Getting Your Messaging and Positioning Right

Created 10 years ago in Business / Getting Started

“Better sex more often.”

Can you describe the user experience, value and ROI of your products and services like this? Have you iterated your positioning, messaging and storytelling map to captivate prospects and motivate them to "stop, look and learn"? No? We should talk.

Getting your story right is an absolutely critical precursor to sales success. While you probably don’t sell anything to improve sex lives, you’re probably doing something that helps someone, somewhere. How are you improving your customers’ lives? Can you say it in one sentence without a lot of subordinate clauses? Can you distill it to a brief tag line to accompany your logo?

The story is the beginning. It’s followed by positioning and messaging to connect your corporate brand, website, product messaging, the content of your online chat sessions, etc. Your target market must understand “if they want X, they should come to you.” Do your landing pages, email subject lines and other acquisition activities do this? The successful content recipe is a blend of features, advantages, benefits, emotional appeals and affirmation.

I help companies develop their own “better sex more often” story. Some are pre-launch; others are already in the market and trying to raise sales. While my recommendation is always to start at the top and work down, some just want an outside perspective or feedback on landing page bounce rates or funnel conversion issues. Their client circumstances may differ, but the priority of saying the right thing at the right time to the right cohort in the conversion funnel doesn’t.