Tips to Create a Powerful Marketing Message
Why is effective communication essential?
Brands that communicate well eliminate confusion, connect with their customer, and grow their revenue.
As a StoryBrand Guide, I encounter too many businesses that fail to understand that to create a powerful marketing message requires planning.
As a result, marketing messages become confusing and, sadly, ignored by potential customers.
In this post, I will share a step-by-step on how to create a powerful marketing message using a story-based framework developed by StoryBrand so that:
- You are understood — customers know what your brand does and why it’s different from the competition
- That your brand is engaging — your story/message is inspiring and captivating
- You inspire action — that when someone interacts with your brand, they want to do business with you and remark about your brand to others
01. Brands that are understood
When a brand is fully understood, you prevent confusion. After all, confusion is the enemy of clarity.
When your customers are confused, they fail to do business with you because they don’t understand what you do.
So it is vital for brands that they communicate with clarity, so customers listen and take action.
Filtering your marketing message through a framework ensures your message is clear.
02. When your brand is interesting, customers pay attention.
When brands fail to be interesting, customers lose interest and stop doing business with them.
They fail to engage or retain their customers.
Customers will hire other products or brands that might not be as good as your products but because they were interesting.
An interesting brand tells a story that invites people into the story.
If you could make your marketing messages more interesting, it means you’ll be able to keep your customers engaged for a longer time.
03. Your message must inspire action
Whether you’re posting on social media or writing a blog post or speaking to your customers in person, you want your customers to take action.
Inspiring action is the most challenging thing to do in communication.
But if you want to attract more customers and have those customers choose your products or services, then as a business, you need to know how to communicate effectively.
We need a simple framework that allows our messaging to be understood and exciting while inspiring action.
Remember, no more guessing how to create engaging marketing messages effectively.
Imagine a straightforward framework that you can use each time you want to create a social media post or write a blog or create a product video or even speak to the press about your brand.
The 8 components of a compelling marketing message
The following components are from Business Made Simple’s Communicate Made Simple course.
1. Define your controlling idea
2. Define the story question
3. Agitate the problem
4. Define the stakes
5. Position yourself as the Guide
6. The plan
7. The Call to action
8. Foreshadow the climactic scene
Let’s look at each part.
01. Define your controlling idea
At the heart of effective marketing, the message is the central idea or (controlling idea).
The controlling idea is the purpose of your marketing message. It helps your audience understand the purpose of your message, speech, communication, or book.
Your controlling idea is the point you are trying to prove.
In this article, the controlling idea is that businesses that use a simple framework to plan their marketing messages are better understood.
Or let’s take Intercom’s overall brand controlling idea — businesses build better customer relationships through personalized, Messenger-based experiences.
Remember, the controlling idea is the most crucial element of your marketing message because it is the idea you are trying to get people to memorize.
02. Define the story questions
The story question is what you want your audience to be asking themselves as they interact with your marketing message.
The story question of your communication has to be obvious and interesting that will keep your audience engaged.
The story question for this article, how do you create powerful marketing messages so that customers listen?
In Intercom’s example, “what will my business look like if I can build stronger relationships with my customers?”
Check this post for additional tips on how to write a story question.
03. Agitate the problem
Persuasive communicators know that without a problem, the audience stops listening.
Imagine a movie where the problem is solved 15-minutes into the film; you would lose interest and stop watching.
Our marketing message needs to define a problem that is worth the challenge of overcoming.
As you define the problem, the way to agitate it is by using the Storybrand Framework to determine the three levels of the problem your marketing message is addressing:
1. External
2. Internal
3. Philosophical
In this article, the problem I’m agitating is that your messages will not be as robust without a communication framework.
External: your customers are not paying attention to your marketing messages.
Internal: As a result, you feel confused about why no one is paying attention to your message.
Philosophically: You shouldn’t be wasting opportunities and second-guessing how to create a marketing message that sticks.
Now, let’s take a look at Intercom as an example.
Intercom — the scale and nature of online business mean it’s harder than ever to create personal connections with customers.
External: Online businesses struggle to create a personal connection with their customers.
Internal: Online businesses feel frustrated that they can’t personalize their customer’s experience.
Philosophical: Online businesses shouldn’t have to struggle to create personal connections with their customers.
04. Define the stakes.
With a clearly defined problem, your audience needs to know what can be won or lost if the problem is not solved.
If there are no stakes, then there’s no story.
When you remove the stakes from the story, you remove any necessity for people to take action; your audience loses interest.
