Improve Your Marketing Messaging Strategy with 3 Questions | 133
I know that storytelling is an important part of business, but for a long time, it didn’t click in my brain on how to actually utilize it. Recently, though, I was listening to a podcast, and the puzzle pieces fell into place. When you are able to create emotion through your brand messaging, you can better tap into where people are at and what they need help with. I want to chat about using storytelling and emotions as a part of your marketing messaging strategy, plus three questions to fine-tune that messaging.
What is Brand Messaging?
When the word messaging comes to mind, you might think of the actual words on the paper. But that is actually your copy. Copy is what gets your message to people, but brand messaging is the value, personality, and emotion behind your brand. It’s what makes you enjoy Target over Walmart (or vice versa).
People feel more connected to a brand when they can relate to the lifestyle and emotions that a brand portrays. However, you can’t just talk about the emotions, you need to show it.
For example, I want people to feel capable and confident running Facebook ads. But when you read that, you probably didn’t instantaneously take on that feeling. But if I can paint a picture of how stressed and overwhelmed a client was trying to learn ads on their own vs. how they felt when working with me - you might be like, “Dang, I can relate to her struggle!”
Three Questions to Improve Your Messaging
If you want to improve your marketing messaging strategy, I want you to start with a few questions. This will help you work through the process and nail down your brand message.
#1 What is the reason for your offer?
This can apply to any offer, whether that be a freebie, product, or service. What exactly did you choose to offer this particular thing? Then, ask yourself why you chose to offer it in this particular format.
Maybe you offer a free webinar (but why a webinar over an email series). Or you might offer collaborative VIP days (but why not a done-for-you offer).
#2 How are you creating desire?
Normally, you create desire in your marketing messaging strategies by looking at the pain points and fears your audience experiences. However, instead of just saying how someone might be feeling, you want to work on painting that picture with storytelling. Come up with examples they can relate to and situations that might evoke emotions.
#3 What is the offer’s takeaway?
Now that you’ve examined your audience's fears, you want to also include their hopes and dreams in your brand messaging strategy. Again, you want to create a picture of what their life or business could look like after they’ve participated in this offer.
I hope this helped you gain some clarity on brain messaging as a part of your marketing strategy. If you feel stuck in your messaging, start by talking to people who are your ideal customer. Ask them what they are struggling with and listen to their stories. You can also conduct market research and poll a wider audience.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Hello and welcome back to Market Scale Grow. I'm your host Jenzea and this is a Saturday strategy session. Today we're going to be talking about improving your messaging. I have a big tip for you, a big realization, eye opener that happened recently while I was listening to a podcast. And then also three questions that you can ask yourself to really just instantly improve your messaging with.
The answers that you get from these questions. So, I'm sure you've heard, just like I had heard before, that storytelling really works. It's the answer to all your problems, or whatever, to get people emotionally invested. But I didn't really understand why. I didn't really get it. I never had it, never really was explained to me in a way that I connected to or related to, which is kind of funny when I think about it.
And I'll get back to that in a second. I just, so I just didn't understand and I knew I needed to tell stories and I knew I needed to evoke emotions, but I just couldn't connect the two or understand why. And so sometimes I tell stories when I find that I have something that relates and sometimes I don't.
But when I was listening to that podcast, here's what I learned. People feel more connected when they're able to create certain emotions within themselves. But describing an emotion can be really hard. Like, I can say all day long, I want you to feel capable with Facebook ads. I want you to feel capable and confident running Facebook ads.
I want you to feel successful and have a successful business. But, like, what is that? Mean, I'm not evoking an emotion when I tell you to feel capable, feel capable, feel capable, right? I'm just like shoving an emotion in your face. And so well, yes, you do want to focus on those emotions It's storytelling that helps paint the picture and the scene or situation that can create or evoke the emotions And so it's not so much At least what I got from this podcast was that it's not so much about really creating a story or telling a story that has that same emotion, but it's more about telling a story that helps them paint a picture where they can feel the emotion that you're looking for them to feel.
