How good is your core messaging? Don’t neglect these 8 essentials.
How would you feel if you walked into a McDonald’s and, instead of offering you a McChicken, the menu read “MacChicken?” Or if you logged into your instance of Slack and found that threads were called “discussions” and channels were called “topics?” Or if you received a marketing email from Nordstrom announcing a “no return” policy in bold type? Even if you couldn’t identify the exact problem, you’d know something was wrong. It would make you question the authenticity of the brand and erode your trust.
It’s no wonder global businesses collectively spend more than half a trillion dollars on brand awareness each year. Brand is a powerful thing, and companies that invest in brand consistency do far better than those that do not. Consistent brands generate one-third more revenue, according to Lucidpress.
Among companies’ most foundational brand elements are its words and messages, whether they appear in-store, in-message, or in-product. The best way — really, the ONLY WAY — to ensure consistent messaging is to craft crisp, logical, and totally distinctive messaging that is usable everywhere you need it; write it down; and then flog everybody in your company until they use it correctly (the fun part!).
Let’s take a look at your core messaging document. Is it up-to-date and usable? Does your whole company follow it (or even know where to find it)? Does it have everything the company needs? If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, read on. Here are eight neglected core messaging essentials, plus a checklist and downloadable template. I stole (er, borrowed) these tips and examples from friends, colleagues, and the best frameworks I could find on the web. According to The Simpsons, “It ain’t stealing if you take it fast.”
1. Narrative
Before you craft a single message, think through your company’s narrative. It should tell your “why the world needs us” story. Wikipedia cites seven basic plots, so check them out if you’re stuck. Since I’m in tech, I’m partial to the “Overcoming the Monster” archetype to explain how newfangled-containerized-cloud-AI-as-a-service helps you battle that analog-monolith-pneumatic-tube-buzzkill-solution that’s totally holding you back. I might throw in a bit of “The Quest” because, well, Monty Python.
This narrative from Material Security does a nice job. Part “Overcoming the Monster,” part “Rebirth,” it introduces the company in response to the infamous 2016 election email hack. Can’t get any more dramatic than that!
2. Audience and its care-abouts
Many companies have beautiful messaging, but shortchange their audience in their core messaging. Make sure yours includes audience personas representing executives, champions, buyers, users, influencers, and stakeholders. If you have detractors, call them out, too. Your “first-among-equals” persona is the “aspirational who.” Think of this as who your primary customer persona aspires to be (and who they can be if they would just buy your product!).
Doing this not only appeals to your audience on an emotional level, but it also serves as a three- to five-word signal about your product, architecture, the pain point you address, and how you differentiate from competitors. Even if the moniker doesn’t fit every single person you target, the “aspirational who” can help you cut through the messaging noise.
At a former company, we sold cloud security to chief information security officers. Those that were the best fit were modern, innovative, and wanted to enable cloud services (not block them like our good-for-nothing competitors!). We named this audience “cloud-forward CISOs” and gave them the rallying cry, “Allow is the new block,” taking a cue from the then-popular TV show, Orange is the New Black.
3. Pain points
THE most important part of your core messaging is the customer problem or pain point. Too many vendors think they do this, but they don’t. It starts with walking in customers’ shoes — understanding who they are, where they come from, where they’re going, what their objectives are, how they’re measured, and who their stakeholders are. Then, it takes really understanding their problem or pain — its cause, trigger, implication, magnitude, cost, and “next best” fix. Not all purchases are triggered by pain. Even if the driver is an objective vs. a pain point, it’s still critical to articulate these elements.
Tugboat Logic does a great job of capturing the pain accurately in this storytelling video. Double kudos to them for capturing the second-derivative pain point, too. Yes, keeping track of security is a hassle, but what really holds customers back is not having all of their security ducks in a row for sales opportunities. The product slays the rigamarole for you so you can slay the sales cycle. Nice.
4. Solution requirements
Too many marketers go from problem to solution, skipping the critical step of laying out “blank-slate” requirements. I realize this sounds like a bit of a detour, but go with me. Imagine how powerful it could be to get prospects nodding about their problem and collaborate with them on defining the right solution. That’s what solution requirements are — taking them on a logical journey of what the best, non-product-specific, solution might be before they ever consider your solution. Doing this right gets prospects to buy in before you ever start selling!
Appcues does a good job of this in its product-led growth story. Check out how the company lays out five critical expectations people have of the user experience well before the company talks about its own product.
5. Value proposition
The anchor tenant of your core messaging, the value proposition, is the promise you make to customers about the value they’ll get from your product. Good companies articulate this well, but not all make that value proposition pervasive across the entire customer experience. It should be clear, consistently defined, and measurable. For example, if your value proposition is based on cost savings, those savings should be easily calculable and reflected in your website and sales pitch, pre-sales assessments, product user interface, implementation process, customer success check-ins, and any other touch-points you have with prospects and customers. If you do this well, your employees, partners, and customers should all be able to tell you what your value proposition is, how it’s defined, and how it’s measured.
AppZen (an AI company I worked for) handles this well. The company parcels its value proposition into three distinct pillars, each with a precise definition and real metrics. Those pillars are consistent throughout sales, implementation, and even in the product dashboard. This gives the company a huge leg up on brand consistency.
6. Boilerplates
Your boilerplate (“boiler” for short) is your elevator pitch. It’s the core of your core message in 25-, 50-, and 100-word increments. It’s not just the bible for your marketing writers; it’s the must-have script for every employee and partner. Deviate from it and face the burning wrath of a thousand suns!
Most companies have one “corporate” version of their boiler of each length. While good in theory, it doesn’t work in reality. You also need a second, straightforward version because writing “…the world’s leading…” works great for a press release but not for an email to an investor. A (made-up) example of the difference might be: “The world’s leading AI platform for modern DevOps teams” versus “AI-based deployment automation for DevOps teams.” It’s good to have the cheerleader-y one, but ya gotta have the sober one, too. And better for you to write both so ya don’t have a bunch of jokers making stuff up as they go (not that you’d have any such jokers in your company).
Writer (an AI writing assistant I advise) does a great job of keeping everyone in a company on the same page with its brand messaging frameworks. Even if each version of a core message sounds great, having variants floating around can hurt you. If your audience sees that you don’t know exactly who you are, how can they really trust you?
7. Brand voice and tone
How often do you look at a company’s website and see huge differences in brand voice or tone one page to another (or, in some cases, one paragraph to another)? Yikes! Your brand voice is the way your company talks. It’s a big part of who you are, and you should be deliberate about defining and codifying it. Are you formal and buttoned up? Casual and pithy? Whatever voice you choose, stick to it everywhere! If you’re witty and warm on your website but your UI is riddled with distant, arcane messages, that’s a miss. Your tone should align to your brand voice but adjust to the communication medium, such as sales deck, technical documentation, or social media.
Call out brand voice and tone in their own section in your core messaging document and reflect them throughout the entire document. Describe your brand voice (e.g., “straightforward,” “caring,” “crisp”); share examples (e.g., “We avoid buzzwords like ‘synergy,’”); communicate rules like perspective (e.g., “the company” and “the customer” vs. “we” and “you”), grammar, punctuation, and capitalization; call out the importance of inclusive language and communication (e.g., “Instead of writing ‘she/he,’ we just go with ‘they’ and call it a day”); and identify any must-have or taboo words or phrases (e.g., “In describing the XYZ Platform, we say “platform,” not “product,” “solution,” or “tool”).
Asana manages its brand voice with an iron fist (in a good way). From its website to its friendly product UX writing, the company’s messages hang together beautifully, down to its fanatical devotion to non-gerund verbs, rabid adherence to Oxford commas, and uncompromisingly consistent capitalizations (sadly, this is something we have to celebrate these days because so few companies — or politicians, for that matter — get it right).
8. Common responses
There’s nothing more disheartening than laboring for weeks over the world’s best core messaging document, rolling it out to great fanfare, and then happening upon a truly abominable RFP response (you simply cannot intercept them all, can you?). They said THAT about how our product works? They attached that 1990s-era architecture diagram? Ai ai ai!
There are tools that help you manage RFPs (Loopio and Tugboat are two). Whether you use one or not, it’s good to maintain responses to most commonly-asked questions in your core messaging document because you never know when they’ll be needed for an investor introductory email, prospect email, channel message, or customer request for an internal stakeholder response. And if you’re in an outward-facing role, you get, like, hundreds of these requests every week.
Now that you know the eight neglected core messaging essentials, go forth and be awesome! And if you’re really a glutton for punishment, below is your full core messaging document checklist. You can also bootstrap your own core messaging by downloading this core messaging document template.
Core messaging document checklist
Have I missed anything in the checklist or template? Or do you have a good go-to template? Please share!
