Hold on and pay attention! Let's dive into exactly, step-by-step, how to craft an amazing message. A message that will have the exact kinds of customers you're looking for, doing exactly what you need them to do in order to make your business more successful.
Choose the subject by focusing on your goals
Too many people hire a marketing professional or agency and say, "I want to get more customers so our business can grow." Well, before we can accomplish a broad goal like that, let's figure out exactly what you want, in detail, so we can figure out what needs to happen for you to get there.
What exactly are you trying to achieve? Yes, I know you want to attract more customers but let's narrow it down even more than that. You need to start building a campaign profile. Contained in your campaign profile are 3 pieces of information.
An extremely specific and detailed goal.
An avatar and profile for your potential customer.
A unique message to be used in the marketing campaign.
Start by asking yourself important questions that narrow down the details of your main goal. Do you want to make more money by making more sales and what do you need to sell more of? Are you trying to grow your social media following by attracting people and which social media platform do you want to grow? Are you trying to get more customers to come eat lunch at your restaurant? Do you need to sell more quick lube oil changes at your auto repair shop? Coming up with a singular, detailed goal is the beginning step to creating a campaign profile that will result in an amazing message. The more accurate the information that you collect, the easier it will be to write a message, implement a marketing strategy, and track results that will consistently attract more customers and achieve your initial goal.
Figuring out whose shoes.
You're going to have to put yourself in the customers shoes...but first you have to find out whose shoes. By figuring out whose shoes, I mean determine the exact type of customer that would be interested in fulfilling your goal. You need to accurately predict as much information about the potential customer as you possibly can. This is your avatar. You will have a different avatar for each campaign profile. Some of the things you should consider when figuring out your potential customer are:
Age
Area they live
Gender (if both genders figure out what percentage of each)
Income bracket
Where they work
Married or not
Kids or not
You could literally go on and on. However, the important part is the next step. Now make up a fictional character based off your avatars information. You need to come up with where he/she works, what time they get off, where they go, when they go to bed and wake up, what they drive...and so on. This fictional character needs to be as accurately defined as possible by the real information you've collected and researched about your potential customer that would fulfill your specific goal.
***side note: This seems intense but you're going to be shocked at how much information you come up with and how much of this info you will use down the road in SEO, Facebook ads, Google Ads and tons of other advertising. If it sounds like a lot of work...well...it is. This is what we do for people successfully everyday but we are happy to tell you some of our secrets ;)
Forming the perfect message to attract the perfect client
The hard work has been done. You've researched and brainstormed to come up with your razor focused, accurate, and detailed goal. You have a very specific customer avatar and a ton of useful information on why you created the avatar like you did. Now it's time to begin forming your message. As you know from the title of this blog post, the message is a key part of the marketing campaign. Once you have the message it can be transformed into a web page, social media campaign, video, old school flyer, pay-per-click ad, or any other media source. Once you have a campaign profile you're ready to do some serious customer attraction marketing, but the message is the KEY component that can make or break your entire campaign profile & marketing campaign.
Let me point out a couple things before you start crafting this message. First, potential customers LOVE to hear about themselves. In fact in 2013, TIME magazine called Millennials "The Me Me Me Generation" on the front cover insinuating that they love themselves first. I can't speak to the actual legitimacy of this claim, but I do know from my marketing experience that people generally are attracted to things that pertain to themselves.
It's really no surprise that people love themselves, love talking about themselves, love
hearing about themselves, and love reading about themselves in today's society. Wouldn't it be cool if they could read, hear, watch, or experience an advertisement with a message that was about them? Wouldn't it be amazing if they saw something so powerful it was almost like someone studied them to find out exactly what they needed to hear? Oh...wait...we did! Up to this point, hopefully you've spent the time (or hired someone who will do it for you ;) and considered all of the important factors about your perfect customer avat
Let's start crafting your message. Your message is going to have to answer 3 questions. And it needs to answer them in uncomplicated terms that make sense. We'll call these 3 questions "The 3 My's".
How will this improve MY life right now?
What makes your product or service better than MY current product/service?
How do I get it without disturbing MY current situation?
