Why Your Message To Market is So Critical To Get Right

For you to effectively communicate with your audience, you need to ensure your tone and language resonates with exactly who you are, whilst speaking in a way that also resonates with your audience.

 

Sound easy? It’s not always.

 

How often do you find yourself in a business meeting or an event where you are asked: “so John, tell us all what you do?” or “please take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself to everyone so we get to know who you are and what you do.“

 

Even if you’ve been in your business for many years, you may not have this simple thing nailed. Many colleagues of mine end up with a very polished version of their products and services benefits, combined with a brief description of how they deliver it and possibly a note on who their ideal customer is. But they are the exception and not the norm!

 

I hear many people stumble with this, ramble on a little and then start sprouting the amazing benefits of their products and give a history of why or how they came to be in their business. Sometimes the spiel includes their business name, the name of their product, or even where people can find them online. 

I’ve seen all variations of this – and they all centre around the one common problem: disorganisation.  Most people are disorganised with their message to market and haven’t done any real work in constructing the messages properly, or tied those messages into themselves and their purpose, asset, and the understanding of who their Ideal Customer is.

 

What I can see from witnessing all the people around me delivering their message to market, is that:

 

1. a) they are very passionate about what they do, and
2. b) they are trying very hard to use typical marketing tactics to sound attractive to their audience

 

So what’s the secret to an effective Message To Market?

 

There’s no hidden secret because it’s in plain sight! The way to create effective messages to your market is in the level of understanding you have of your ideal customer, and your level of understanding of yourself and your core asset that you sell to them.

 

Once you have understood your ideal customer on a truly deep level, you will be able to understand their emotions and feelings as they go through your customer journey. You will be able to understand how they feel before they even get to meet you and your business! However this is a level of ‘knowing’ that most business owners fail to get to.

 

Many of my clients are quite established with an average business age of 8.5 years old, and a turnover range of $3-5M. You might think that turnover is indicative of a successful or profitable business that doesn’t actually need to know how to speak to their market?

If you do, you would be wrong. It’s at this stage of their business evolution that they are established and have validated their product in the marketplace, however market conditions may have changed or factors in their environment have forced them to find new and innovative ways to reach new people.

 

So it’s not only new businesses who need to figure out their Message to Market! This is crucial at any stage of business if you are wanting to reach people in the most engaging, connected, and effective way.

 

It’s also crucial if your business is evolving, facing changes in the marketplace and needs to adopt more innovation in any area of product design, delivery, and production.  There are many factors that can play a part in a changing marketplace, and they are always prone to changing and fluctuating. Hence the need for businesses to evolve to keep up and stay current.

 

Where do you start?

 

The first step is to do the work to understand who your Ideal Customer is and create a detailed avatar. This is not a simple ‘quick fix’ kind of task (I take my clients through this and it can take a few weeks of working on it to finally get it nailed and offer an online program for people to do it at their own pace – you can check that out here). The value in doing this exercise is that you then can work on yourself and your genius and understanding what your core genius is that you bring to the market – in a way that speaks to the most valuable perceived part of it.

 

One of the biggest failings in traditional marketing is to focus solely on product and benefits, and this has come at the expense of people bringing themselves into the equation so that the recipient can get a sense of who the seller is and understand them better. After all, we are all humans wanting to have a connection with another human and be understood by them… right?

 

With the focus on products and benefits, and the lack of personalisation in our marketing it has come at a great cost. Take a look at our video here on our purpose so you can learn our take on this.

 

Your Message to Market is the first thing people hear or see, and the first thing they subconsciously judge you on to determine if they’ll keep reading or listening. So, when you have their 10-30 seconds of attention, it’s in your best interest to make that experience meaningful, effective, clear and engaging. Make it do its job of getting your Ideal Customer to ‘turn the page’ so to speak and keep reading.

 

Ultimately you want them to be glad they kept reading and end up taking all the steps to becoming your customer. It starts with your Message to Market being crafted from your understanding of your ideal customer and yourself. It will be one of the most powerful things you can do for your business.