digital strategy

how to create unique messaging by identifying your value
  • Kim Donlan

How to Create Unique Messaging by Identifying Your Value
How to Create Unique Messaging by Identifying Your Value 650 650 Kim Donlan

Recently, I had an opportunity to help my mentor with her latest startup and create a unique message that would connect with the right audience. Over 20 years ago, I met Lois Lindauer, one of Boston’s most successful women CEOs, when I joined The Commonwealth Institute. Lois had sold Diet Workshop and was just starting her second business, Lois L. Lindauer Searches. In a sea of conservative-chic trailblazers, Lois had this creative flair. I, the digital, email, web-conferencing maven, immediately connected with Lois, whose mantra was “Why don’t you come in and we can talk face to face?”

Look to the founders for clues to create unique messaging

Back then, I was razor-focused on raising money and closing early customers for my marketing software firm, Perfect Pitch. When I say razor-focused, I mean head-down, nothing else matters, if I can just do this, please God, I won’t ask for anything else kind of focus. The bursting of the tech bubble put an end to that particular dream. In many ways, it should have put an end to the relationship I had with Lois Lindauer. It didn’t.

Now and again, I would email Lois with questions on how to pivot my own businesses or the VC-backed tech firms I was leading. Out of deep respect, I didn’t ask often. Each time, she would insist we meet. Her advice was always insightful, thoughtful and wise. And right.

Lois and I are both relentless entrepreneurs. From her, I learned to give people time and advice whenever they asked. When I got a call in November, Lois was now the razor-focused woman looking to capitalize on her small business selling postcards on Etsy. A small project had morphed into a potential business. It was time to create unique messaging that would connect with the right audience.

A simple framework to create unique messaging

It happens to many founders and executive teams. Creating a unique message that connects is hard. It’s there, but each time you try to articulate it, you ramble on and on. An explanation of WHAT you are offering can be trapped inside the reason WHY you are offering your products and services. The struggle with the messaging problem is a conflict between the WHAT and the WHY. If you can’t connect the WHAT and the WHY, it becomes difficult to create messaging that matters to your audience.

For founders with an idea chasing funding and customers and VC-backed teams disrupting a market, defining the messaging framework is key. You often need a framework to uncover the link between WHAT and WHY. As I wrote about in my article “I Just Need a Landing Page” and Other Mistakes You Are Making with Your Early-Stage Branding, there are discovery questions that can help get you thinking about this connection. To further that thinking, here are the two principles I keep in mind when creating unique messaging that connects:

  1. Messaging is the ability to communicate your unique value.
  2. Your unique value is always a core principle of you, as a person, or your team, as a collective.

Here is an example of the two principles at work in the case of Lois Lindauer and Keep Me Posted Postcards.

Creating unique messaging is the ability to communicate your unique value.

There has been a resurgence of direct mail and postcards in particular. People are reading postcards in greater numbers, with a 3.9% year-over-year increase (USPS Household Diary Study). Postcards have a 5.7% response rate (DMA) and, when combined with other methods, increase branding efforts. And 57% of customers feel more valued when they receive a postcard. (The Private Life of Mail Study). For example, when we conducted our consumer insight and SEO research, we found that people struggle with how to follow up after meetings, networking functions, and other events.

Clearly, Lois’s unique value is that her business allows customers to grow their networks and businesses using postcards and sign up for tips on what to actually write on the postcards. This is a unique value. This could be core to creating unqiue messaging that connects. But is it enough?

Your unique value is always a core principle of you or your team

Your target market is critical and oh-so-hard to nail. Everyone can benefit, but which market is the easiest to enter? For personal postcards that help a business grow, it made sense to think about salespeople, consultants, freelancers, business development folks and small-business owners. We then looked at  Lois’ philosophy and history of supporting women. This led to insightful consumer research that reveals that:

  • Women have a tendency to harbor moral concerns about “exploiting” social ties. It causes them to under-benefit from networking activities (Science Daily Press Release)
  • And “women build less effective professional networks than men as they underestimate self-worth.” (Science Daily Press Release)

So we have a unique value (personalized postcards that can help networks and businesses grow). And a target market (women consultants, small-business owners, freelancers, and sales/business developers).

When we really look at the products (postcards) and the service (the tips for what to say to stand out, grow your business and add to your marketing toolkit), there is a clear WHAT. But we still need the emotional connection. Many marketers and entrepreneurs skim over this step. It’s understandable. It involves getting to the root of WHY you? Why choose Keep Me Posted Postcards over MailChimp or Moo? How do you think about creating messaging that is the right emotional balance.

Finding the emotional connection

For Lois, the emotional connection is the value of lifelong, personal relationships that are the direct result of meaningful, thoughtful interactions. A handwritten note, a personal message, or a face-to-face meeting can have a lasting impact. The personal postcards are a tangible reminder that in this digital world, human connection is extremely important. Human connection is what built Lois’ deep network and success. Her new business is a way of sharing her know-how with others.

