BUILD MESSAGING THAT MATTERS

CREATE. ACTIVATE. AMPLIFY.

By Joseph Metzger

In his bestselling book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don’t,”

Jim Collins expounds on the concept that greatness is a choice. To prove his point, the former Stanford Business School professor and acclaimed author assembled a 21-person research team for a five-year project to read and code 6,000 articles, generate 2,000-plus pages of interview transcripts and create 384 megabytes of computer data.

What Collins discovered was that the difference between success and failure is far less about what the world is doing to you, but rather what you are doing for yourself.

Being a great company means making choices about what you do and how you do it. It means looking at your products and markets objectively, and testing your assumptions about where the growth is now and where it’s going in the future.

Your business strategy should enable you to compete and win— not just anywhere and everywhere, but anywhere and everywhere you choose to win. And that’s an important distinction. Through public relations (PR) and social media, every company has the opportunity to focus its outreach and messaging on the targeted customer community it wants to attract, and to build the brand it aspires to be.

To get there, your messaging should align with the relationship you are trying to build and sustain with your communities. And your marketing and communications efforts should seamlessly, effectively and clearly inform, persuade and collaborate.

Of course, just saying it doesn’t make it so. You have to live it. In your PR, marketing, and social media outreach, communicating directly with your target community means you must:

» Determine (with speed) what needs to be said

» Say the right things

» Do the right things

And never forget to listen and respond to your customers through active, two-way dialogue.

While you believe you’re marketing your message effectively, you may not always be delivering it consistently or in the way your customers access and consume information. This is critical, especially in today’s rapid-fire, unpredictable, multichannel world.

What is the secret? Assuming your marketing strategy is in place, start with the essential tenets of building your messaging strategy. These include defining the gold standard that sets your products and services apart, establishing your goals/KPIs, knowing your target audience and having a compelling story to tell.

What I’ve found is that all your messaging—from your collateral materials to your social media voice—MUST start with the customer in mind. I know I’m not the first person to say that, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easier said than done. I’ve found that following the sequence of steps below provides the best framework for breaking your communication strategy into manageable tasks.

Create — Establish your “go to” messaging. What are the three to five core, differentiated points you want to convey? Make sure this messaging is infused consistently in your PR, marketing and social channels.

Activate — Identify how you want to roll this messaging into the marketplace. Sometimes it’s focused on selling a product, other times it’s about building awareness, credibility and/ or relationships.

Always make sure you have the protection of your brand top of mind. Take social media for example: Does your team fully understand what should—and what shouldn’t be—said? Ultimately, it’s what you say. How you say it. And what you do and how you do it. Consistency drives engagement and helps to build your brand.

Amplify — Effectively getting your message to the masses is the goal of any campaign. This engagement crosses many lines, including media relations, advertising, social media, partner channels, etc. Your choice of media mix broadens your reach, but it also can get overwhelming. With so many options available, stay focused on the most trusted channels and media where your target customers spend their time.

Manage — Stepping back and taking stock of your efforts is critical. Make sure to establish goals and KPIs before you begin your campaign, so that you can measure effectiveness and optimize your strategy as new data becomes available.

Everything is tied to the story you tell and share—one that extolls the benefits of who you are, and what you do to inform choices and influence behaviors. By effectively crafting this messaging, you can design a well-rounded communications and outreach plan that engages with your community.

The most successful brands at this are ones that offer a belief and purpose their customers can stand behind. It’s been said that “a brand is a promise”—a promise to your community and customers about your competencies and values. Hopefully, you’ve already chosen to be a great company. Now it’s time for YOU to amplify and share that with the world.

Your brand’s distinctive style and voice will help amplify your story across any media you choose. Your brand should reflect values you share with your customers—ideals that create a powerful value proposition and strengthen customer bonds.