Your business is only as good as your brand, and your brand is only as good as how well you position yourself in your industry. That boils down to the core messaging your brand communicates to consumers.
However, the process of coming up with those core messages can be challenging without a strong messaging framework that you can use successfully over and over again.
Knowing your audience inside and out is key to crafting brand messaging that resonates and drives sales. Messaging templates help you take that data and knowledge and distill it into a consistent, cohesive message your whole team can use when creating content and copy.
Without a messaging framework, it’s easy for your brand’s message to become muddied or convoluted. Since brevity and clarity are necessary to avoid confusion and create a compelling offer, that’s where utilizing a messaging template can truly shine.
How to Craft Compelling Messaging Frameworks
Everyone knows there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but there are key areas you should focus on when creating a messaging framework template. These key areas hold true for any business, in any industry. Think of it like sales 101.
Start with Your Offer
You can define your offer by asking questions. The most common questions are:
- What are you offering?
- Who are you offering it to?
- Why should they even care?
Always remember that most people buy from people or brands they know, like, and trust, and most won’t care about your offer until they know you care about them. So when you define what you offer and who you plan to offer it to, that question of why they should even care is vital.
Begin Designing Your Core Messages
Even if you offer a product or service that’s similar to others in your market, there is always something that sets you apart from your competitors. It’s just a matter of digging deep and finding out what that difference is.
You can start by:
-
Outlining Your Customer’s Problems and Pain Points
List out the problems and pain points you know your target customers may face. Come up with as many as you can think of. Though some may be more important than others, it’s still good to know as many as possible, because the more you know about what makes your audience tick, the better you can focus your messaging and compel them to buy.
Once you’ve listed those out, brainstorm ways you can address them and offer solutions. Try not to limit yourself in this brainstorming phase, because you can always narrow down later.
-
Outlining Your Customers’ Goals and Aspirations
List out your customers’ goals and aspirations, so that you can determine how to best help them achieve them. This is similar to helping them solve their problems and providing solutions to their pain points, but maybe their goals and aspirations aren’t viewed as a “problem” per se.
They are simply targets they want to hit, but they need help getting there. List out different ways to help them reach those goals, and use those ideas to guide you in crafting your copy and content.
-
Outlining Your Product or Service’s Benefits and Features
Most savvy salesmen will tell you to always lead with benefits. Remember, people don’t care about what you’ve got to offer until they understand that you first care about them. Sharing benefits puts the focus on their wants and needs, while sharing features puts the focus on you and your products or services.
However, it’s still valuable to list out attractive features, because the reality is you will craft your messaging around both. So, the more you can list in both categories, the more ammunition you will have to lace your copy with.
-
Debunking Popular Objections About Your Product or Service
Depending on the type of product or service you offer, there may be some common objections you’ll need to overcome to close a sale. List those potential objections out and systematically debunk them, so that all objections are eradicated and any lingering questions are answered satisfactorily.
Customers will always have objections and concerns, but often they are unfounded. It’s your job to prove that and put their objections to rest.
-
Debunking Authenticity or Credibility Concerns for Your Customers
Authenticity and credibility are popular buzzwords in the realm of sales and business. That doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable. Both are necessary to overcome concerns potential customers may have about doing business with you.
List out some ways customers could perceive your brand as inauthentic or untrustworthy, and summarize some ways to correct it. Your whole brand package contributes to the perceptions of your audience, even down to website fonts and color palettes.
Things like testimonials and social proof go a long way to establish trust, along with your content, your portfolio, and even the way you or your brand interacts on social media.
-
Outlining Messaging Ideas for Specific Platforms and Channels
Every platform and channel is different. Sometimes by a lot, sometimes by a little, but it pays dividends to brainstorm how and what you will communicate through each.
List out some ideas so you have a starting point and can determine what channels might work best for your brand. You might discover that it’s not worthwhile to bother with certain platforms, given your audience and industry.
-
Defining What Platforms and Channels You Plan to Distribute Through
This plays into the section above. By sketching out some ideas ahead of time for different communication channels, you’ll have a better idea of which ones you want to focus on distributing through.
You don’t have to be “everywhere” and do “everything” to be successful, though you should be where and do what matters most for your brand. You may find it better to start small and expand your distribution strategy later down the road. All things to consider as you’re using your messaging framework to map out your next steps.
-
Create Assets for Platform and Channel Distribution
Once you have all your ducks in a row and have gone through your entire messaging framework template, you can begin assigning tasks to your team and creating your assets for distribution.
Remember that using messaging templates create cohesive communications, which means your whole team can help during this phase, because everyone is on the same page.
Some assets you might create include:
- Audio assets, like a podcast.
- Video assets, like podcasts or instructional videos, or even entertaining videos if relevant to your brand.
- Longform and short-form content, such as web copy, sales pages, white papers, and landing pages.
- Written content for blog and content marketing. These might be how-to posts, listicle-style posts, pillar posts, alternative to competitors’ posts, checklists, infographics, and more. There are many types of written content you can create as brand assets, so this list isn’t exhaustive.
On-brand digital assets are infinitely valuable for small, e-commerce brands who want to outshine their competition and make waves in their industry. Those kinds of assets are born using a solid messaging framework template that you can use over and over again.