Entrepreneurs struggle to create unique messaging when they can’t see their businesses as a direct extension of who they are. Customers and prospects respond positively to those who are clear about what they care about. And they really respond when they know you care about them.

I just need a landing page and other mistakes you are making with your early stage branding
  • Kim Donlan

Startup Branding: The Best Discovery Questions and Digital Framework
Startup Branding: The Best Discovery Questions and Digital Framework 650 650 Kim Donlan

Brand strategy for startups is complex. As you launch your new ideas, seek financing and find initial customers, branding is often pushed to the side. It is costly, time-consuming, and simply not a priority. While full branding and messaging do take time, a failure to understand the pitfalls of startup branding can stop your company from ever really taking off.

Some think, “We’ll figure out the branding later—all I need is a landing page.” Another is, “We’re in stealth mode, so I can’t publicly share what we really do.” Or, “We can just use a template for now.” The problem with this thinking is it prevents you from addressing the fundamental questions that define your brand. As a result, it keeps you from communicating why your early adopters should trust you.

Where startups go wrong with brand strategy

A digital presence—even a seemingly simple landing page—need to address the foundational business questions early customers have. Branding and messaging require you to answer the tough discovery questions that prospective customers have about you and your idea. It is painstaking work to articulate your idea. But it does lead to a better customer experience that builds trust and a sales funnel from the beginning.

Best brand startup discovery questions

  • What is the impetus of your idea?
  • Who are you?
  • Can you succinctly describe your products or services?
  • What kind of organization or business model are you?
  • Where you are in the marketplace, and where you would like to go?
  • How do you currently market your products and services?
  • What is your competitive advantage?
  • Are there any trends or changes that are affecting your industry?
  • Are there any potential barriers to success for your product or service?
  • Where do you want to be in three years?
  • If you could communicate one single message about your company, what would it be?

These startup brand strategy discovery questions are vital to your digital presence and, in fact, the identity of your brand. Most noteworthy, your answers shape the content and structure of your preliminary digital engagement plan. It does not matter whether you have a single landing page, a small site, a predominantly social approach, or just a sign-up form—it must reflect the answers to the discovery questions to some degree.

Think customer experience even with a templated site

Yes, it is true that your brand will change as you go to market. Certainly, there is fluidity as you refine your messaging and learn more about how the market will be impacted by your idea. Having a branding and messaging starting point will prevent you from taking the shortcut offered by templated landing pages. Because templated landing pages give you a cookie-cutter digital presence that makes you look just like everyone else, they rob you of your uniqueness.

Because templates are quick and easy, they allow you to save money on designers and developers. Add a hero image (check), list the features and benefits (got it), incorporate clever team bios (yup) and a contact form (done). But these templates are being used by every other early-stage company and can trap you in an online experience does not distinguish you. More importantly, templates deployed without the branding and messaging can lead you down a path that fails to address the customer’s perspective.

Brand startup digital framework

The Startup Brand Discovery Questions help you examine your idea more closely—what is your idea, how does it fit in the market and where are you going with it? (To get the full list of discovery questions, please email me at KDonlan@RedSwan5.com) The answers to these questions are from your perspective. As you move towards the Startup Digital Branding Framework, you need to think about how your answers can be framed from the customer’s perspective.

Imagine you have a small site, just something built to support your efforts to close initial pilots and secure funding. First of all, branding and messaging are embedded in the typical sections. The template will have you fill in features, benefits, and product information. Furthermore, all the information will be from your perspective and not help you present your business with a customer-centric message. Finally, the templates make it hard to address what the customer is really thinking. Take a look at the framework below that presents shows how the map the messaging to the site.

Align the CX with what customers seek

Startup branding digital framework that diagrams how to build a site in a way that makes you customer-centric from the beginning.
To see how this framework changes the site content, checkout out our case study on Nataly Kogan, Happier.com here. Or go right to her great site we created, Happier.com.

Startup branding and messaging is hard work. The pressure to create a digital presence that supports current goals and shows the long-term vision is a balancing act. Above all, focusing on the customer experience in front of you is the best approach. The discovery questions and framework will get those critical first customers. As a result, you and your company will be around long enough to evolve.

Finally, think of startup branding as your version of the Grey’s Anatomy scene where Dr. Meredith Grey says, “So pick me. Choose Me. Love Me.” And the Startup Digital Branding Framework will ensure your idea connects with those who’ll love you most.

  • Kim Donlan

Winning with a Continuous Planning Mindset
Winning with a Continuous Planning Mindset 650 650 Kim Donlan

You need to be able to respond to the unhappy customer experience in front of you and let go of the ideal customer you dreamed of.

When you start out, you plan for the perfect customer. You hone your product to their every need and know that you will do everything you can to make them happy. And then they aren’t. They ignore you. They complain. They don’t want what you give them. No matter what you try, it doesn’t work. Despite how much you love them, you don’t make them happy.

