Marketing messaging helps convert prospects into customers and reinforce the loyalty of existing clients. This requires a deeper understanding of the ideal customer and their needs. Your marketing messaging must be able to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”
Let’s dive into building your startup’s marketing messaging strategy.
Quick takeaways:
- Understand your marketing personas to learn more about your target audience and develop stronger messaging
- Attach goals to KPIs so you can measure your progress
- Set a tone for your marketing messaging based on the target audience, the media being used, your goals for the message, and the feelings you want to evoke
Tactics for Building Your Startup’s Marketing Messaging Strategy
Every startup should develop a marketing messaging strategy before investing significant time and resources on a marketing campaign. Your strategy will drive the creation of the content for your marketing campaigns. Start with a baseline for your strategy, and then adjust it according to:
- Feedback from sales and marketing personnel based on responses from your target audience
- Metrics on the performance of your marketing campaigns
Consider the following tactics when creating and amending your marketing messaging strategy, as well as crafting individual marketing messages.
Understand Your Marketing Personas
Before sending any marketing messaging, understand who will be receiving the message. Your ideal customer will shape what you say and how you say it. To better understand your target audience, develop marketing personas, which are fictional characters with demographic and behavioral attributes designed to closely represent your ideal buyer.
Developing marketing personas will create consistency in your messaging across your organization. It will give you a better understanding of your ideal customers, enabling you to improve your marketing messaging so it speaks to their needs, emotions, and interests.
Attach Goals to KPIs
Measurement is essential for evaluating the success of your sales and marketing efforts. That’s why it’s important to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the results of your marketing campaigns. However, KPIs are not goals. Your goals are what you want to achieve with your marketing. KPIs are metrics that let you know how well your marketing is helping you reach your goals.
Set specific goals for your marketing and then use KPIs to measure your progress toward those goals. For example:
Goal: Generate traffic for your website or newsletter
KPIs: Website visitors, bounce rate, clickthrough rate
Goal: Build brand awareness
KPIs: Number of likes / shares, inbound links
Goal: Generate new leads
KPIs: Landing page conversion rates, email subscriptions
Goal: Convert leads into customers or subscribers
KPIs: Online sales, “thank you” page conversion rate
Goal: Improve customer retention
KPIs: Lifetime customer value, churn rate
Set the Tone
Your company should have its own voice: the words you use, your brand’s defining characteristics, and overall personality. It should reflect your brand personality, help you to connect with your audience, and differentiate your company and its products or services from the competition.
While your startup’s voice will remain consistent throughout your marketing, your tone will change depending on the situation. Each marketing campaign should have its own tone. It’s not set in stone — create a voice for your marketing messaging and adjust it depending on how your audience reacts.
When setting the tone for your marketing messaging, consider:
- Your intended audience (e.g., CEOs, Millennials, IT professionals)
- The media for your message (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, corporate blog)
- Your goals for the marketing (e.g., educating, selling, getting leads)
- The feelings you want to evoke (e.g., excitement, curiosity)
- The tone you want to convey (e.g., helpful, formal, informative)
Creating the Right Marketing Messaging for Your Startup
Your startup’s marketing messaging strategy will form the foundation for all your marketing efforts. It should begin with understanding your audience, as they will drive your messaging. Attach metrics to your goals to make sure you track and measure what matters in your marketing. Match the tone of your messaging to your audience, media, and goals while supporting your overall voice.
Need help with creating a marketing strategy or crafting the right marketing messaging for your startup? Sellerant can guide the way.