So if we're talking about feeling capable with Facebook ads, instead of saying I want you to feel capable with Facebook ads, I'm going to. Do something more along the lines of imagine that you have your Facebook ads up and running. You set them up by yourself and you know, because you went step by step through the process that each and every piece of your ad is set up properly.
And if there is a mistake or an error that you know how you can fix it or that you have the support that you need to fix it. And so feeling capable with Facebook ads means that you know you have the information in your head and at your fingertips to Get those ads set up correctly and you can know Cert with certainty that they're set up properly and you look around and you see other people have Facebook ads running and Instead of feeling like oh, they must know something or have some sort of magic trick that I don't have you You know that now you have ads that are set up properly that are getting shown to the right people and that are bringing in leads consistently every single day.
And so instead of just throwing that feel capable, feel capable, feel capable, I said a lot of things that you can actually imagine. You're imagining other people's ads. That are set up and we can't see how someone else's ads are set up. We have no idea if they're working or not working, but we tend to lean to the side of they must be working.
They must be so great. Other people's stuff is better than mine, or at least that's what I lean to. But so you want to have that feeling of your ads are running just as well as everyone else's that you're feeling. I also painted a picture of, or tried to at least, that you're, you know, your ads are set up properly.
You have a support system in place. If there's something that goes wrong, that you can pull the information up or reach out and ask that question. So, all of those pieces are painting that picture of what capable looks like. So instead of someone else trying to like figure it out, they're sitting there like, I can't do Facebook ads.
I don't know how to. There's too many options. I hate how this feels. I hate how it looks. I never know if I've done it properly. When I say capable they start to go to that well potentially go to that self deprecating perspective and so instead of just saying capable capable capable and letting them go there I'm painting that picture of what being capable looks like.
What success looks like, instead of just saying, I want you to have a successful Facebook ad campaign, I want you to have a successful Facebook ad campaign. I can say things like, every single day, new people are being added to your email list. It is growing consistently without you having to do anything because your ads are doing the heavy lifting for you.
Your ads are successful because your email list is growing. More people are reaching out to you, answering your emails, opening those emails. Your click rates continue to show that people want what you have, and that email list continues to grow. Those list building ads are successful. And so again, instead of you having to imagine like what success looks like, I'm telling you, success looks like you're growing your email list every single day.
So this is a little bit of a different spin on storytelling than I had ever really gone with. And there are some people that are able to take the mundane, like I was at the grocery store and this, this, this and happen and connect it to. Whatever. And you're like, Oh, how is that possible that they have every single week a new story and about their life that just connects perfectly.
They just have this innate ability. And I don't have that innate ability. I have mundane moments all the time. I was at the grocery store today. I've been to the doctor's office in the last week. Like I had a Cairo appointment, right? Like I'm an everyday person. My kids got in fights. And we also had such a great time at the park, right?
Like all of these things have happened to me, but I just don't have that ability to connect those everyday stories to my messages. And so when I was listening to this podcast and they had this like different spin on. Storytelling. I was like, mind explosion. And so I just wanted to share that with you in case maybe that's a different way of looking at it for you, and it can help improve your messaging.
If you are now painting those emotions for people and painting those situations, those scenes, the stories for them so they don't have to just like, well, what does that mean? Right? They can actually feel it, actually see it, actually experience it in their mind. Okay, now let's jump into three questions you can ask yourself to improve your messaging.
So the first question is, what is the reason for this offer? Like why this offer? What is your reasoning behind it? Is it to grow your email list? Is it to pitch and pitch a thing on offer? Um, and why this? Like, why are you doing it in this format? Why is it a video series? Why is it a challenge? Why is it a webinar?
Like, why are you choosing to do it in this format? What is the end goal of it? Why this? Question number two. How are you creating desire? So typically we create desire by knowing exactly what our customers fears and frustrations are because people want their problems solved and we need to paint that before picture really, really well and that's by looking at that emotional piece, the fears, the frustrations, the pain points and not so much necessarily like how you're going to do it, but like what is really the problem that they are sitting with that they want solved?
And this is going to look like like concrete examples that they can relate to that are going to evoke those emotions of fear or evoke the emotions of frustration or evoke the emotions of um, Like inability or imposter syndrome or whatever it might be like i talked about just before in the storytelling is creating like painting that picture painting the before picture so what how are you creating desire how are you meeting their needs.
