Crystal Clear Communications Blog

Get your brand message heard.

Do your customers hear your brand message?

For many customers, the answer is “no.”

It’s easy to tune out marketing messages. It’s hard to break through and get your brand message heard. Why?

Because people in your audience are incredibly impatient. Here are some telling behaviors:

• People skim a webpage’s headline, subhead, caption, callouts, and photos looking for answers. On average, Nielsen Norman Group found that people spend less than 15 seconds active on a webpage.
• People spend much of their day multi-screening. About 17 out of 20 people (84%) look at two or more screens – such as a PC, TV, smartphone, or tablet – frequently.
• Most consumers actively avoid advertising. People fast-forward through commercials. They use ad blockers, spam filters, direct mail, and email opt-outs.

Unheard messages haunt marketers

What’s the answer to this dilemma for marketing professionals? How can we get our brand message heard?

Shout louder? Spend more on paid media?

Consider that U.S. companies already spend over $290 billion per year on paid media for advertising. To put that in perspective, we spend more on advertising alone than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Oregon or South Carolina.

Here’s the catch: when you choose to spend more, you have to compete with everyone else’s spending.

Smart marketers find another way to get their brand message heard. By looking through the eyes of customers, they maximize the merit of their message. So it hits home with customers.

Talk about customers’ needs first

To get your brand message heard, what should it include? Don’t talk too much about yourself and your brand. Instead, talk about customers and their needs.

Taking this advice will vault you way ahead of most competitors. Here’s why.

A Forrester study, Customer-Centered Messaging Motivates Buyers to Act Helps Boost B2B Revenues By Motivating Buyer Action, sheds light on marketers’ messaging problems.

Only one marketer out of ten puts customers’ needs first. Nine out of ten marketers (88%) admit their home pages talk primarily about themselves – their companies, products, and services.

Only one marketer out of four (28%) learns and mirrors the language of their audiences and decision-makers. Three out of four marketers speak in their company’s specialized language, one that’s often foreign to customers.

Only one marketer out of seven (13%) uses a narrative story, walks buyers through a persuasive argument, or shows empathy for customers. Six out of seven marketers miss the opportunity to hook their audience with a great message.

That’s why, to get your brand’s strategic message heard, you must put the needs of your customers first. The right message cuts through all the competing noise in your marketplace by talking directly to customers, one at a time.

Break through to customers: sharpen your message

To succeed, your brand’s message needs to do many jobs well:

• Focus on one message, since customers absorb only one at a time.
• Make your message customer-centric.
• Lead with clear benefits to hook customers quickly. In the first seven seconds, answer customers’ first question: what’s in it for them (WIIFM?)
• Make your message concrete to paint a picture in customers’ minds.
• Add emotion since emotion drives people’s buying decisions.
• Give customers three good reasons to believe your message.
• Build credibility through all your communications by delivering one message consistently in digital, physical, and personal media.
• Gain buy-in to your message from people who regularly interact with customers – sales, service, marketing, and executives.
• Co-create your message as a team to achieve the Ikea Effect: the feeling that your message is more valuable because your team put it together themselves.

Putting customers first makes it far likelier that your content marketing will succeed, the 2022 Content Marketing Institute survey found. About two out of three consumer marketers always or frequently prioritize the audience’s informational needs over the company’s sales and promotional messages.

In workshops, we help marketers like you co-create a successful Message Map for your brand. With the right message, you’ll beat competitors – without having to shout or spend more. Win by presenting customers with the most persuasive brand message, the one that puts customers’ needs first.

That’s how you can make sure you get your brand message heard.