The stakes in this article: if you fail to plan your marketing messages through a simple communication framework strategically, your messages will not spread or cause action.
Intercom: if you can’t personally connect with your customers, at the exact moment they’re ready to buy, you lose them as a customer.
Some brands intuitively communicate this way. What this framework ensures, you do it consistently and are deliberately repeating them.
When you define the stakes, ask yourself what will be won or lost if you do or do not achieve the objective set in the communication campaign?
05. Position yourself as the Guide.
Your product or services are not the hero of the story; your customers are.
It is their problem, their journey, their transformation that you are part of.
The fifth principle of the Communication Made Simple framework is to position your brand as the Guide.
The fifth principle comes from the Storybrand Framework, made popular in Donald Miller’s StoryBrand book.
Nancy Duarte, the communication expert, recommends positioning your audience as the hero, i.e. as Lue Skywalker, when you run a marketing communication campaign, and positioning your brand as Yoda.
Remember, your brand is not the hero in the story. Your audience is the hero. Your brand is there to ensure the hero wins the day.
This is where most businesses make the critical error of making themselves the hero of their marketing message.
“…we should “[help] people to see themselves as the hero of the story, whether the plot involves beating the bad guys or achieving some great business objective. Everyone wants to be a star, or at least to feel that the story is talking to or about him personally.” Business leaders need to take this to heart, place the people in the audience at the center of the action, and make them feel that the presentation is addressing them personally.” — Screenwriter Chad Hodge points out in /Harvard Business Review/
Don’t tell your story, invite people into a story — Donald Miller.
So when do you talk about your brand?
If you’ve read the StoryBrand book, you know that the ideal time to talk about your brand is to position yourself as the Guide that demonstrates empathy and authority.
06. The Plan
Clear communication hinges on a plan on how we’re going to get there. It removes any fog or confusion about how your product or service works or the necessary steps your audience has to take.
For example, the plan for this article:
1. Understand the 8 part communication framework
2. Use the 8 part plan to plan your marketing message
3. Confidently communicate your message with your audience
The plan for Intercom:
1. Start with basic chatting
2. Then start using targeted messages and self-service support
3. Then accelerate and scale your customer experience
07. The call to action.
To continue to build on your framework, you need to call your audience to make a decision. The CTA is where you ask them to put skin in the game and make it obvious what the next step needs to be.
In this article, the call to action is simple — I want the reader to download the 8 part framework template and craft effective marketing messages.
Intercom has two CTAs.
One is the main CTA: Get Started.
They also have a transitional call to action — not sure if Intercom is right for your business? Ask us anything in their Live AMA webinar.
08. Foreshadow the climactic scene
Your audience doesn’t want to live with the problem forever.
Every great marketing message heads towards a climactic scene in which all the conflict is resolved.
Your marketing message needs to help the audience imagine themselves in that climactic scene.
The climactic scene for this article: when you use the 8-part communication framework for your marketing campaigns, you can confidently create messages that will connect with your audience.
Intercom’s climactic scene across their communication is:
As an online business, regardless of your size, when you use Intercom, you can build a personal relationship with every customer — without overwhelming your team.
When you define each of these talking points, you can use them to create powerful social media posts, blog posts, videos, email campaigns, and even pitch your business idea to your team or investors.
Bonus: Marketing messaging mistakes to avoid
A good marketing message is an exercise in memorization. Audiences need to hear the same thing over and over again. Donald Miller
- Have one controlling idea in your marketing message. Force the communication to be about one topic, not many, or you’ll confuse.
- Make your story question about the audience and keep it consistent with your main idea.
- When you agitate the problem, be sure it is a problem your audience is experiencing. Remember, there can only be one main problem.
- Your message needs to answer “so what?”. If it doesn’t motivate your audience, your marketing message will fail to connect with the audience.
- Don’t make your marketing message about your brand; it’s about your customer. To connect with your audience, clearly tell them that “you get it.”
- Make your plan simple enough that somebody can memorize it. Avoid more than three steps.
- Make your CTA time-sensitive to increase urgency
- Don’t make your climactic scene negative. Make it positive and visual
The simple framework created by StoryBrand to help you craft engaging marketing communication campaigns
Use the following worksheet to help you create a clear and winning marketing message.
You’ll want to use the template to plan content marketing, social media campaigns, corporate videos, and internal communication.
Commit to becoming a brand that communicates with a purpose, and you can do this by utilizing a proven filter to clarify all of your marketing material.
