January 2007

Developing Effective Messages
By Kay Paumier, Communications Plus

Every day we are bombarded with hundreds of messages. Some "hit home." Most fall flat.

We are all victims of message overload. That makes it all the more important to craft effective messages that clearly state what you want people to know about your organization, product and service. Good messages prompt the desired response from your audience.

Easier said than done.

To develop messages, first do your research and develop positioning statements. Those statements, which are for internal use to guide your communication efforts, can include both negative and positive elements.

Messages, on the other hand, are primarily targeted to the outside world. These statements should focus on your positive attributes, and accurately present your organization, product or service so that you:

• Get the attention of the reader or listener
• Convey the desired information (e.g., tell readers why they need your product or service)
• Prompt the reader to take some action (e.g., ask for more information).

To develop your messages, focus first on your target audience or "public." After all, if you're going to prompt someone to do something, you need to know what motivates them. What keeps them awake at night (the "pain")? What makes them smile (the "gain")?

List those motivators to help guide the messaging process. Common motivators for business audiences are to:

• Reduce costs
• Speed up product development
• Enhance productivity.

Common motivators for consumer audiences are to

• Look better
• Remain healthy
• Make or save more money.

Now start developing messages that should answer the "WIIFM" question (What's In It For Me). Product messages should focus on customer needs and wants. The messages should include at least one of the following elements:

• A key differentiating factor or claim (e.g., "easiest to use," "most cost-effective")
• A key feature (e.g., 500G hard drive)
• A corresponding benefit or benefits ("increased storage" and "reduced need for an external storage device")
• A description of how you solve a problem (the "pain") or enhance life (the "gain").

For example, suppose you are promoting a new ballpoint pen. Let's say that people need to hold your pen differently than traditional pens. (That's the bad news.) However, the product gives writers more support, reducing fatigue and improving penmanship. (That's the good news.) The pen can also hold much more ink than other pens, making it more cost-effective.

Your positioning statements might be:

• "Once people learn how to use it, the Penultimate Pen can help them write more clearly with less strain."
• "The Penultimate Pen costs three times as much as the traditional ballpoint pen, but lasts four times as long."

(Remember, a positioning statement can include negative features. Your messages should express only positive qualities.)

Messages that might stem from those positioning statements are:

• "The Penultimate Pen enables people to write longer without fatigue."
• "The cost-effective Penultimate Pen lasts four times longer than the average pen."
• "The Penultimate Pen can help you write more legibly."

Once you have your first drafts, test the messages out on people both inside and outside your company. You'll probably refine or at least clarify some elements.

Additional Recommendations

If possible, develop different ways to say the same message so you can repeat the points without sounding repetitious. (For example, the first and third messages above state similar benefits in slightly different ways.)

Depending on the complexity of your product or service, you may want to develop supporting or "sub-messages." Possible sub-messages under the "write longer without fatigue" message would be:

• "In controlled research, writers using the Penultimate Pen wrote comfortably four times longer than people using traditional pens."
• "The Penultimate Pen leverages recent research into muscle strain to enable people to write longer and better."

Prioritize the messages for each group you're trying to influence. The "cost-effective" message would probably be less important to a corporate buyer than to a family struggling to make ends meet.

For a succinct discussion of positioning and messaging in the high-tech world, see the book "High Tech Product Launch" by Catherine Kitcho (Pele Publications, www.pelepubs.com/pele).

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