A Strong Messaging Strategy Will Improve Your Marketing Performance

While the best marketers know that developing a strong messaging strategy will improve your marketing performance, this task often fails to leave the to-do list. In the fast-paced world of marketing and communications, a strong messaging strategy is an essential foundation for success. It serves as a guiding light, ensuring alignment, consistency, and effectiveness across all marketing activities.

Cons of Not Having a Strong Messaging Strategy

Neglecting to develop a robust messaging strategy can have detrimental repercussions. These include a lack of alignment, inconsistent messaging, a disjointed brand voice, and critically, can increase the overall time taken on all subsequent tasks.

Overlooking or “not having enough time” to complete a messaging strategy can affect your marketing performance. These can include:

1. Lack of Alignment: Without a messaging strategy, various departments within an organisation may communicate conflicting or contradictory messages. Sales, marketing, and customer success teams, for instance, might unintentionally convey different value propositions or positioning statements. This lack of alignment can confuse customers, erode trust, and ultimately hinder business growth.
2. Inconsistent Marketing: A messaging strategy ensures that marketing efforts are cohesive and unified. In its absence, marketing campaigns may lack a clear direction, resulting in inconsistent messaging across different channels. This inconsistency dilutes brand recognition, reduces the impact of marketing activities, and confuses the target audience.
3. Inconsistent Tone of Voice: A strong messaging strategy includes guidelines for maintaining a consistent tone of voice. Without these guidelines, organisations may struggle to establish a distinctive brand voice that resonates with their target audience. Inconsistencies in tone can make it challenging for customers to connect emotionally with the brand. This can lead to decreased engagement, loyalty and overall marketing performance.
4. Missed Differentiation: A messaging strategy defines unique selling propositions (USPs) and differentiators that set a brand apart from its competitors. Failing to identify and communicate these differentiators can result in a brand being perceived as undifferentiated. This can lead to increased competition, customer confusion, price sensitivity, and difficulty in capturing market share. Differentiating your brand is critical to marketing performance.
5. Lost Opportunities: A messaging strategy acts as a roadmap for engaging customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey, also known as the sales funnel. Without a defined strategy, organisations may miss valuable opportunities to connect with their target audience and drive conversions. This can lead to lower customer acquisition rates, decreased revenue, and missed growth potential.
6. Wasted Time: A well-crafted messaging strategy will not only improve your marketing performance, but it will also save you time. The messaging strategy should be the copy DNA for all your marketing and communications materials. This might include press releases, website copy, social media, sales collateral, brochures, and internal communications. Without a centralised messaging document, copywriters and marketers are forced to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time they develop new copy. This can result in hours of wasted time, not only from the copy development but also relentless rounds of feedback.

So, what should a well-crafted messaging strategy document include?

At Bright Company we have created hundreds of messaging strategies for clients internationally and regionally. A messaging strategy is not and never should be a ‘cut and paste’ job. A hard-working and effective messaging strategy will likely include the following elements – not all may be required in the “final final” document, but they are vital in the process of messaging strategy development.

1. Background Research: thorough research to understand the target audience, industry landscape, competitive positioning, and customer pain points. This research provides the foundation for crafting effective messages that resonate with the intended recipients.
2. Message House: This outlines the core messages, value propositions, and supporting evidence for the brand. This framework ensures consistent and coherent messaging across all communication channels.
3. Positioning Statement: A clear and concise positioning statement that defines the unique space the brand occupies in the market and highlights its value to customers. This statement serves as a guiding principle for all marketing and communications efforts.
4. Unique Selling Propositions (USPs): Identify and articulate the key attributes or benefits that differentiate the brand from its competitors. USPs help create a compelling value proposition that resonates with the target audience and enhances brand preference.
5. Tone of Voice Guidelines: Defines the desired tone of voice for the brand. For example, the language, style, and personality that aligns with the brand’s values and resonates with the target audience. These guidelines ensure consistent communication that reflects the brand’s identity.

Want to develop your brand messaging?

At Bright Company, we have conducted brand messaging workshops and delivered brand messaging strategies and documents for hundreds of clients across Dubai, UAE, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, as well as internationally. As a result, those workshops have transformed marketing performance through improved communication with clients and decreased wasted marketing team hours. Messaging strategies are used to develop press releases, media content, video scripts, social media strategy and content, SEO-optimised website copy, sales materials, and more. We’ve developed brand messaging for consumer brands and highly complex B2B organisations – bringing their business to life through words and copy.

We’d be more than happy to take you through some examples of our work and talk you through the process. If you want to find out more – drop your details here: