Your trusted advisors

Did I mention that trying to tackle messaging by yourself results in predictable results? Something you love, but no one else does. It is best to assemble a team of trusted advisors who can brainstorm with you. The key factor in assembling your team is that they are not all like you.. But people you can trust to be honest and constructive with you.

Here are some suggestions on picking team members;

• Get cross discipline representation.. Sales, product development, support

• Look for a member who knows little about your product/solution but is strong in the creative area (sometimes we get too close)
• Find the best messaging person you know!

When you assemble your team be very specific on what you want them to do, and set up a couple of sessions to deliver results. Do not try to do it all at once. Give messaging time to develop and mature. You may have an idea of where you want to end-up, but do not force that direction. See if the team can get there on their own.

Most of all, make it fun. Make sure everyone has a voice, a vote and is respected. Move through a brainstorm phase where everything is captured, before you start critiquing them.

Remember messaging is part art, part science and never done!

Iterate, test, iterate.

The view from the top (Part 4 of 4)

The memorable part of messaging it the simple statement at the top. You can think of it as your tag line or the one thing you want everyone to remember. I went to silverpop.com and there on the scrolling banners are their key top level messages. "Get a better return on relationships" … great top level message. Speaks to what it does, the value it delivers, and makes you want to know more.

Many people want to start at the top because it is the sexy part, the part most seen. But without understanding what you have, and what value it provides, you can spend a lot of time coming up with catchy phrases that you can not support.

In todays crowded marketplace, your top level message has to be designed not to just garner attention, but attention with the people who can buy your product. If you have started at the bottom, and driven through the middle, you should have a good idea of what you need to say to reflect the rest of your message platform.

If you are starting from the top, here are some suggestions on how to kickstart the process;

• Look at your differentiation

• Start with the pressing need or driver for your solution

• Drive home the benefit or value you deliver

After you have identified 3-5 good candidates, then proceed to see if you can provide reasonable proof for your claim. If not, move to the next. Don't get too attached to any particular direction early in the process. Narrow it down to a couple and then test it on your target audience, or your trusted advisers who can stand in for them.

Messaging Series:

• Intro Part 1

• Bottoms up Part 2

• Meet you in the middle Part 3

Meet you in the middle (Part 3 of 4)

In part 1 and 2 of this series on messaging we investigated assembling the core capabilities of your product or service and started the work of grouping these into logical buckets. In the middle we want to start the hard work of messaging.. Creating the key points to a story that answer the "so what" question for the user/purchaser.

That’s right, we have to speak to value not just capability. So you have a 16mgz processor, what does that mean for me in my job? This is where we have to start targeting a specific role.. Or personna that we want this messaging to sell to. You have to know what is important to them to be able to message your great product, in a way that makes them want to buy.

And yes, it is appropriate, based on how you will be going-to-market, to modify your positioning for certain sub-segments.

The key goal of the middle is to identify three to five memorable points that speak to value, that when taken together represent your product or service. Think of each of these points as a hook on the coat-rack of your story that you will hold a group of related capabilities.

The reason for no more than five is that no one can remember or effectively communicate more than this from memory.

Start in the middle if you have an idea of the key points you need to make to be successful. But make sure you have capabilities to back it up. Otherwise you start to fall back on buzz-word-bingo to sound valuable… when you have nothing to back it up.

A really important point in messaging, is that your job is not to dress up a "pig" and try to pass it off as a "princess." Your job is to bring to light how great tasting bacon is!

This should be an iterative process that you tweak and experiment with. Advanced elements you can look for include,

• Balance - are all the points at the same level
• Completeness - when taken together do these points allow you to tell your story?
• Differentiation - Could any of your competitors use your same messaging?

You can not create messaging in a vacuum. Get out and talk to your prospects and customers and find out what is important to them. Get with the product teams and find out what is unique to your offering.

Messaging Series:

• Intro Part 1
• Bottoms up Part 2

• View from the top Part 4