Art of Messaging

Now I want to clear up a common misconception. Before we go any further your core message is not a statement. It's not a story. It's not a tagline and it's not a paragraph or a body of copy that you put on your Web site or social media or any other communication platform. Now I know a lot of people struggle with this because I did as well. I thought that your core message was something that you memorized and spotted at every single opportunity that you got that you put it up across your communication platform and you put it up on your social page & reposted it until people started to get the message of what your core message actually was.

But that's not what it is.

Your core message is what you want your audience to understand about your brand. But just as important as what you express is - how you express it - throughout your communication messages touch points and experiences it guides your marketing your web site copy, social post, advertisements press releases, collateral packaging, emails and influences your visual identity and brand expression.

But each of those touch points may communicate a different part of the message. Your message therefore is the underlying theme that structures your communication. It's why you want them to understand about your brand and comprises of what you deem is the most appropriate and most important information to help them understand and that word is really important here in understanding what’s your core underline message is.

It's not about the direct message or the exact words that you communicate through various touch points at different stages along the customer journey. It's the consistent theme throughout each one of those instances that delivers a sometimes  unspoken message this message directly or indirectly communicates who your brand is what it believes where it's going what is committed to what its values are how it's different the value it offers its thoughts ideas behaviours and opinions.

Hopefully this shines a light on how big the misconception is about what your core message actually is. You have many many touch points with your audience today so simply regurgitating a single paragraph about your business doesn't work. You need to build it up into what you want them to understand about your business and then strip it back into segments.

The core message is made up of two parts the primary inner core message and the secondary outer core message.The primary core message as you might have guessed that is the most important message you want to deliver to your audience.

And it's based on what you want to mean to them. That is why you are different than their existing options in the market and what value that holds for them. In other words, your primary message is based around your market position - your audience first needs to know why you're relevant to them and that you actually hold some kind of potential value before they're prepared to invest any more time getting to know you better.

Think of it like from the dating scenario - when you meet somebody for the first time you wouldn't decide to catch up with them again for coffee without knowing that there's some kind of shared interest and possibly some shared characteristics there. Once they see the value you've gotten their attention then you have the opportunity to build on that with your secondary core message.

This message is about your substance behind the brand and it's the supporting reason as to why they would want to do business with you other than the fact that you hold value.

It's a message of shared beliefs values aspirations and commitment so in other words your secondary message is based on the substance of your internal brand. And this again ties back into the theme that is our human brand. Our audience will analyze your brand in the same way they'll analyze another person they'll look for interest and then they'll look for substance.

First they'll want to know who this person is why they're relevant and what they mean to them. Once they're open to the idea that there may be some value or relevance they'll want to get to know you more whether or not they decide that a person is worth keeping in their lives will come down to what they believe the values that they hold and how they behave.

We might decide that we like someone based on their sense of humour but we're also open to the idea that they might be more than just funny they might have passionate beliefs about something or insightful opinions they might turn out to be so aligned with who you are that they become your best friend.

In today's overly noisy markets it takes on average eight touch points for your audience to engage with you.

And this means that after the first time they learn on your Web site/Social platform or hear your primary core message or at least part of it anyway they might need to revisit your site/social platform again.

To read your blog or to visit your social pages and digest some emails on seven more occasions before being ready to really take notice of you. This means it's not simply a case of telling them your position and then following it up with your values it's more likely that you'll need to dissect the key points of each of your messages and deliver easily & quickly digestible bite sized pieces of your message that work together to tell your story.

When I realized this, it blew my mind for so long. I had looked for what core message and modern brand storytelling was.

Crafting your core message requires immense amount of understanding of your target audience on entire UX journey before crafting valuable core message for your target audience & further crafting exclusive for the various platform

#stayinspired