Your Message - Clear and Direct

Consider the following marketing slogans:

The California Milk Processor Board asks, "Got milk?" Wow, that is about as clear and direct as a marketing message can be.

The food company Mars says about its famous Dove Bar, "Silky quality chocolate wrapped round delicious ice cream. What could be better?" Mmm, that sounds clear, direct and tasty.

The business consulting firm Accentures states about what it takes to be successful: "High-performance businesses continually balance, align and renew the three building blocks of high performance, creating their competitive essence through a careful combination of insight and action." Hmm... That message is abstract and complicated. I'm not entirely sure what it means. Do you?

To be fair, it is much more difficult to write an effective message for a high-level consulting firm than an ice cream bar. But Accenture nevertheless violates the #1 rule of messaging: Be clear and direct, even to the point of obviousness.

The world is busy and frenzied and people have too much information coming at them all the time. We are lucky to get 3 seconds of someone's attention. Therefore a marketing message should get right to the point. It should jump off the page and say what it means. BOOM! There it is.

Emphasize only 1 or 2 primary benefits of your product and ignore the other dozen secondary benefits, at least in your initial impression. (If you have an interested client or a captive audience, perhaps you can elaborate.) Resist the temptation to say too much. The effectiveness of a message steadily declines with each additional benefit you include over 2 because the message becomes diluted and does not leave as strong an impression.

When it comes to writing an effective message, ambiguity and long-windedness are sins, while clarity and directness are virtues.

Your Message Is an Arrow

As noted in the previous post, the first priority in marketing is to develop an effective message explaining your benefits. I would also add selecting a target audience who is likely to respond. These two elements – message and target market – are your marketing foundation. They support and extend everything you do to reach out and win customers. In fact, having a solid message and well-defined target can literally double or triple your product’s chances of success! It makes a significant difference.

If your message is an arrow, think of it as having two parts. The tip of the arrow is your essential benefit, the main benefit your product or service delivers to customers. The shaft and feathers are reasons to believe or points that build credibility. A good message has both because an arrow without a tip does not stick, and a tip without shaft and feathers does not fly far or true.

In the next post we will look at the most important characteristic of an essential benefit – being clear and direct.

P.S. For a sneak preview of a roll-up-your-sleeves workshop for creating a message and target market (planned for fall 2008), click here.