Your marketing message resonates with clients when your brand story is communicated clearly.
As a small business owner there are ways to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing message. An increase in customer engagement and website traffic are at the top of the list. As female serviced-based business owners, being heard and truly understood by our target audience starts in our brand’s story. You’ll know it’s working because your prospects will fill out your inquiry forms to book calls or ask questions about your services.
SmartCat’s marketing message journey.
For example, for about 4 years of my business, the tagline of my website read:
Be Found. Be Heard. Be the Solution.
I created this message when SmartCat Marketing was in its third year of business.
These three phrases described a client’s buying journey.
- First off, they need to be able to find you.
- From there, they have to hear your marketing message and get a sense of what you’re offering
- And finally, what you offer needs to be incredibly clear, and so does the solution that you solve.
The problem I uncovered was my audience was not resonating with the “Be The Solution” . You see, pretty much everyone thinks their services are a solution.
Include the frustrations or desires your client has in your web copy as part of your marketing message.
Pulling out client’s challenges and pain points in my discovery calls has always been part of my process. Yet, I wasn’t crystal clear with defining these pain points on my website. Basically my website wasn’t pulling it’s full weight when it came to converting clients. It drove me absolutely bananas. By my 4th year with more client research, I began recording the patterns from the conversations during phone interviews with past clients and prospects.
A game changer.
Your clients have a pain point, and your marketing message is looking to target that pain through a solution to take the unpleasantness away. If there is no paint point, no solution is required.
Avoid industry-standard jargon – it doesn’t improve your marketing message.
Looking at my old tagline—Be Found. Be Heard. Be the Solution—I discovered that some of my audience, outside of the marketing sphere, didn’t completely understand what this meant. They didn’t recognize the relevancy of the buyer’s journey. It was essentially industry jargon.
And so, with my new found data, I tweaked my marketing message’s tagline.
Nicole Gallant, Lead Cat and Certified StoryBrand Guide
Get More Sales With The Right Words.
My clients tell me they totally understand what I do. I haven’t changed what I offer. The same services are there. And now, I can add my certification with StoryBrand (February 2022).
So now when I ask myself the question, “How do I know my message is working?”…I know because I’m attracting the right clients! Female entrepreneurs are having an easier time finding me. They’re resonating on a deeper level with my message, and they’re reaching out more than ever before to work with me!
The perfect brand story, in the eyes of your potential customer (which is the problem you solve), is super enticing. It generates curiosity about your brand, it’s relatable and it is not a pitch. I really wish I could obliterate this word – pitch – from our vocabulary. Successful subject matter experts don’t pitch. They don’t need to. I wrote more on this topic of Getting to the Heart of Your Audience.
Here are 6 elements to include in your marketing message.
At this point in my story, I knew my tagline wasn’t hitting the mark as I’d hoped. This was a big lightbulb moment for me. Therefore I made a promise to myself that I would regularly touch base with my audience and ask them for feedback. Also known as market research.
For that reason, keep in mind that a quality marketing message, that truly resonates with clients, needs to achieve 6 objectives:
1. To answer a question: whether it’s the copy on your website or what you’re saying on a call, your marketing message needs to answer the questions your client has in mind, before they even ask them.
2. To get clients to say “YES”: whatever your message, you want it to hit the nail on the head for your prospective client. If you’ve communicated your offering in such a powerful way that they hear it and say “YES!” then you know you’re on the right track.
3. Get clients buzzing with excitement: a great marketing message doesn’t just answer a question – it has the potential to solve it. When you solve that significant problem for your client, they are absolutely overjoyed to have found you (I love it when that happens!).
4. Communicate its value for the money: how often have you heard, “I’m not ready to spend any money right now” or “I have to think about it”? The right message answers the bulk of their questions. They’ll pay you what you’re worth, because the solution you have for them is so invaluable that it will ultimately make them money.
5. Get the client to want to close the deal themselves: they see so much value in your offering that they want to get in there before you’re over capacity and can’t take any more clients. Imagine if your potential clients asked you when they can start, rather than the other way around.
6. Clearly communicate your process so that the client has no doubts: you’ll know your message is working when you stop hearing, “I don’t know if this solution will work for me”. A good marketing message instills clients with the confidence that you know what you’re talking about. Secondly, that you’re capable to get the job done. Thirdly, you’re not an expense for them on their taxes – you are the solution to radically change their business for the better.
In short, elevate your marketing messaging by taking these 6 objectives into consideration. You’ll know that it’s working when your message reaches the ears of the people you intend it to, and it calls people into action.
Stop wasting money on marketing tactics that don’t work
When your audience doesn’t resonate with your marketing message you lose out on opportunities. Spending money on ads and endless hours on social media won’t work if your marketing message isn’t clear. So, if you are frustrated with making your brand memorable so the people you want to serve have access to your offers, reach out.
Above all, I know you want to make an impact by helping your audience solve a problem.
I’m Nicole Gallant, CEO of SmartCat Marketing and certified through StoryBrand helping you use the proven 7 step framework that acts as a filter to clarify your message so clients listen.
