What’s the big deal about key messages? Your company is your company, your brand is your brand and your products are your products, right? Not so fast. I bet if you asked two people to describe your company, your brand or your products, you’d get two different sets of descriptions. Have you ever identified an object as blue, only to be told that it’s not blue, it’s cerulean? It’s kind of like that. (For those of you who know I’m color blind, you’ll see a bit of humor in this.)
It’s important to control how your company, brand, products or services are messaged. If you don’t position them appropriately, someone else will most likely interpret them differently, and you might not like the results. You might think you’re offering a cerulean masterpiece, while somebody else might call it a blue piece of junk. Messaging dictates how people perceive what you have to offer, and you can’t leave that to chance. You want your leadership team, your sales team, your customers and the media to describe what you have to offer the same way—the way you describe it. The secret to that is your key messages.
When the Kovak-Likly team works with our healthcare clients to develop key messages, we start by asking the following questions:
- What do you want people to know about your company?
- When asked who you are, what do you want others to know about your company?
- What does your company stand for?
- Who does your company serve/who are your customers?
- What is your company’s record and reputation?
- What do you want people to know about your brands/products?
- What are the brand’s key values?
- Who does the company/brand/product aspire to be?
- What makes the company/brand/product special?
- What problems does your company/brand or product solve?
Once you answer those questions and you write out your messages, consider the following factors and think about refining your messages:
- Do your key messages align with the interests of your target audiences? If they aren’t in alignment, are you planning to go after a new target audience? Different audiences want different things. Some people buy on price, others on quality, still others on exclusivity. If your key messages don’t align with your key audience’s priorities, you should think about new messages, or shifting your target audiences.
- Do your key messages differentiate you from your competitors? Positioning yourself as the same as the other guy is not going to win any hearts or minds—or sales. Key messages need to identify your key differentiators. Is it your U.S.-based manufacturing? Your customer service? First/best/only?
Once you develop your key messages, you should validate them with your key stakeholders and target audiences, then stick to them with conviction and deploy them everywhere. Use them in media interviews, adapt them for your marketing collateral, talk about them within your company and on your social media platforms, etc. And if you need help with your key messages or getting them to your targeted audiences and making them sink in, shoot me an email. We’d love to help.
– BML
