Word Matters: Positioning -> Messaging -> Content
If an aspiring marketer read Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout and no other business book before launching his or her career, then reread it annually thereafter, I’m convinced they’d dramatically increase their odds of achieving whatever goals they pursue. With it, one can go anywhere. Without it, everywhere can be challenging.
Here’s how I think about positioning as a starting point for messaging and content development. Together these activities remain the enduring triad of effective communications and the key to customer engagement.
Positioning (P) is an active verb implying movement, flexibility, and strength. It represents a point of view and investments made on behalf of a central ambition. It can be done assertively and for oneself or passively and by others (note: not ideal). In all these things it is dynamic and essential to marketing success in that it should succinctly address the question, ‘What do you do?’
I dig positioning. I dig it because it has a competitive, forward-looking orientation. After all, every business must position against something. I also dig it because it’s the cornerstone of marketing strategy and content.
Messaging (M) is the manifestation of positioning for go-to-market purposes. It’s how you answer your essential question and the references you use to elaborate on it. Messaging is the raw material for your story and the unmissable points you can’t pass GO and collect $200 without making. It’s your elevator pitch, your sound bite, how you translate what you do into language your target audience understands and will follow.
I dig messaging, too. I dig it because drafts require word-crafting and data-crunching and research and insights and keen self-awareness in equal proportion. I also dig it because it’s what people see and hear and read and without it content strategies lack direction. In many respects it would be challenging for a marketer not to dig messaging.
Over the years I’ve witnessed an abundance of slapdash positioning and messaging. Occasionally concocted from thin air, other times heaved onto a slide, less-than-critical P+M bites every company that settles for it squarely in the backside. Perhaps this has happened to you or someone you know. Either way, it’s not appealing and neither is the resulting content.
Let’s instead focus on establishing and maintaining content greatness.
P -> M -> Content (C). It’s a symbiotic relationship well-recognized by anyone in the strategy and content sphere. Today this is most of the world (certainly the marketing world), in one form or another. As you embark upon the next chapter of your P -> M -> C adventure, here are a few takeaways worth keeping in mind:
If you haven’t invested in or updated your P and M in a while, give it a fresh look and compare what you see with the content you’re producing. If they match, great; if not, revisit your P then M and start drafting tighter content. Sounds simple, I know. Do it anyway.
Create messaging priorities, segmented by target audience. For example, I’m going to communicate X to Y by Z (date) via the following formats (copy, imagery, video, other) and distribution channels (paid, earned, owned..in detail). The beauty of digital marketing is the ability to accomplish this at a granular level and optimize accordingly.
As you draft your messaging framework and prep the content it will influence, emphasize the following:
- Product/service description. Make it sharp.
- Target audience(s). Who are they and what do they want?
- Market position. See above. What do you do and how are you different from the competition?
- Value proposition. Single statement: your offer. Who for, what for.
- Key themes. The top 3–5 (I personally tend to think in threes) must-knows for your target audience. If possible, keep them mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
- Reasons to believe for each key theme. Proof points and how you substantiate your offer.
This all takes time and iteration, sometimes for each piece of content you develop. Pro tip: be elaborate in your thinking and straightforward in your expression. And please don’t rush it.
Big upside.
John Tintle is the Director of Content and Communications at Highspot, the leading sales enablement platform for content management, customer engagement, and analytics. Twitter: @highspot. Also: highspot.com.
