Laurel Black Communications + Design

Messaging

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The Top Marketing Must-Have: A Clear Message

The Top Marketing Must-Have:
A Clear Message

Do your prospects understand what you do?Why? Because confused people don’t buy, and in during times of uncertain economies, scared people don’t take chances. You can’t assume that if your message is clear to you, that it will in turn be clear to your customers.

People don’t read minds or between the lines, especially when they’re more nervous than usual about parting with their money. Their tendency is to play it safe and be really literal, so your customers need to be told clearly what’s in it for them from their point of view.

And your message has to be delivered in a user-friendly way. An illegible store sign, a web site with confusing navigation, a display ad with tons of tiny type too small to read – these things are all too common and destroy the ability of the sign, ad or web site to communicate. If your message is not clear, your market will be confused, and (again) confused people don’t buy.

As the economy and your competition continue to evolve, being clear will become even more crucial as everyone jockeys for market share and adjusts to new playing fields.

Your marketing materials deliver your messages when you aren’t on hand to explain what your business has to offer and why it’s valuable to your market. If the messages are confusing, unprofessional or inconsistent, people will assume that your business is too, since they will have nothing else on which to base a judgment.

So here’s my message (and I hope it’s crystal clear):

Explain the advantage to your customers from their point of view. Make this message consistent throughout out all your marketing.

Do all you can to ensure that the message sent is the message received. Your market will thank you!

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Cheap Design is Expensive

Cheap Design is Expensive

Cheap design is expensive

I was contacted recently by a business owner who wanted to place an ad in a magazine with a looming deadline. The owner said he wanted me to just resize an old ad and wasn’t interested in making any changes. Upon further questioning, it appeared that the old ad had not been effective, but since another publication had put it together for him for free, he felt he could get some more mileage out of it.

I tried to explain that putting little thought into the content and look of an expensive display ad would make the ad basically useless, but he wasn’t having any of it. He insistedthat the important thing was to have a presence in the magazine and that the ad’s message was adequate.

He seemed to think that readers would just somehow “get” what his business was all about and that they would know what to do (even though the ad had no call to action). He felt that spending money on the content and appearance of the ad was a waste, and I should just resize it and be done. Since I have an allergy to selling people useless stuff, I passed on the job.

This experience is not unique. Everyone who has ever been in business has had to deal with customers who are overly focused on price, and the design and marketing professions are no different. This is especially true in an ailing economy – customers tend to focus on the bottom line because it feels like they live and die by it.

But, as we know, it is a mistake to bring a short-term focus to a long-term challenge, and that is what happens when make-do patches are applied to marketing tools. Re-using something that didn’t work the first time just wastes resources that would be better applied to finding a real solution that supports business goals over the long term. And other businesses have their versions of this. If you are an accountant, it’s “Cheap accounting is expensive,” and if you are a mechanic, it’s “Cheap repairs are expensive.”

Your investment in expensive ad space, printing and web development will be wasted if budget resources are not first used for developing message and design. Get your strategic content in place, and you will receive a much better return on those investments.