Having an effective core message sets the tone for your communication, that will allow you to: (1) communicate the value you bring to a specific target market, (2) the specific problems you solve, and (3) the transformation, the results, and experience people can expect when they decide to deal with you.
In other words, your core marketing message serves as the foundation for your entire marketing strategy by making it easier for you to talk about your business, and for your prospects to easily understand your offering and remember it.
Why Do I Need a Core Marketing Message?
Your core marketing message can differentiate you from other business who provide or perform the same services, particularly if the competition is fierce. It encompasses your target market, their problems, your solutions, and prove that you have the expertise to deliver as promised. Without a core marketing message, people will find it difficult to set you apart from other businesses. It helps you quickly answer the simple question of “what do you do?”. It needs to be simple enough to make it memorable and easy to repeat.
Steps to creating your core marketing message:
To develop a core marketing message for your business, here are the steps you may follow:
Ideal Target Client: You need to be crystal clear on “Who” you are targeting. Which businesses do you serve? Are they small entrepreneurial businesses or large corporations? What industries do they belong to? Where are they located? Describe your company’s ideal client.
Problems: To make your marketing more effective, evaluate your target’s key problems. What specific problems does your business solve? What are the specific benefits offered to your prospective clients?
The solution: Explain how your company can solve the problems of your target ideal client. What results, experiences and transformations will you produce?
Proof: Back up your claims with success stories, testimonials, reviews and references from satisfied clients. Your target clients will be more interested in success stories that are similar to theirs in terms of industry, size and type of problem.
Every once in a while, you may tweak the ideal target market to resonate with a specific audience, but the problems, the solution may remain the same.
Defining your key core marketing message will give you so much clarity. It should be incorporated in all of your marketing landscape, including website, social media and other marketing assets. Take a look at your content across all platforms and determine if your messaging is consistent, clear and easily identified. Remember, people don’t have time to make a guess to figure out what you do. Make your core marketing message simple, easy to understand, delivered quickly and clearly to achieve the intended result.