Got Something To Say? Customers May Not Always Want To Hear It
Reared in full-service account handling, adopted by the digital world. Prodigal son, parameter pusher and tactician. Derby.
So many brands are guilty of getting bogged down with their messaging and what they think is important to customers.
Sound familiar?
While you’re rightly excited that your product is ‘innovative’, ‘market leading’ or worse, ‘best in breed’, these aren’t words that customers would typically relate to. They’d much prefer how it would make their lives easier, help them look good and importantly, how much it’ll cost them.
Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C world, messaging that doesn’t quite hit the mark is a big problem for many brands. That might be because you’re targeting a broad audience, haven’t quite got a grasp on your audience data, or have been asked to include stock phrases like ‘quality you can trust’ by people outside the marketing team.
It Calls For A Mindset Shift
Listing the benefits of a product or service can only get you so far, especially when customers have heard it a million times. I’m doubtful that they’ll relate to terms like ‘quality,’ ‘durable’ or ‘intuitive’ because the benefits aren’t translated.
So, instead of explaining what your product does – how does it solve your customers’ challenges? For example:
Optimisation: Helps you work faster and more accurately
Transformation: Brings positive business changes
The more you bang on with your sales messaging or product/service benefits, the more diluted your message becomes. In effect, it can impact conversions, relationships and trust – and not in the way you want it to.
But what do you do when you need to get your message across?
The Bridging Technique
You’ll often see politicians expertly change the topic when presented with a tough question. This is a technique taught in media training, known as the ABC method:
A: Acknowledge the question
B: Bridge your answer to your messaging
C: Control the narrative with your key message
Although you’re not taking part in the BBC’s Question Time or trying to dodge a question from Laura Kuenssberg, there’s a lesson to learn here. It’s not about deflecting or avoiding tough questions, more so that you’re confident that what you offer can genuinely help customers.
So, start by directly acknowledging your audience’s problem. The next step, bridging, is probably the most important because you can start to link it back to your message. And then follow it up by controlling the narrative with a call-to-action.
To take an example from marketing, it could look like this:
A: Struggling to be seen online?
B: The answer is search engine optimisation (SEO), a tactic our expert team has perfected.
C: Get in touch today to boost your visibility.
Start at the end. By being customer-centric, and focusing on their needs and issues first – rather than getting your message out there immediately – it helps to understand what your customers are dealing with and their behaviours. Something, in this scenario, that SEO and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) can help with.
A good SEO strategy involves crafting relevant content that helps customers by answering their questions directly – these can be found through Reddit, keyword tools or Google’s People Also Asked section. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) also plays a part because websites are continuously improved based on customers behaviour and preferences.
Don’t Go It Alone
Guessing who your audience is, or relying on old data, is an ineffective strategy, especially when you probably have a tonne of audience insights from tools like Semrush, which tap into audience demographics, interests and behaviour.
But data alone isn’t enough.
Once you have a clear idea of who you’re talking to, you need to engage your emotional intelligence – imagining yourself in their shoes – and considering all the things that are important to them, or keep them awake at night.
Don’t forget the basics either. For example, are you talking to the end-user or person who buys the product? This will inform your stories, messaging, language and channels.
Targeting a broad audience isn’t a bad thing but it does make it harder to understand specific groups.
That’s where buyer personas, built using data and research like audience pain points, interests, motivations and behaviour, come into play. You’ll get to know what engages them, their perspectives and what content will resonate.
Speaking the Right Language
Another important point is language: simplify your message.
That doesn’t mean you’re dumbing it down, but buzzwords like ‘productivity’ or ‘efficiency’ are so over-used that they’re unlikely to resonate. With the research and insights gained, adapt your language and tone to reach them on a level they are familiar with.
Different sectors like financial services or construction expect a level of technical jargon, as do different roles within a company. Competitor research will provide insights into how others are doing it to help you use the language naturally.
Moral of the story: serve your customers’ needs first.
Related Posts
