Many people who work in the more marketing oriented areas of corporate communication nowadays seem to be under the impression that they should try to say anything they want to communicate in as many words as they can. However, the reality is that an excessive amount of buzzwords or business jargon is likely to have a negative impact on the brand messaging you are trying to convey.
When more words are added to a brand’s message, the meaning of that message will become more difficult to understand. It becomes diluted, diffused, dissipated.
For this reason, businesses should develop their audience capture and media sources access by using engaging brand messaging that is succinct, economical with explanation, and crystal clear throughout. This is of particular significance in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, where the use of technical terminology and ideas that are difficult to grasp can obfuscate a message and, as a result, scare off potential customers.
Obtain Your Brand Messaging From PR Experts
PR Overview: Clear Messaging
01. Free-form Writing with Detailed Editing Plans - Writing without restrictions
One strategy that businesses may use to simplify their brand messages is to begin by writing down any idea that comes to mind around what information the target audience could be interested in learning about the current subject at hand.
The topic may be a brand-new product or service, or it might even be an announcement made by the company. More effective that this though is messaging that is of significant interest or impact on the market, the community, the nation – collectives of stakeholders.
During the process of free writing, you may also include any facts about the topic that is interesting to discuss, important takeaways for the customers, as well as potential objections the general public may have to the message. Because it allows people to stimulate their own imagination, this is a very successful starting strategy for producing simpler marketing messaging. This is because it provides individuals more lateral freedom to explore an idea, to free-form. In addition to this, it enables businesses to envision all of the many aspects of their operations that link customers to a brand message.
02. Planning core messaging development
The subsequent step in the process of developing a straightforward brand message is to zero in on and determine the target audience that the business wishes to communicate with through its message, as well as the action that the company hopes the target audience will take once they have been exposed to their message.
When developing a marketing message, it is essential to keep in mind that the majority of people are persuaded to perform a certain action based on what they understand, rather than merely what is being told to them.
Because of this, businesses need to take action and ask themselves whether or not the message they are sending is written in the same manner that their intended audience communicates on a daily basis. If the answer to that question is “no,” then the brand message and the marketing plan need to be revised so that they are as understandable and convincing to customers as they possibly can be.
03. Editing ideas into full stories – creating engaging narratives
It is essential to keep in mind that fewer words may convey more information while writing material such as copy, press releases, and blog articles. This indicates that the word count of virtually every piece of material ought to be decreased in order to assist readers in comprehending the information that is being supplied and in reflecting on that information.
To ensure that the reader is able to concentrate on the information that is most important to them, any lengthy descriptions, unclear material, or technical jargon should be totally removed.
Clarity is key with press releases -and other communication forms
That calls for the elimination of any and all unnecessary words, the rewriting of any passive phrases using the active voice, and the fragmentation of any lengthy sentences into a greater number of shorter ones. In this approach, businesses have the opportunity to not only focus on simplifying the messaging associated with their brands, but also on convincing their customers to do the action that the business desires those customers to take.
Creating strong key messages is core to everything we do in the PR industry specifically. By adopting this approach too, businesses across all sectors can ensure their messaging is clear, consistent, accurate, transparent, helpful and true. If you are able to tick off all of these boxes with your handful of key messages, it is highly likely that your main message will be well understood; you are then well placed to cut through with tenacity and effectiveness across all of your messaging and brand/product positioning messages that follow under your key message halo. You then have a great platform to move forward on.
