How Great Strategic Messaging Works
When I embark on a new strategic messaging project with a leadership team, I start by showing them the home pages of 10 companies. Then I ask them to articulate the story each company is telling and rate its effectiveness.
One company whose strategic messaging consistently rates highly is TaskRabbit, and in this piece I’ll discuss why. (BTW, I have zero relationship to TaskRabbit.) Here’s TaskRabbit’s home page header:
Let’s considering the following 5 questions:
1) Does it present a well-defined protagonist (persona)?
A great story needs a compelling main character. Marketplaces like TaskRabbit face a challenge in this regard because they have to speak to buyers and sellers. Companies in this situation must prioritize one of the two, and TaskRabbit has done that beautifully by clearly directing its primary messages towards the buyer (“Live smarter”, “Help around the home…”, etc.).
Interestingly, TaskRabbit only recently began using the image above, replacing this older one, which didn’t clearly show the buyer (and who’s that dude in the back???):
2) Does it convey what’s at stake?
Your messaging must describe two possible futures: the positive one your audience will experience if they buy, and the negative one they’ll experience if they don’t. Your audience must care enough about the difference between the two — about what’s at stake — to take action.
In my opinion, TaskRabbit outlines compelling stakes. The top message could easily have been “Have more hours in the day to do what you want” (and I’ve seen them message to that effect on bus advertisements). But I like that here they’ve leveled up the stakes. It’s not just about saving time; it’s about how you’re living your life — smarter or dumber?
3) Is it credible?
Great strategic messaging makes a promise — that positive future — and a skeptical audience wants evidence you can deliver. In my opinion, the 3-step “How TaskRabbit Works” (just below the main messages) serves this function. Do those three steps alone make an iron-clad case that “living smarter” is “just a few clicks away?” No, but they do enough to get a potential customer to take the next step (sign up, choose a service category, etc.).
4) Does it handle the protagonist’s objections?
What do new TaskRabbit customers fear most? That some creep will show up to rearrange their closets. So TaskRabbit depicts taskers who look friendly and trustworthy, even in this gallery, which asks visitors to choose a service category:
Great salespeople arm themselves with a list of common objections and strategies for overcoming them, but TaskRabbit shows how strategic messaging can do some of the work for them.
5) Is it deployed consistently and powerfully?
Strategic messaging is not a tagline or a script. It’s a well-structured story that you tell in many ways. The more ways you find to tell it, the more power it accrues. For example, check out TaskRabbit’s account sign up/login page:
Most companies show only the box in the middle for sign up/login — usually on a solid background. I love that TaskRabbit sees even this interaction as yet another opportunity tell its strategic story.
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About Andy Raskin:
I help entrepreneurs tell more effective stories — for fundraising, marketing, sales, and recruiting. I also lead workshops on strategic storytelling. To learn more and get in touch, visit http://andyraskin.com
