Strategic Messaging: Who's in Charge?
The Messagery's two Davids explore the murky world of creating strategic company messages. Quite often, the people who should be driving it aren't. Sometimes because they think it's someone else's job. Sometimes because they're not sure how to go about it. Either way, the Davids shine a little light into the gloom.
There’s no magic bullet in developing messaging. It’s impossible to get a perfect outcome by handing it off to an external source. Any time, energy and effort you save will be totally outweighed by the far=reaching damage that will result.
All the people who can develop truly effective strategic messages are already in your company. They are the true sources - your board, leadership team and internal influencers.
Their collective and agreed views, opinions and observations will form the basis of the strategic messages that are used to brief your communications and marketing teams, and even their agencies. This is the effective messaging that will reveal your competitive advantages and influence your market(s).
Many companies have specialised communications and marketing teams and the temptation is huge to say, “Well this is part of their job,” This can only be true if they have a representative (internal or external) fully embedded within the core team mentioned above.
Otherwise, you are leaving the creation of an external perception of your company in the hands of people who are experts in getting messages out, but who lack the whole story and the external view that provides perspective.
By taking this approach, your communication professionals are able to weave a picture of all the attributes that make up your company that are more appealing than those expressed by your competitors. Yes, PPPP (Product, Placement, Price, Promotion) does matter. But so does Perception, Presence and Personality.
Some people call this branding, but this is ‘real’ branding. It’s not about putting mascara on a camel, it’s about creating compelling messages about the totality of your offering that, in combination, persuade prospects that your company is the one they prefer to deal with.
“We’re a multi-billion-dollar turnover organisation” is just showing off. It might work with timid purchasers who draw comfort from this sort of thing, but the majority of buyers would rather hear that you have their interests at heart.
Developing your own powerful core messages and combining them appropriately for each audience is what matters most.
(This sort of thing is meat and drink to us at The Messagery. You might like our 3-minute video on Improving Your Market Impact, if you haven’t seen it already.)
Picture credit: France Water Source by Christine Delouvrier