What are the reasons that your buyers buy? How is your business truly different than your competitors business?
Now you can understand why accurately and consistently communicating the same messages to various influencers becomes complex. Different stakeholders require different messages and they often want or need their communications delivered in various ways. Adding to the complexity, there's often an order or sequence that should be followed when delivering certain messages.
Positioning a business or new product is a scientific art that involves finding your "sweet spot" in the marketplace and clearly communicating your key messages in the right sequence to all concerned. It’s easy to know that the message isn’t right when you experience signs like:
- Internal groups become opposing camps.
- Company is reactive, not proactive.
- Imitation versus innovation rules
- Alliances/partners difficult to secure.
- Company is undervalued.
- Weak relationships with corporate/business influencers.
- Press releases are difficult to write and approve.
Try building a clear Communication Roadmap to open the right dialogue at the right time with all of your critical stakeholders –staff, press and analysts, investors or stockholders, the buyer, and their partners. Roadmap construction begins by rigorously answering questions like:
- What is your company's aspiration or vision?
- What products and services will you offer?
- Who is your buyer and what causes them to buy?
- Who influences the buyer and the purchase?
- What characteristics do your best/worst customers share?
- What competition do you face and how do you stack up?
- What are your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses? What are yours?
- How do you distinguish yourself from your competitors?
- Can you prove your product/service claims?
- What communications or marketing channels are best suited to reaching your target audience?
- What challenges do you face in meeting your objectives?
Today it's not enough to just develop clear messages. In our wary business environment you had better be able to prove your claims. If you're the best, tell why and who declared you the best. If your product works fastest, give provable statistics. If you're the "only", the "first", or the "leading", there better be someone outside of your company that substantiates the claim.
This isn't rocket science, but the impact on your business if you don't get it right could be the same as a big bust. Searching your corporate soul to answer the questions above is just the start. Crafting and delivering the message is the key to the puzzle.
If you need some help, give me a call at 281-437-0309. Sometimes it takes an outsider to shine the right lights on the corporate blind spots.
© Copyright 2005. Communing, Beth S. Miller Marketing Communications.
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