like myself again, thank you so much!” -Heather F.
Skip the salon. Get gorgeous hair color at home, starting at only $22.
Make sure your messaging is tailored to the needs of the buyer. It should be specific, concise, and direct.
Make it very clear what it is that you are selling and what the value will be for the buyer. Then introduce what could happen if they don't address that challenge.
Add a timeliness to the offer - ie. X number of seats remaining, one day left to register, etc.
Recognize that "conversion" looks different at different stages of the funnel. Getting someone to watch a video or register for a webinar is easier than getting someone to talk to a Salesperson on the phone. So set those expectations and KPIs appropriately.
Create content that will engage and provide value to the prospect early so you build trust and credibility. Then it's easier to build up to that higher value ask.
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