3 Ways To Craft A Compelling Marketing Message

An old adage says that you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. That’s a good one. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell to someone – you need to really understand that person.

How easy is it to miss? Well, a long time ago, I wrote a TV infomercial script selling a home-mortgage-related product.

The script called for the spokesperson to walk into a living room, saying, “Here, in a typical American home…” While the producer filmed this line with the spokesperson stepping into a white-carpeted room with a grand piano as its centerpiece! How many people do you know that own a grand piano? It was completely out of touch.

Now more than ever that is a red flag.

Your marketing message is often a concise reveal of what your customer wants, needs, and desires. That message will lose all its meaning if you fail to convince your customers that you understand them.

You need to understand your demographic, their preferences, and what your target market needs from your product. Tailor your message to resonate with their interests and address their pain points.

If you’re still lacking clarity on this subject, you can use this special checklist of smart questions to help you get into your customer's shoes.

In most cases, you may already have a lot of demographic and statistical data about your customers or prospects available. The truth is that you cannot realistically target everyone, however, a deep understanding of your target market ensures you are emotionally connected to their needs so you can build meaningful messaging.

Just as you have to crawl inside your ideal customer’s mind in heart, you’ll also want to crawl around in your product or service, as well.

Promoting your business in one single sentence may seem like an intimidating task, but plenty of other companies have done the same before – with varying levels of success, of course.

Now, I’m going to show you one example that I’ve been using for years: the message that built Domino’s from one failing pizza joint to a major player.

​“Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.”

Only ten words, yet these ten words brilliantly incorporate two product benefits with the meaningful specific time frame of delivery within thirty minutes – not quick, fast, or too soon, but precisely thirty minutes.

This may not seem all that special to you if you are someone unaware of Domino’s history, so I’ll give you a brief rundown.

All of the early Domino’s locations, including the first one, were in college towns. This meant buildings full of people smoking the same illegal substances, and that had the side effect of needing large quantities of carbohydrates in a hurry.

The main issue was speed and the fact that most people who needed them were not in a state or position to go get them.

That’s why Domino’s message didn’t have anything about the pizza’s recipe, or how it’s better than anything else. All that mattered to their targets was speed, and that was exactly what Domino’s offered.

And so, therein lies a great example of knowing what you can offer, as well as a deep understanding of your audience’s demographic and needs. Your marketing message doesn’t have to be a grand promise, it just needs to be something relevant and clear.

One mistake that some businesses make is using big words and too much technical jargon, thus you end up with a message that lacks emotion, doesn’t sound real, and just doesn’t connect with your customers.

Creating a compelling marketing message isn’t about sounding intelligent, but rather about how you can intelligently convey your brand’s abilities in a way that makes customers take action.

Doing this often requires you to write in your target market’s voice.

There are plenty of ways to do this, from participating in online forums, joining relevant Facebook groups, and just looking at the content you believe your target market would frequent.

All this will help you build a vocabulary tailored to your specific target market, and from there, it’ll be easy to figure out how to word your message in a way that will catch their attention, let their guard down, and take action.

95% of purchasing decisions take place in the subconscious mind, after all.

When you are communicating in their language, you can create an emotional connection, and an emotional connection is the most predictive driving force behind purchasing decisions. In this digital age, where consumers are seeing hundreds to thousands of ads every day – that kind of emotional bond is crucial.

By combining these strategies and adapting them to your specific industry and audience, you can create a compelling marketing message that captures attention, resonates with your audience and motivates them to take the desired action.

I would also suggest regularly reviewing and refining your messaging based on performance data and customer feedback – do A/B testing on different variations of your message to see which resonates best.

If you’d like to learn more market messaging tips or just anything about marketing in general, then I highly suggest you register for our NO B.S Newsletter, where you’ll gain instant access to timeless business principles and countless goldmines of information for exponential growth.