Insights:Marketing Insights: Stripping down

Stripping down is perhaps one of the most difficult processes a marketer faces. It’s human nature and creates a false sense of safety when you try to cram everything that you think makes your company great into an advertising message.

To be truly effective, a marketing message needs to focus on one message. Not one message with seven sub-messages and perhaps a spattering of callouts.

The reason for this is simple: people have only so much mind space that they might fill with your message and they will quickly forget your laundry list ad as just more brain clutter.

A good way to begin stripping down your message is to create a list of all the things you think makes your product or service desirable to your target audience. Then create a list (preferably based on research) of what your audience is looking for from a company like yours. Compare the list and remove the ones that do not match. Hopefully you will end up with a shorter list than you started with, but you still won’t be at one.

The next step is to do an audit of what your competitors are focused on and decide if any of them “own” one of the items on your list. Removing those items that your target market closely associates with your competitors prevents a “me, too” approach to your marketing and allows you to stand out from the crowd.

The final step is to carefully consider the messages left to decide which one is the most compelling and that your company truly delivers on the best. Now you can dress up your stripped down message in an interesting and unique way that people will remember.