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Alignment Bottlenecks

How do you avoid creating unfocused, generic, and watered down marketing? By first aligning on the right “red thread,” a central guiding messaging framework.

Better Answers or Better Questions?

When facing a messaging strategy problem, do you tend to start by looking for better answers, or by asking better questions?

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Messaging Problems

Messaging strategy = problem solving.

The Misguided “More” Strategy

Persuasive messaging isn’t about adding “more.” More value props, more benefits, more data, more content, more social posts—more noise.

Do They “Get” It?

“People don’t buy the best products, they buy the products they can understand the fastest.” Donald Miller

And the product messaging they understand the fastest is always about them.

3 Steps to Bad Messaging

3 steps to creating really bad marketing collateral that nobody reads:

Make the Hard Decisions First

An effective messaging strategy starts with making the hard decisions.

Where’s the Focus?

“Focus your message on the customer, not just your product” is Marketing 101.

And yet…

Mixed Messages

If Marketing, Sales, Product, and the CEO all think your messaging should focus on a different thing, the solution isn’t to just combine them together so that everyone’s perspective is included.

Aligning on Messaging

Coming up with compelling messaging is always a team effort. You might start with a sense of what will best resonate with your ideal customers.