You think you know your messaging—but do you really?
Is your messaging consistent across every piece of marketing collateral you produce?
Do you talk about your messaging with every recruit you interview?
Does your messaging shine through in every conversation you have with clients?
Do you engrain your messaging into the training process for all new employees?
Do you evaluate current employees against the values put forth in your messaging?
Would people know your content is yours even if it didn’t have your logo on it?
If you answered “no” to any of those questions, you do not know your messaging as well as you think you do. Or at least, you have not clarified and reinforced your messaging as much as you should.
A few weeks ago, Kris and I conducted a strategy consultation with a professional services firm in need of help with their social media and, more generally, their business strategy.
“We know we have messaging for clients, for partners, and for prospective employees,” they said. “The trouble is, we don’t know what the messaging is for each of those groups, or why it differs.”
That sounds like a unique problem, but it is far more common than you think. Although you only have so much control over your brand, it is important that you do as much as you can to steer things in the right direction.
The best place to start is knowing your messaging. It is only once you know your values—how you want to be conveyed, and what you care about most deeply—that you can display that messaging externally. Without knowing your messaging, you can not even begin to say you have a marketing program.
So, do you really know your messaging?
Image credit: CC by Håkan Dahlström