And then number three is what is this offers takeaway. So for this, we're going to go on the opposite spin and look at their hopes and their dreams. And again, you're going to paint a picture, but this time it's what their business looks like. After they've participated in this offer, participated in your freebie or whatever it might be.
So whether it's a free download, what is the solution that you're providing at the end? And the reason why it's important to create that desire and give the takeaway is because often there are not the same thing. People are looking for something. Like weight loss or make more money or improve relationships and you can talk to those you not even going to you should you need to talk to those pain points and what they're saying is the problem.
But you often are also going to be given a solution that is potentially unexpected or not on their radar at all. And so with the weight loss example, you can go about weight loss by talking about calories. And I don't know much about this. It's not a thing that I do, but like micros and macros and All that.
Or you could go at weight loss from a keto diet or paleo diet or a whatever diet, or you could go at weight loss from a exercise, exercise, exercise, calories in, needs to be less than calories out, whatever, and those are all three different ways that you can approach it and meet their hopes and dreams of that losing weight, and you can paint your picture based on your solution.
And so the way that somebody is going to paint those feelings Post whatever offer you have is going to be based on your solution, but your person might not be looking for an exercise regime. They might be looking for paleo or keto or whatever and You can, you're gonna wrap it as like 10 tips for losing weight or whatever it might be and then the spin that you have inside and the takeaway that they're gonna get is Dieting doesn't work Exercise is your answer or maybe it's the opposite of like exercise doesn't work and dieting is your answer and again I am NOT a weight loss coach or specialist or anything.
I'm not a dietitian. I know nothing about these things I have never been on a diet once in my life Um, so I don't count calories. I have always been a very intuitive eater and believe in, like, nourishing my body both with physical activity and food. That's my, my thoughts and my opinion. So I know nothing really about dieting.
I know nothing about counting calories. I just know that these are all different options that you could go about and explore when losing weight. So, um, if we're talking about making more money, right, like if somebody's looking for marketing, if I was doing something with Facebook ads, right, like grow your list on autopilot, well, people might not be necessarily looking for the solutions that I'm giving of like.
Growing their list using Facebook ads. So I need to talk about both growing the list, the frustrations, the fears about not growing their list and how stressful it can be if your list stays the same size and how nothing changes if nothing changes, right? But the and the takeaway needs to be. Facebook ads are your solution.
Growing your list with Facebook ads is going to put it on autopilot, so you're not thinking about it. You're gonna have them set up by an expert. Me and my team, we're gonna do it for you so you know it's done right. You don't have to stress or worry about the Facebook ads not being set up right. And we're gonna paint that picture of we're both gonna touch on what they want, their list being built and growing, but also how they're gonna get it.
And then, so just as a recap, I gave at the beginning a new spin on storytelling and what you're really trying to do. And if you're not an innate genius on making every single mundane moment in your life connect to your business, then that's okay. Neither am I. But maybe The tips that I gave in the previous episode will help with storytelling and evoking emotions.
And then we talked about three essential questions for improving your messaging. So exactly what is your reason for this offer? How are you creating desire for your offer? Whether it's a free or paid offer, you can do these questions. And then number three is what is the offers takeaway? What are people walking away with?
If you can answer these using The emotions the thoughts the feelings the words that your customers and clients are using then you will be able to improve your messaging and I didn't even this isn't in my notes or anything but I'm going to say it don't hate on me the best way. To get your customer or your client's words, their feelings, their emotions, like exactly what they need, what they're looking for, what they want is market research.
Whether you're doing it through Instagram polls, DM conversations, or getting on coffee chats and talking to people doesn't matter to me. But market research is really what's going to help your messaging just stand out above the rest. Okay, thank you for being here. Thank you for participating in this, this episode.
Thanks for listening to this episode. I'll be back with another Saturday, Saturday session next week. And I hope that you are enjoying your summer break. Whether it's right in the middle, like we are here in Ontario or you're just coming to the end. I hope that you are enjoying these summer days.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!