MESSAGE ENGINEERING… A New Approach to Marketing

Author: Prayukth K V Design: Prabahar Chitraikani

June 2014

Message Engineering

Messaging constraints Channel

Degree of personalization

Time of delivery/receipt

Content packaging and appeal

Offers

Audience profile and relevance

Impact forecasting

Message Engineering

Messaging constraints Maximum/minimum no.of campaign elements to

ensure delivery of the chosen high level message

Nature of messages to be sent per program

Nature of assets to be shared

Constraints as applicable to each campaign program

Audience sensitivity

Message entropy

Combination of words needed to create maximum

impact

Message Engineering

Messaging scenarios

Stable and effective messaging

High degree of instability

Decay

Irrelevant

Cam

paig

n ef

fect

iven

ess

Messaging entropy

Case one

Message Engineering

Messaging scenarios

Sens

itivi

ty

Messaging relevance

Case Two

Low degree of personalization

Emergence of appeal

Lead

Message Engineering

Messaging scenarios

Rele

vanc

e

Impact

Case Three

High degree of insensitivity

Expect a response

Expect a query

Zone of maturity

Zone of connect/understanding

Message Engineering

Message engineering Is a measure or a set of measures designed to increase the impact

of marketing campaigns using conventional and non-conventional

techniques through messaging

Involves understanding the forces at play which create barriers in

deriving effective campaign messaging

Is not restricted to methods, principles, algorithms, channels,

language, syntax or any campaign or program parameter

Can be done manually or through an algorithm

Message Engineering

Why is it essential Helps increase the conversation/lead pipeline

Improves campaign relevance and effectiveness

Helps reduce wastage of marketing effort and Dollars

Helpful across all types of marketing activities

No more “shoot in the dark” campaigns

Promotes targeted and relevant campaigns

Increases the “loiter time” on your web pages

Message Engineering

Algorithm-based message engineering

Involves quantifying all campaign constraints and advantages

Core messaging is also quantified by converting the syntax into

numbers

The algorithm generates a plot to display the zone of feasibility for

good and relevant messaging

It also displays the fringes or best possible area or an area of

significant messaging impact potential

Reduces influence of constraints

The area is then studied to derive messaging with minimal role of

constraints and maximum campaign impact

Message Engineering

Getting the plot

Constraint one

Constraint two Virtual constraint

Optimal Vertex

Zone of feasibility

X1

X2

X1: Regular campaign effectiveness

X2: High impact campaign effectiveness

Message Engineering

Manual message engineering Is a more laborious and time consuming effort

The target segment is broken down into further homogenous groups for

this exercise

Involves feedback loops that capture messaging impact in minute detail

The feedback is analysed to determine key set of high impact words and

sentences

A refined campaign based on the above is released

The process is repeated with different segments of the target audience

(low risk, low business impact parts)

A final and high impact campaign messaging is finally derived and

released to the preferred segment of the target audience

Message Engineering

Enter entropy Message entropy deals with the increase in randomness of

messages as they move from one step of the campaign message propagation process to the other

A message that is deemed ‘apt’ during a marketing brain storming session may turn irrelevant by the time it reaches its target audience

This happens because of many reasons; teams involved, channels, improper segmentation of TA, bad timing, verbose elements, distractive offers or technical issues

Suppose ideal message strength= 100 %and attained strength (at the TA level)=30%; the entropy level here is 70

Message engineering can counter entropy and reduce it to manageable levels

Understanding the impact of entropy on your marketing effort is essential to increasing your lead pipeline

Message Engineering

I.E.,

Just like Chinese whispers, your

core message could decay or

transmogrify as it travels across

channels and people

The stronger your message, the

lesser the chances of it changing

its form

Message Engineering

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