Working out your key messages Copy

 

The final step in identifying your ideal customer, your target market, is to craft your key messages.

 

Watch the video for an explanation.

 

Your key messages will drive the content of all your marketing. If you have more than one ideal customer identified your key messages should be tailored to each ideal customer.

 

If you have a team, it may be worthwhile to get them involved so they feel a sense of ownership of the key messages and are more easily able to believe in them and articulate them.

 

Allow up to an an hour per ideal customer to complete this step.

 

If you haven’t already done so, you can download the Course workbook in the Materials section.

 

Note: you need to watch the video to be able to mark this module as complete and progress to the next module.

 

Video Transcript

 

Hello and welcome back to the final part of understanding your ideal client or getting to know your ideal customer.

 

Today, we are going through the final step, which is working out your key messages.

 

Now key messages are really important because they will drive the content for your marketing. So having them documented as a reference to go back to, to make sure all your messaging aligns with those key messages, those key points you want to convey to your ideal customers is really important.

 

And having key messages means you’ve really looked at who your ideal customer is and worked out what’s going to connect with them.

 

When we connect with our ideal customers, it’s much easier for them to know, like, and trust us. And when your customers know, like, and trust you or your target market knows, likes and trusts you, then their decision to purchase from you is much easier for them.

 

So your key messages is really important.

 

So you can see here, we’ve got the ideal customer description that you will have populated from the last module and we’ve added a key messages section here.

 

I’ll take you through to the example of what we’ve done for Starfish Marketing with our key message.

 

So when we look at the ideal customer description, small business, less than 10 employees, the demographics and the psychographics.

 

This is where we pull the information for our key messages, time poor, but wants to have control, appreciates others have skill, always seeking to learn and improve and happy to hand over responsibility when they trust someone.

 

So, when crafting your key messages, if you think about the problem that you’re solving, which you will have completed earlier in the psychographics of your ideal customer. And so you can use those as part of your key messaging, or you can reword it to the type of language that will appeal to your ideal customer.

 

So you can see here, the problem that we’ve described overwhelmed it’s emotive because our ideal customers are more emotionally driven than data driven in our ideal customer one. So we’re using emotive words like “overwhelmed with where to start”. “There’s too many options with marketing”.

 

Some of the other problems are:

  • that they don’t know who their most profitable customers are
  • they’re not sure what type of marketing or social media is going to get them the best return on investment, what’s going to give them the best results
  • they think that marketing takes up too much time because they’re busy doing all the other stuff that small business owners have to do, and
  • they’re not sure where to spend their marketing dollars.

 

Then you craft the solution and, thinking again, about what is going to connect with the psychographics of your ideal customer.

 

So we say “we work together”, “we’re helping you work out what marketing to focus on your business”.

 

We’re demonstrating that we are customer focused first by using language like you and your rather than we and us.

 

“Building a plan together”, is alleviating this sense of not maybe being too willing to hand over control or letting control go, liking to do things themselves.  So we say “we’ll work together on things”.

 

“Saving them time”, “making their marketing happen”, are action oriented. So making their marketing happen is language that’s going to appeal to that. And focused on delivering results, which again, it’s emotive, but referring into that action oriented aspect of this ideal customer.

 

They are sort of the key messages that we try to convey in our content marketing in all our marketing, whether it be social media or when we’re networking and talking to people. It’s always at the back of our mind that these are the problems that we are working with our clients on, and these are the solutions. And this is the language and the messages that we want to convey.

 

Now, you may not use exactly the wording that you put in here. But it’s meant to be your reference to drive your marketing messages throughout all aspects of your marketing.

 

And from a customer service perspective, training your team to use this type of language as well.

 

So, that’s developing your key messages.

 

Have a look at your ideal customers. Look at the psychographics. Look at the values. Look at the problem that you’re solving for them. And craft your messaging around that.

 

Just very quickly, another example with our second ideal customer, which is the larger organisation. The decision makers here are more data driven rather than the emotive side of it.

 

You can see we get pretty quickly to the point with our messaging. We don’t have a lot in there, but it’s straight to the point. They’re:

  • “Not sure what type of marketing is going to get them the best return on investment”
  • “The marketing isn’t being delivered consistently”
  • “They have an understanding, but they don’t have, or want, a marketing expert in house”

That’s their problem.

 

The solution:

 

  • “We work with their team or work with your team to make your marketing happen”
  • “We understand the importance of return on investment”, and
  • “We have over 20 years experience”

And that messaging links into the valuing of experience, the preference to be delivered by an outsource marketing expert who will collaborate with their team.

 

Open to advice, demonstrating our expertise, make decision based on data and return on investment.  So, working with your team, understanding the importance of return on investment.

 

You can see the differences in the types of messages that we are crafting for our ideal customers number 2. It’s quite different, more direct, less emotive than our messages for our ideal customer number 1, who is a more emotive decision maker.

 

So that’s crafting your key messages.

 

Going forward, you use this as a reference to drive the content for your marketing, drive the messages for your marketing and all your marketing activities.

 

I hope that helps. That’s the end of this program so go forth, understand your ideal customer and create your marketing that is going to connect with them so they more easily know, like, and trust you.