You know what your business does, right?  It makes perfect sense to you. But does it make perfect sense to your target audience?  Can your customers (and potential customers) easily define what your business does, and why it matters to them?

It’s a challenge many business owners grapple with – how to take something that’s crystal clear in your head and turn it into compelling marketing messages, which is why we’ve honed an easy exercise to help.

Try our positioning and messaging exercise
This exercise, which we do with clients all the time, is a sure-fire way to punch up your messaging.  Start by working through the following bullet points and finesse a brief (as in, no more than three sentences) definition for each.

• Who we are. So, for us at OCTOPUS that’s, ‘We are outsourced marketing specialists who provide affordable, practical marketing resource for businesses.’
• What we do. For example, ‘We work with businesses to define, drive and deliver their marketing goals.’
• Who we do it for. Such as, ‘We work with organisations of all shapes and sizes. Some may already have in-house marketing resource but need extra support, while others may prefer to outsource all their marketing to us.’
• How we do it. For instance, ‘We start by identifying your marketing goals, then we create a marketing plan and strategy to achieve those goals. We’ll also manage the campaigns for you and monitor their success.’
• Why us?We might say, for example, ‘When you work with OCTOPUS, it feels like we’re an extension of your in-house team. We’re right there with you, supporting your goals and business growth every step of the way.’

What’s next?
Now you build on your answers to create some key marketing messages.  Here, make a short list (five or six items) of what your target audience wants.  For example, at OCTOPUS we might identify things like, ‘You want an affordable way to market your business.’ Or ‘You want a flexible marketing resource you can call on anytime.’

Then, for each need identified, write a sentence or two on:

• What your business offers to meet that need.
• How that service benefits the customer.

The result is a framework of core messages that should underpin all of your marketing efforts going forward.  This ensures you’re consistently targeting the right people with the right messages, every time. 

If you want to polish up your messaging, we’d love to help.  Drop OCTOPUS a line.

(Business photo created by aleksandarlittlewolf – www.freepik.com)