Building Your Marketing Strategy, Step Four - Determine Your Marketing Message

[as seen in the October issue of The Stuckey Report]

This month, we talk about Step Four in our marketing plan development series. The first three steps are the hard part. Your marketing will fail if you don’t take those three critical steps. But now comes the fun part of your marketing plan – determining your marketing message!

What is your marketing message? This is the story you tell. This is the message on your direct mail, your television commercials, your website and blog, and the thirty-second pitch made at a networking function.

But it can’t be just any old story. Since you have completed steps one through three, you now understand the marketplace and whether there is a need for your product, you now understand your customer and why they buy, and you have determined a niche – which refines the marketplace and helps you target your prospects with more precision.

But what should your marketing message consist of? It should identify a problem your product can fix, or identify a need you can fulfill. It should create a sense of urgency – take action now to solve that problem or fulfill that need!

And your message needs to convey to your prospect that your product or service is the answer. Your message isn’t about the details about how your product works. Your message consists of two simple parts – identifying an urgent problem – and providing the solution!

Todd Schnick is the president of the Intrepid Group LLC (www.intrepid-llc.com), a small business marketing firm. You can find his small business marketing blog at http://intrepidgroup.blogspot.com!