Predicting what customers want is more difficult than ever. Especially in this unpredictable, consumer-controlled, environment where customers continuously cry for a customized brand experience. Developing a rock-solid plan that has little flexibility is setting you and your brand up for failure. As the boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

According to research from Harvard Business School’s Shikhar Ghosh, 75% of start-ups fail. This is often the result of an unexpected setback that they didn’t plan for. If you stay on plan or don’t respond fast enough, it can lead to disaster. You need to be able to respond to the unhappy customer experience in front of you and let go of the ideal customer you dreamed of.  

CONTINUOUS PLANNING

A better approach is to adopt a continuous planning mindset. You’ll still be tied to sales goals — but exactly how you are going to get there is less rigid. Think of continuous planning as a new and improved version of the lean start-up model. The lean start-up model is all about listening and responding: using the customer feedback to develop the next step. Exactly what the next step should be — a marketing campaign, a fix for the onboarding process or an investment into a business intelligence tool that will provide the customer insight you need — all depends on what you are up against and what makes the most sense. You need to be willing to test alternative tweaks to the experience, product or messaging on the fly and watch very carefully for a positive response.

Continuous planning requires alignment and strong relationships across the organization. Whether it’s just two of you or an organization of thousands, the ability to pivot — to try something new is critical. Responding to customers, even imperfectly, demonstrates you care. And customers know you care even if they can’t express it at the time.

SCHEDULE INNOVATION (into your planning)

A big problem with planning is the pesky goals and milestones that need to be established. Exactly how or what will make your company stronger is different for everyone. Do you need more users, higher sales or a chance to just start anew? Whatever goals you establish will quickly be something from which you will be judged or worse, you will use to judge yourself. Who among us has not downgraded the goals and milestones to what is “achievable? “

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.

What makes better sense is creating time to innovate. A consistent time dedicated to a mindset of what can we do differently. The focus is to evaluate, brainstorm, design and implement a new response to the customer feedback and behavior. It’s about building innovation into your work so that you and your organization have an opportunity to see things differently.

At RedSwan5, founders come to us stuck. Despite everything they have tried, their customers are unhappy and they are exhausted. Their messaging isn’t working. Sales aren’t closing fast enough or the digital strategy and onboarding process is disconnected. Through innovative workshops, creative and digital strategy, and UX design, we address what keeps you up at night.

To learn more about how we can help you, contact Kim Donlan at KDonlan@RedSwan5.com

  • Kim Donlan

Holistic Marketing in Chaos
Holistic Marketing in Chaos 650 650 Kim Donlan

create

A New Perspective on Holistic Marketing: Your Customer’s

Holistic marketing is based on a strong belief that all aspects of marketing and the customer experience are interrelated. Makes sense, right? Yet, marketers are failing to grasp exactly how to develop a truly holistic approach because it is so incredibly hard for brands to think like their customers.

“86% of brand marketers admit that a holistic marketing approach is a top priority, yet few feel prepared to execute one.”

Problem 1: Company mindset

Up until now, holistic marketing has been viewed from a company-centric mindset.  When building a corporate process designed to provide a seamless brand experience, very smart, experienced marketers are spending (lots of) time and money trying to align around the idea of the most perfect customer behavior that leads to the highest profit. With a company-centric mindset, brand strategies and decisions are one-sided — only viewed from the internal perspective. If everyone who is part of determining the brand experience is sitting on the brand’s bench, it is impossible to see the issues from perspective of the customer.  

The efforts to align and collect data from everywhere — marketing, sales, and customer service —  lead to the consideration of technology and systems that promise a 360-degree view of customers. However, the 360-degree view puts the brand in the middle looking out at their potential and existing customers’ behavior. Several problems arise from this approach:

  • Customers only care about their view
  • Every customer has a unique view

A company-centric approach makes it difficult to organize and operationalize around the countless ways with which potential customers interact across touchpoints. To make this more manageable, buyer and customer journeys are developed that streamline a set of interactions that lead (hopefully) to a consistent experience. The customer journey — while a good starting point — can only manage the optimal behavior of a limited number of people. Customers don’t follow a single journey. And a customer journey cannot be personalized to the level customers demand.

Thinking about all the customer interactions and experiences is overwhelming. Trying to anticipate all the paths that may (or may not) quickly lead to loyal customers is like trying to imagine chaos. Your version of chaos might be different from mine, but it is still overwhelming and leaves you wanting to run screaming for the hills. To make a difficult situation worse, online behavior is evolving. For those operating within a company-centric mindset, this leads to continuous failure to deliver a seamless brand experience across all channels. To avoid this, three things must change. You should:

  • Embrace a holistic approach that is truly customer-centric
  • Support multiple customer paths and strategies
  • Treat prospects and customers as your marketing department

Holistic marketing must be customer-centric and responsive to multiple customers’ perspectives. Honing a holistic mindset and operational approach will need to support the ability to respond to the chaos of customers who interact with brands in any way they see fit.

At RedSwan5, we believe in the co-evolution of marketing and helping brands prepare to respond more successfully to the chaos of engagement. We are working with customers to perfect a better approach. It involves building a holistic marketing approach that is customer-centric and able to manage multiple strategies that are often led by the customers themselves.

We intend to share case studies and research on this new approach.

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