Examples of Key Messages: Crafting Compelling Communication
Key messages are the essential building blocks of effective communication and play a vital role in conveying your brand's story, values, and benefits to your target audience. Crafting compelling key messages can help you break through the noise and resonate with your audience. In this article, we will explore examples of key messages and discuss how to create them, drawing insights from industry experts at various companies.
1. Clarity and Simplicity
The foundation of any effective key message is clarity and simplicity. Your message should be easy to understand and convey the core essence of your brand, product, or service. Raman Sharma, Vice President of Product Marketing at DigitalOcean, emphasizes the importance of writing crisp customer-facing content, such as blog posts, data sheets, and product pages, to communicate clearly and concisely with the audience.
"Writing is the exercise of organizing your thoughts, answering your own questions, and articulating a straightforward story to the audience. In other words, writing is thinking." - Raman Sharma, DigitalOcean, Vice President, Product Marketing
2. Emotional Appeal
Creating an emotional connection with your audience can significantly impact the effectiveness of your key messages. Harsha Kalapala, Vice President of Product Marketing at AlertMedia, highlights the power of human emotion as a driver of action. By tapping into the emotional pains and benefits of your target audience, you can create key messages that resonate on a deeper level.
"Human emotion is the most powerful driver of action. If you can tap into the emotional pains and benefits for your audience, you hit gold." - Harsha Kalapala, AlertMedia, Vice President Product Marketing
3. Focused and Unique
To stand out in a crowded market, your key messages must be focused and unique. Ivan Dwyer, Product Marketing at Okta, suggests following a narrative from top to bottom, anchoring to "the what," hooking with "the why," and winning over with "the how." Each section in that narrative should be punchy and unique, appealing to the target audience's pain points in an encouraging way.
"Personally, I care more about making an association with 'the what' than trying to get creative. Just be prescriptive about what this product is to frame the rest of the content." - Ivan Dwyer, Okta, Product Marketing
4. Customer Success Stories
By showcasing real customer success stories in your key messages, you can build credibility and trust with your audience. Derek Frome, Vice President of Marketing at Ouster.io, recommends investing in a solid customer marketing program to tell the stories of customers who have experienced success with your product, especially if they switched from a competitor.
"You have to position your product correctly and you have to prove that you are better. Now would be the time to invest in a really solid customer marketing program to tell their stories of success with your product." - Derek Frome, Ouster.io, Vice President Marketing
5. Three Benefit Pillars
A powerful approach to crafting key messages is to focus on three benefit pillars that are untouchable by the competition and matter most to your target audience. Alexandra Gutow, Director of Product Marketing at Snowflake, suggests using a messaging framework to capture the three key benefits of your product or solution, justifying each by explaining the challenges, uniqueness, and impact on the customer.
"The most valuable thing to have in the messaging are the three key benefit pillars of your product/solution/feature that are untouchable by the competition and matter most to your target audience." - Alexandra Gutow, Snowflake, Director of Product Marketing
6. Call-to-Action (CTA)
An effective key message should include a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA) that prompts your audience to take the desired action. Harsha Kalapala recommends offering one action item and making it low-lift, ensuring that your message is understood and prompts action.
"Offer one action item and make it low lift." - Harsha Kalapala, AlertMedia, Vice President Product Marketing
Conclusion
Creating compelling key messages is crucial for effective communication and resonating with your target audience. By focusing on clarity and simplicity, emotional appeal, uniqueness, customer success stories, benefit pillars, and clear CTAs, you can craft key messages that help your brand stand out in a crowded market. Remember to draw inspiration from industry experts and adapt their insights to your unique brand story and audience needs.