Marketing

Is Your Messaging Really Hitting Home with Ideal Prospects?

October 8, 2013

You know exactly who should be using your product. But is it clear to your ideal prospects that you’re speaking directly to them? Customer acquisition strategist Lincoln Murphy shares three steps to sharpen your messaging.

 

In football, there’s an axiom that suggests if a team has two quarterbacks, then it doesn’t really have one. The reasoning? If one player isn’t exceptional enough to stand out and claim the position, then the likelihood is that neither player is talented enough to really make a difference.

For many expansion-stage businesses, taking a generic approach to messaging can create a similar problem.

As conversion rate optimization expert Lincoln Murphy told OpenView in a recent podcast, too many companies mistakenly assume that by being all things to all people, they stand a better chance of appealing to a wider audience and fueling more rapid growth. The reality, however, is that when businesses (even ones with horizontal products) try to market their solutions to everyone, they ultimately end up talking to no one. In fact, Murphy says that generic approach is often a recipe for mediocrity.

“Sure, you might pique a larger audience’s interest, but you’re very unlikely to deliver messaging that’s targeted enough to capture the right audience,” Murphy explains. “And when that happens, your messaging becomes diluted and confusing, and it’s very difficult to convince buyers to do much of anything.”

3 Steps to Sharpen Your Customer Messaging

To be more effective with their messaging, Murphy says that companies need to do a better job of getting into their ideal customer’s head — thinking how they think and speaking how they speak — by taking three simple steps:

1) Identify Who Exactly Your Ideal Buyer Is

It’s not enough to simply guess, Murphy says. If you aren’t sure who your ideal buyer is, Murphy suggests performing some research to identify traits or characteristics shared by the customers who best align with your product’s value proposition, or really thinking about how specific customer segments align with your sales goals.

2) Get Out of the Building

Once you’ve identified your ideal buyer, go out and talk to them. Ask questions about the specific problems or pain points that matter most to them, and dig down to identify the specific types of content and messaging that resonate most. “It can’t be high level, generic stuff,” Murphy says. “You really have to get to know them and understand what they care about.”

3) Build and Adjust Your Messaging Accordingly

Murphy says that a lot of businesses take this step first. They come up with an offer, write some copy, and then figure out whom they’re really trying to target with that messaging. It should be the other way around. Once you know who your ideal buyer is and have decided what they care about most, craft your messaging and product offerings around that information.

It Should Be Clear to Your Customers that You’re Targeting Them

Of course, this process isn’t exclusively beneficial to individual campaigns, Murphy says.

Once you’ve put in the work and determined what exactly your ideal customer cares about most, Murphy also recommends conducting a thorough review of your main website and asking a very simple question: “Would our ideal customer know they are our ideal customer simply by looking at our site?”

Most of the time, Murphy says, the answer is no. But that’s a problem that can be easily corrected by performing the steps above and adjusting your website messaging accordingly.

Take the Next Step: Download the Free eBook

If you can’t articulate what your competitive advantage is, you’re losing customers and market share.

Competitive MessagingWhy Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging will help you create the kinds of messages that will increase your perceived value in the marketplace and help you win more business.

Download this free eBook and learn how to:

  • Understand exactly what your target prospects care about
  • Improve your sales and marketing productivity
  • Measure how well you are communicating your value proposition to improve your messaging over time

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Photo by: David Martyn Hunt

Customer Success Architect / Mentor

<strong>Lincoln Murphy</strong> is Customer Success Architect / Mentor for <a href="http://www.stormventures.com">Storm Ventures</a>. Previously he was the Customer Success Evangelist for Gainsight, where he drove thought-leadership in the areas of customer success, retention, and churn mitigation. Learn more about his customer acquisition and churn reduction consulting at <a href="http://sixteenventures.com/">sixteenventures.com</a>.