On Messaging

You need messaging that quickly, crisply, and impactfully informs readers on the value you bring to them. Oddly, most of us are trained to write in ways that do anything but that.

Take follow-up emails as an example. You’re writing to a person with whom you have met. Your goal is to express your appreciation for their time and attention, and convince them to move with you to the next step in your sales motion. You want to move them, to compel them to take specific actions.

Yet, most follow-up emails begin with something like, “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.” Sounds lovely. Does nothing.

Your One Chance

You’ve heard it a thousand times. You only get one chance to make a great first impression. No matter how many times you’ve heard it, it always remains true.

It’s true, in fact, in each and every message you send. Your recipient will open your message if they recognize your name, or if your subject line is provocative enough. You need to provoke readers into opening your email. You need to keep provoking your readers every step of the way.

Once you’ve succeeded in getting them to open your email, you only have one chance, the first sentence of your message, to make a great first impression that will get your reader to continue reading. “Thank you for giving us the time to meet with you,” doesn’t do that at all. It may mildly signal that you’re courteous, but that’s not what any reader cares about.

So, you decide to go in boldly. “We have the perfect solution for your needs,” or “Wait until you see our solution.” In the readers mind, so does everyone else. You gain nothing.

“You are clearly experiencing a significant challenge that limits your ability to increase your profits.”

Few readers will be able to keep themselves from reading on. They’ll immediately want to know what you think this challenge is, and if it agrees with their perception then they’ll want to hear your solution. Provocative!

Also, note that the first sentence is not about you or your product or your company. It’s about the reader. It’s about them!!! Rest assured, there’s nothing they’d rather hear more about than about themselves.

This is a good time to suggest that you go through your entire website. Count how many paragraphs appear across your website, and how many of those paragraphs begin with I, me, my, our, we, or the name of your company. How many of your paragraphs are all about you rather than all about your reader and potential customer?

If yours is like most websites don’t be surprised to find that more than 90% of your paragraphs begin with you. Each of those is a likely place for your reader to stop reading.

Value is in the Eye, Ear, and Mind of the Beholder

Another popular marketing message mistake is to think your message is about you, your product, your company, or any of the features and capacities thereof. Customers really don’t care much about how long you’ve been in business, or where. They really only want to know about one thing:

Value.

What value do you bring to them? How do you improve their results? How does your offering deliver superior business outcomes for them. Until they perceive that value and embrace it, they could care less about you or anything about you. How much value do they see in what you’re offering? How do your explanations sound to them? How much do they come away believing there’s value for them in dealing with you?

Watch What Happens

Pull out the last follow-up email you sent. It probably begins with the customary thank you and some other patter about how pleasant the meeting was.

Now delete those wasted words and read your email again. It’s very likely it will sound so much better to you starting with your second paragraph. Why? Because once most people get past the pleasantries, they will start to give evidence as to why the reader should listen to them. This is where the effective messaging begins.

When taking attendees through this exercise in workshops I have marveled at how the light bulbs start coming on around the room. Once you’ve done it once, you’ll want to do it every time.

In the Next techChannel:Marketing

Next time, we’ll analyze the anatomy of a complete work of market messaging. There really is a “best practice” structure available to you, one you should use as your framework every time. In our next article, we’ll pull that framework apart for you.