A strong, high-converting message is a defining factor when it comes to marketing and promoting a business. In fact, a clear message helps you connect more effectively with the right audience and increase your conversion rates. Plus, if you have a well-defined message, you can carve a space within your niche and put your business on the map, no matter how many competitors you have.
As more businesses are created around personal brands and socially conscious commitments, strong messaging is becoming more and more a way to create communities and movements. Yet, despite all of this, many business owners struggle to identify what makes a great message and how to efficiently craft one that stands out from the crowd.
To give our community a head start, we invited our spinner, Rosie di Lecce, founder of Writing with Rosie and expert in copywriting and persuasive communications, to share her tips on how to create a high-converting message.
Brand messaging is a vital element used by copywriters, marketers, salespeople, and business owners to convey what a business does and why people should be interested in a product or service. It’s also a way to target the right audience and create a strong sense of community and identity.
Yet, despite messaging playing such a critical role, small business owners struggle to identify what their message is and how to successfully craft it to make an impact on their target audience.
In my 10 years as a Persuasive Communications and Copywriting Expert, I’ve seen how challenging and overwhelming this process can be for entrepreneurs. Most of them are unsure about the actual elements that make a brand message, while others can’t figure out how to turn it into a high-converting one.
And that’s really what makes or breaks a business - because after all, it’s not just about having a message. It’s about having a persuasive message that can sell for you and for your business.
So if you’re still struggling to create your message, here are 5 tips that will help you kickstart and quicken the process.
Clarity is your Priority
The biggest mistake when it comes to brand messaging is to create something that’s confusing. You don’t want your audience to go through your website, read 20 of your latest social media posts and watch 5 of your videos, and still wonder about what you offer. Unfortunately, even the most skilled of copywriters won’t save a reader from an unclear message!
That’s why the first rule to creating a great message is to focus on its clarity.
A persuasive message needs to be straightforward, specific, and very well defined. It needs to have the right words that are relevant to your audience, and it must directly communicate with them.
The danger any business incurs when creating a message is fitting in it as much as possible; what they do, who they are, what they want to achieve, their products, how they’re different, etc. At its most basic, a message just needs to concisely communicate your value proposition, your differentiator (eg. a specific audience you serve or how you serve them) and convey a hint of your brand personality.
No big words. No fancy statements. Just a line that’s representative of your business and that’s easy to understand.
Focus on What You’re REALLY Selling
Of course, in order to create a clear message, your value proposition (or ‘why a customer should choose you’) needs to be on point. In fact, confidently communicating your expert value or main benefits of your services will help you to attract the right audience and easily convert them into customers. Unsurprisingly though, most business owners are unsure about how to get to the core of what they do.
Whenever I work with my clients on their persuasive message, I invite them to answer this question:
“What are you really selling?”
For many, finding the answer proves to be a real challenge, but if you just stop for a moment and reflect on the real main benefit your services or products offer, then an idea will start forming.
Think about it from a practical point of view, as well as from an emotional one.
Imagine for a moment you’re a mattress seller. Now, if we want to sell one, we could talk about all the features of the mattress, its materials, measurements, etc. but the question is - are we really selling a mattress? In reality, what our customers want to hear is that we’re selling a good night’s sleep, a chance to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, or maybe the promise of comfortable winter nights and fun between the sheets. It surely isn’t just about the mattress and its components.
So, when creating your message for your business (no matter if service- or product-based), focus on identifying the ultimate benefit or outcome you’re selling to your clients – and that’s what you really want to clearly communicate in your message.
The advantage of thinking about your value proposition this way is that by putting the benefits first, you create an immediate emotional connection between audience and brand; customers respond to how messages make them feel as that’s what subconsciously drives their buying decision.
Speak the Language of your Audience
Once you’re clear on what you want to communicate, it’s time to look at how you’re communicating it.
The best (and most persuasive) brand messages are those that speak the language of the audience – that’s really what makes them great.
As obvious as it might sound, the best way to nail that language is to listen to your audience and talk to them.
Depending on resources and budgets, you can do this in several ways; in-depth market research, social media surveys, sample groups of your target clients, etc. If your resources are minimal, but your target audience is in your network and you can spare some time, simply opt to connect with 10 people over a 15-min phone conversation. You can ask about their challenges relevant to your offers, invite them to describe what solutions they want and - most importantly - ask them how they feel when thinking about these solutions. This alone would give you enough insights into their language and desires to create not only a compelling message but to put in place a wordbank you can share with copywriters and your content writing team.
Leave Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Home
As most businesses currently operate online, it’s become essential for both big and small brands to effectively convey who they are virtually.
While for many this has led to thinking outside the box, getting creative and figuring out how to truthfully showcase their personality with every medium available, for others this has created a Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde scenario; online they come across as one type of person and in their individual work with clients, they come across as another.
If you run a personal brand, it can be really detrimental to find yourself in this scenario. In fact, your prospects will simply be confused by the person they “read” online is completely different from the person they’re on the phone with. In turn, this will lead to a missed sales opportunity.
As we’ve discussed, the language you use in your message (and across any of your content) needs to reflect your audience - but it also needs to reflect who you really are. To achieve maximum business results, the two things need to be cohesive and consistent.
Most markets are currently packed with people doing similar things, so how you come across, who you are, and your personality become important differentiators. That’s why it’s key that as a personal brand you don’t try to copy what competitors do or how they speak. There’s nothing wrong with leveraging your personality - just as it is - to showcase your expert skills and attract your ideal customers. After all, people buy from people, so if as a brand you’re trying to do “what everyone else does online” or you’re trying to replicate someone’s behavior, it will just not feel authentic to your customers when they’re about to buy from you.
So once you’ve identified your message and found the right language, make sure its expression feels aligned to who you are, as this will help you to further connect with your audience and increase your number of customers.
Remember to Keep it Simple and Consistent
Last but not least, remember to not overcomplicate your message.
A great brand message is all about oversimplifying concepts, keeping value propositions concise, and creating communication consistency throughout all your channels, so that your ideal customers can understand what your business does, at a glance.
Being persuasive and standing out from the (competitors) crowd is not about giving away as much information as possible. In fact, when it comes to copywriting and, in general, persuasive content, less can really be more!
Of course, creating a message is just the tip of the iceberg. The next step is to learn how to confidently share it, in all sorts of ways, so you can build your audience and get more clients. So don’t let time (or trends) rush you into this process, as once you’ve got that high-converting message in place and you know how to leverage it, your business will be ready to soar.
Rosie has created a free Checklist that will show you all the elements you need to consider when creating a High-Converting Message. The Checklist will also show you how to leverage your message in the best way possible to increase your revenue. You can get the Checklist below:
This article is a collaboration between Veronica Guguian from Spin Ideas and Rosie di Lecce, from Writing with Rosie to provide our readers with the right tools to grow their businesses.
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