Creativity can be highly useful in marketing, but it won't get you very far if your message strategy is off the mark. In fact, it's a waste of talent.
Your message strategy is the foundation for everything you do in marketing. And when your message strategy is consistently and repetitively executed, creativity is the icing on the cake.
Think of your message strategy as the recipe for how to write and talk about your product. Your copywriters follow the recipe, mix ingredients from the message strategy, add their creativity, and you end up with a great story about your product.
A message strategy includes a positioning statement, three or four support points, and as much detail as necessary to accommodate all marketing communications.
Positioning Statement Defined
A positioning statement is a short, declarative sentence that makes it clear what you do and why the target audience should care enough to want to know more. Here are a few positioning statement examples:
- Automated Business Design has created the only staffing and recruiting software you'll ever need.
- Stowga is the ultimate tool to instantly find the best warehouse for your business.
- Vendavo's CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) Solutions maximizes profit with every quote.
- Eckerson Group helps you get more business value from data and analytics through strategic consulting, thought leadership, and education.
Creativity can make a solid positioning statement come to life. For example, a financial analytics consulting company positioned its solutions as "accelerating decision-making throughout the enterprise." The position was executed in marketing communications as "see how fast your business can run."
Support Points Explain Your Positioning Statement
The reaction you want to your positioning statement is "That's interesting! Tell me more. How do you do it?" Three or four support points explain how you deliver the promise you've made in your positioning statement; they prove the claim made in your positioning statement, and they help your story unfold with detail.
Support points also provide a structure for product, solution, or technology demonstrations. They create a framework for you to include product detail in your message strategy. Just remember that you need to prove every claim you make. Ultimately, each support point should drill down to a portion of the demonstration that proves a particular claim or set of claims.
Here is a positioning statement that has two support points that give it more meaning: "Microsoft Forecaster is the fast, affordable way to gain control of budgeting and planning."
- This support point quantifies "fast:" "In as little as two weeks, you can be using Microsoft Forecaster to speed up your ongoing processes for budgeting and planning."
- This support point begins a discussion about an "affordable" implementation: "You can tailor Microsoft Forecaster to meet your budgeting and planning needs without breaking your budget."
As you can see, support points provide the reason to believe your positioning statement. Therefore, you need to choose your support points carefully.
Your positioning statement becomes the theme for as much of your marketing communications as is practical. It needs to be important, unique, and believable before creativity can make a difference.
Your positioning statement is important when it expresses a benefit that solves a pressing problem for your target audience. It needs to seem inherently true and differentiating—no other competitor has the same position.
