Foundations Of Your Business Development Series- #marketingmessages

6 KEYS TO QUALIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND SENDING THEM RELEVANT MESSAGES

Making your messages stand out among the many offerings and potential distribution channels that exist can often mean a headache for marketing professionals. Relevant storytelling is required, the kind that addresses your potential customers’ concerns, and communicates the benefits they can receive from your offering – emphasizing what makes you unique compared to your competitors. Aligning all your teams (as well as all of your marketing and communication initiatives) around consistent central messages will create a true sounding board for your content.

RELEVANT AND EFFECTIVE

It is easy to make the mistake of communicating messages without having a clear vision of whom they address. The best way of ensuring relevancy is often to start out by specifying who is going to receive your message. Rather than using general speech that speaks to nobody in particular, precisely qualifying your target audience will result in content that will be of interest to the people you wish to speak to.

Qualifying your target audience means adopting their perspective. You need to know what positions they hold in their organizations, where they are based, what their concerns are, and what the challenges are for which your solution specifically provides an answer.

Positioning elements provide essential market information: your main targets and their main issues – see 7 keys to clear positioning)

1 – KNOW WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO…

What is the objective of your communication? Once you know who you are talking to, you need to know what you want to achieve through your communication. Do you want to: - Offer a new service to existing customers? - Launch a product or service on the market? - Establish an area of expertise? - Generate new leads for the sales team? - Develop your brand awareness?

A clear objective means a specific context that turns into a simpler – and more effective – message. Eventually it allows the required means to distribute it to also be adapted.

Effective messages are tailored to your audience and your objective. Using a single message for multiple objectives is often the source of confusing or overly general and dull communications.

2 – …AND WHAT TO SAY

Understanding the concerns and challenges that your customers face is essential for providing them with relevant content that will be of interest to them. Before undertaking to provide a description of your solution’s features, have you looked into whether or not your stakeholder is looking for a solution to solve his/her problem? And, have you checked whether or not your features serve his/her objectives? All too frequently, we send messages that only focus on ourselves, whereas our customers want to learn how they can make progress with their own projects. Do you know how to talk about your customers’ problems and the solutions that are available to solve them?

Translating your solution precisely in terms of the ability in order to solve your customers’ issues will help you capture the attention of your audience before they even begin to search for a solution to their problem.

3 –ADAPT EACH MESSAGE TO EACH CONCERN

4 –KNOW HOW TO STAND OUT

Being aware of your key differentiators will help guide your communication and the messages that your customers will receive. Your customers’ ability to quickly identify the value you offer and how you are different from your competitors will help them understand the specific value of your solution – then select it if you can provide them with essential advantages for their project.

To stand out from your competitors, the quality of your message will be more important than the quantity of information that is delivered: choose to focus primarily on the customer issues for which your solution provides a unique answer – or emphasize the features of your solution that support this capability.

5 –BUILD IN THE LONG TERM

It is difficult to rely on a single message and/or a perfect marketing campaign to yield all of the results that you are expecting to help you achieve your goal.

In order to be effective, your messages need to be delivered over time: it is often through the regular and constant repetition of solid, relevant messages that you will succeed.

Therefore, you must accompany your prospects in the process of discovering their issues, in their understanding of potential solutions, and in the adaptation of your solution to their specific context. You will also need to provide them with a message adapted to each step of their growth.

To orchestrate all of the messages that you will deliver over time, the first thing you must do is identify your key messages, then align all your teams around them. No marketing automation tool will provide you with this essential content!

Your customers are becoming more and more wary of marketing messages, which are all too often associated with advertising and lies. They will appreciate simple and honest messages that are free of useless frills.

Speaking truthfully, consistently and authentically is not only a requirement for a new professional ethic, but is also the means to being truly effective.

6 – SPEAK TRUTHFULLY

1. Know who you are talking to…

2. …And what to say

3. Adapt each message to each concern

4. Know how to stand out

5. Build in the long term

6. Speak truthfully

6 KEYS TO QUALIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND SENDING THEM RELEVANT MESSAGES

See also:

5 CHARACTERISTICS OF WEB PRESENCE THAT HELPS YOUR BUSINESS

TO LEARN MORE

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