It’s not a headline. It’s not a tagline. It’s not a campaign. It’s the strategy for telling the story of your brand in the most advantageous way possible. This usually means creating clear differentiation within your industry, as well as high relevance to your audiences.
Before you fill a web site with copy that may or may not hit the mark with your audiences, the messaging strategy sets the frame for who you want to say you are and why you’re the best choice. With this clarity, every word and image takes on greater purpose and impact.
Why do I need one?
Messaging strategy is an opportunity to step back from the day-to-day action of marketing in order to align your brand with your audiences for max response. Clients often hire me to help them strategically differentiate their brand creating greater visibility and impact for their marketing. Certain innovators sometimes require their messaging strategy to help them say what they do with brevity and clarity—turning a whitepaper into a value prop. Others just know their message isn’t performing at a high level and understand the power of optimizing it.
What’s the difference between a messaging strategy and a creative brief?
Creative brief is a form you fill out to tell your creative team what you want. Messaging strategy is the process by which you discover how to best present your brand. Your messaging strategy informs every creative brief. Often times it makes the creative briefs actually make sense.
Does messaging strategy constrict creative?
On the contrary, messaging strategy frees up the creatives to be bolder and go further, knowing they are aligned with what the brand needs to say.
What are the components of a messaging strategy?
The elements of a messaging strategy can vary. What matters is that you get what you need to clearly articulate your message in both word and image. I include the following:
- Brand type
- Strategic differentiator
- Positioning statement
- Consumer value proposition
- Mindshare to own
- Category
- Strategic driver
- Core Brand Attributes
- Elevator pitch
- Tagline
Why can’t my marketing director do this?
Your marketing team does a lot. They budget. They coordinate vendors. They initiate campaigns and sometimes create them. They maintain your web presence, support your sales team and probably handle PR as well. Most marketing directors don’t have time to step and back reflect. They may be too close to the brand to see it other than how it currently shows up anyway. And given everything else they do, it’s not surprising that they don’t have the specialized skillset to do strong messaging strategy. That’s not a knock on marketing. It’s a testament to how complex and crowded the messaging environment has become in almost every industry.
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