So let's say you own a pizzeria. You don't have enough customers throughout the week to support the salad bar and you'd really like to continue having it. You also decide that the easiest and most profitable thing to make is pizza. Based on your main goal, the objective is to sell more pizza and trips to the salad bar, at dinner time, Monday through Friday, in March and April in your pizzeria. More specifically you'd like to increase the turnover and number of 4 to 6 person tables that eat dinner. Your avatar is a middle aged woman named Sue who is married, works 9 to 5 at a bank, has 2 kids, a husband, and a dog to take care of. You've got to consider all of this information and how it pertains to your specific goal. Now remember, you aren't going to be answering these questions based on yourself...you're answering them as your avatar. Sue will benefit in the following ways.
She won't have to cook dinner tonight when she gets off work, on a school night, giving her more time to take care of things at home, relax a bit, catch up on household duties, and spend more time with the family.
She will save more money than eating at a traditional restaurant where each person orders an entree. She gains more time at home without cooking or cleaning. Plus you give her a 15% off dinner coupon that is reusable during the week...which is better than her having to plan, shop, prepare and clean up the mess.
She can click directly on the ad she sees on social media during her lunch break. It takes Sue directly to your web page that has been set up, not only to reserve her reusable coupon for that month, but it also has a button that Sue can click 30 minutes before she arrives that will reserve a table for her and her family and start their order (saving her more time).
The first answer should be benefit heavy. I know I pointed out the obvious but if you have ever taken care of a family of hungry people and animals, you know I'm telling the truth about the busyness of life, work, cooking, cleaning, helping with school, and all of the other hectic parts of family life.
The second answer should showcase the strength of your product or service. The key here is thinking about what they are currently using or doing. If you can add in a coupon for trying your product, saving money is a definite win. However, time is something that is much more valuable...especially to busy people who have very limited time.
The last answer is all about convenience. Make it incredibly easy to get your product or service. Your product should be so easy to get that it wouldn't make sense for them NOT to go with you. In this case she literally reads, clicks and that's it. Then when she gets to the restaurant she has a table, food and a happy family.
Finalizing your perfect message
You've done a lot of work to get to this point. You are ready to finalize your perfect message based on all of the information you've collected. You're going to need an attention grabbing phrase which will be your main message line, a brief explanation as a sub phrase, and a detailed paragraph explaining your offer. After reading through all of the information that you've collected, you can see that Sue will have more time by not having to cook or clean. Look at question and answer #1 and start forming an attention grabber. Now, we could say "You'll have more time" but that is too generic. Sue needs to hear something shocking...she needs a promise that would catch her attention. In this case I think a good attention grabber would be, "Don't Cook Tonight! We'll Have Dinner Ready When You Get Here." Instantly Sue wants to know more about whoever this is letting her off the hook tonight. Is this real?
Next we'll look at question and answer #2 and start forming a brief explanation of the situation that Sue is now interested in. After she reads the attention grabber she clicks the ad. She then sees the brief explanation that says something like,"Take the night off! Aren't you tired of cooking and cleaning? We're taking care of dinner for the whole family. Fresh gourmet pizza with real mozzarella and Romano cheese served family style with unlimited salad and garlic bread. Plus we're discounting dinner for eating at our place!"
Finally, it's time to bring home the bacon!...or the pizza actually. Sue is on the verge of taking your incredible offer of more time, less cooking and cleaning, incredible sounding pizza, and a discount. We want to show her how easy it is and the joy she will have taking advantage of this incredible meal. Take a look at question and answer #3. We want to show all of the steps to making this happen tonight. The key in this piece is execution. (This may take the assistance of a marketing agency like F5 or some time to learn a few things). We want Sue to be able to click, type her name, how many in her party and have an email / text message sent to her so she can click on it later (30 minutes prior to her arriving at the pizzeria). So the next statement is going to in EXTREMELY SIMPLE TERMS, give Sue instructions. It will go something like this. "Are you ready to give yourself the night off? We'll even have it ready when you get here! Reserve your family's spot now and save 15% off your entire meal tonight by clicking here. (Button says something like - We're coming to eat. Give me 15% off!)"
Creating YOUR message
Creating your message can be a challenge. This whole post is only a tiny example of countless ways to increase traffic, profits and grow your customer base. Obviously YOUR message may be different in a lot of ways. It may be about a service that you offer or a specific product. No matter what your goal, most of the time if you use the methodology above and create a detailed campaign profile it will result in a message that can be extremely effective in achieving your marketing goals.
Relevant Digital Agency has many techniques and proven methods of reaching specific goals for your business and we really appreciate you allowing us to share some of our knowledge with you. Just remember, YOUR business is unique...YOUR message should be too!
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