Messaging is how your company explains itself: what you do, for whom, and why anyone should care, in words your buyers actually use. Get it right and everything downstream gets easier, from your website to your sales deck to your next campaign.
At SAGE, messaging is the first thing we build with every new client, because nothing else works without it.
Before meeting with a potential client, we always review the company’s website in order to familiarize ourselves. In most cases, the website content we come across is full of industry jargon and/or heavy text elements that are difficult to digest, and the gap between what we read online and hear later in a face-to-face meeting can be vast. The problem with complex language and extensive use of professional jargon is that new website visitors must learn about your industry before they can understand your unique value proposition and discover why they should turn to you.
If what makes your business special – and different from competitors – isn’t straightforward and clear, the money you spend to bring more traffic to your website is wasted and generating relevant leads is much more difficult. The first and most important thing we do once we start working together is understand what the company is all about. We prepare several versions of copy that expresses this – in one sentence, in 50 words and in 100 words, and we make sure the message is simple, coherent, and consistent.
But it is not just about the high-level messages and the company description. It is mainly about generating high-quality content that is relevant to your buyer personas.: Quality content has been proven to generate the most relevant organic traffic and leads, and helps establish a company as a market leader.
Strategy and content are closely tied, since without an effective strategy, it’s going to be very hard to reach your goals and produce high quality content that performs. We try to encourage each website visitor to go through the whole customer journey, progressing from awareness all the way to purchase.
At each stage of the marketing funnel, we use relevant content to:
- Attract prospects and encourage them to pay attention to what you have to offer
- Convert interested visitors into leads
- Convert these leads into customers by engaging them with our content
- Delight customers with more valuable insights and benefits to create loyalty and upselling opportunities
How we learn your buyers’ language
We work closely with our clients’ sales teams and turn what they hear into marketing messages. We join calls with prospects and customers, review sales presentations, and stand at the booth during trade shows to hear the team present to a live audience.
The listening teaches us the buyer’s pain points, concerns, and objections, and then we use their exact language and terminology in everything we write. Very few agencies work this way. You can hear the difference in the copy.
We take a similar approach to content marketing and focus not on telling your company’s story, but rather highlighting how the company’s potential customers can use these products or services to solve their biggest problems. The content strategy we build also considers different interests your target audience might have, to provide them with real value.
Content formats we employ can vary greatly depending on the defined goals and objectives.
They can include infographics, videos, one-pagers, case studies, presentations, blog posts, website content, white papers and e-books, surveys, articles, email campaigns, landing pages, newsletters, social media posts and more. In each case, we pay close attention to using the right tone of voice that is consistent with the brand. In some cases, a cool, funky tone is more effective to convey the message, while others require a more conservative approach. And sometimes, being provocative or edgy is necessary to capture the target audience’s attention and rise above the noise.
One more principle we hold onto: the more personal and granular the messaging, the better it performs. So you get message variants for each target segment and persona, never one description asked to please everyone.
One of the most powerful types of content is UGC, or user-generated content, including customer testimonials, reviews, quotes, etc. When others recommend your company or product, it is much more effective than even the best piece of content you can write about yourself. UGC helps build stronger relationships with your target audience and gain their trust. Articles written by analysts and journalists also play an important role and should make up part of a successful content strategy.
Messaging sets the direction; content carries it to your audience. For how we turn these messages into blogs, case studies, and campaigns, see Content and Messaging.