Boomers are marketing’s most valuable generation.
And will be for years to come.
Craft a compelling story with a Messaging Architecture
Building a Messaging Architecture for each audience persona arms marketing and sales teams with a consistent, omnichannel message that can guide channel choices, tactical decisions, creative and offers.
Too often, messaging is the last thing marketers address when putting together a marketing program. But the truth is, it should be among the first things marketers consider.
What story are you trying to tell about your company, product or service? How do you make that story compelling enough to engage prospects? What will move them to action? And what do you want them to do next?
All of these questions need to be answered before making important tactical decisions (after all, different tactics lend themselves to different types of storytelling). Developing that story is the job of the Messaging Architecture.
The development of a detailed Marketing Architecture for the Fort Worth Zoo led to a brand repositioning that helped the Zoo top one million visitors in a single year.
What does a Messaging Architecture do?
An effective Messaging Architecture tells the prospect 1) Why we’re vital to their lives (Relevancy), 2) why we’re worth the effort (Value), 3) how we inspire trust (Transparency) and 4) why it’s critical to act now (Urgency). It’s a deceptively simple — but incredibly powerful — tool that will prove useful to marketing, sales, internal training and c-suite communications. It allows you to present a unified way of thinking and talking about your company.
How does it work?
The key to building a successful Messaging Architecture is collaboration. You need to gather the perspectives of the C-suite, sales, marketing and other key stakeholders. The goal is to create a unified communication platform that transcends departmental silos and provides guidance for external partners in order to develop a clear, omnichannel message.
The Messaging Architecture begins with a single statement: I will not purchase your product or service. From there, our task is to identify all the possible reasons why — emotional as well as logical — and craft meaningful messages to effectively counter each objection. Sound simple? Believe me, it’s not.
As you develop and fine-tune your answers to each objection, you’ll create a number of message iterations: a long-form editorial version, a sales pitch version, an elevator speech and long and short promotional copy.
It’s a major undertaking. But the rewards are significant. I’ve developed Messaging Architectures for clients in the real estate, financial, insurance and family entertainment verticals, for both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores. In every case, the implementation of the Messaging Architecture has led to an increase in MQLs and conversion rates.
Consider implementing your own Messaging Architecture. You’ll be surprised how valuable a tool it can be.
Jeff Coleman is a marketing strategist, creative director and writer with more than four decades’ experience delivering results for B2C and B2B clients nationwide. Get in touch by calling 682-262-7243 or by emailing jeff@colemanconverts.com.
Data is not persuasion
In our enthusiasm for analytics, automation and AI, we’ve forgotten a fundamental fact: the ultimate goal of marketing is to persuade.
As marketers, we’ve allowed our love affair with data and technology to become the be-all and end-all of strategic marketing. While both are vitally important to marketing success, there are two critical needs that they simply can’t provide:
Data can’t move prospects to act. Technology can’t motivate consumers to buy.
Persuasion is the sole province of messaging and creative.
In fact, a marketing ROI model developed by Forrester shows that an increased investment in creative — even a moderate one — will result in an 18% higher ROI for marketers.
A compelling message that incorporated emotional and logical appeals allowed Just Brakes to reposition their services in the mind of consumers without investing in an expensive rebranding campaign.
The goal of creative is to persuade; to craft a compelling message that incorporates logical and emotional arguments, delivered by a credible voice.
Logic. Emotion. Credibility. The three pillars of persuasion as espoused by Aristotle some 2,000 years ago. The foundations of effective, sales-generating messaging strategy today.
Messaging and creative, based on proven conversion marketing principles, are the most critical elements of any campaign. Because if we can’t persuade, we can’t convert. If we can’t convert, we fail.
Time to put persuasion front and center again.
Jeff Coleman is a marketing strategist, creative director and writer with more than four decades’ experience delivering results for B2C and B2B clients nationwide. Get in touch by calling 682-262-7243 or by emailing jeff@colemanconverts.com.
1 in 3 agencies admit difficulty thinking strategically
A recent Data & Marketing Association (DMA) report has confirmed a disturbing trend that may be adversely affecting your marketing results.
The DMA surveyed marketing agencies nationwide and made a surprising discovery: nearly one-third of them openly admit that they have difficulty thinking strategically. That’s quite an admission. And it poses quite a problem for marketers.
1 in 3 agencies admit difficulty thinking strategically.
In a 2017 survey of CMOs, marketing managers revealed that one of their greatest concerns is “the inability of their agency partners to provide good, long-term strategic thinking.”
Strategic thinking links tactical marketing to business objectives. The ability to think strategically is at the very core of data-driven marketing. Strategy connects data to message, message to tactics. It identifies market opportunities. Matches products to personas. And links marketing goals to business objectives. It is the overarching blueprint that brings together a wide array of multichannel tactics.
In short, strategic thinking is what your agency partners are hired to do. So why do one in three have difficulty doing it? (And how many more agencies lack strategic bench strength but won’t say so?)
Three factors contribute to this strategic deficit:
1. TACTICAL TUNNEL VISION. Today’s marketing agencies have abdicated strategic leadership in favor of tactical specialization. Web design shops. Content agencies. Programmatic media buyers. Direct marketing specialists. Social media experts. The list goes on and on. As a result of this tactical tunnel vision, more than 60% of surveyed CMOs state that they are unable to effectively orchestrate cross-channel marketing strategies. So who’s providing the strategic thinking needed to develop a cohesive, multichannel strategy?
2. DATA-DEFICIENT DECISION MAKING. When it comes to utilizing data to make strategic decisions, most agencies talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. In fact, 3 out of 4 agencies confess that they don’t use data to make marketing decisions. Hard to believe that agencies in this day and age can get away with that. But agencies aren’t alone. CMOs admit that 70% of their marketing decisions aren’t based on data-driven insights.
3. ABSENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY. Seventy percent of CEOs believe that revenue generation is the #1 goal of marketing. And yet, today’s agencies are not holding themselves accountable for results that impact business goals. They depend on “soft” metrics to measure program success, rather than tying their marketing efforts to revenue generation. Is it any wonder that 31% of marketing managers believe that their campaigns have absolutely no impact on the company’s business goals?
It’s time for marketing agencies to step up strategically. It’s time for CMOs to demand strategic bench strength from their agency partners.