IIf you've ever sat down to craft a written communication piece, then you know how much time and effort it can take to find the right words and the best structures to make sure your message conveys not only the factual bits and bobs but the appropriate feelings too.
Just think about these two sentences...
And no matter what The Obedient Wives Club, the Ha'penny Restitution Council or even The Roadkill Hospice Advocacy Society says, grandpa's life is in a rather precarious situation and he'd better run very fast and very far.
When your potential clients can't quickly distinguish your offers from your competitors', how do they feel?
They get more confused than a drunk squirrel in a real Californian forest fire.
And what do they do?
They either shop you on price or unceremoniously dump you altogether and move to your competition.
Standard garden-variety human reaction.
You've got a great story to tell, but the way you tell it's drier than camel crap.
The best way to differentiate your business from your competitors is having a great story and, even more importantly, telling it better than your competitors do. That requires a high degree of consistency in your words and phrases.
You know you offer better services than your competitors, but you're not certain about how to put that "better" into words.
You also know that if you can't communicate why your business is special, you'll likely to waste time and money on generic marketing efforts `and substandard cleints.
Instead of an eardrum-shattering bang, your message lands on your readers with a timid, dull hum.
This is where many IT firms resort to hype and plain bullshit. They say they are "innovative", "ethical" or "client-focused" as if their competitors were not, but suppress their inherent boldness because deep down they are scared shitless of standing out of the crowd.
I offer this service to help IT SMBs to take the high cost of improvisation, a.k.a. trial and (t)error, out of their message development.
The Master Brand Message Playbook is a service most suitable for IT SMBs that...
Written communication has far too many moving parts to leave it as a spur of the moment exercise. And those moving parts can cause different effects.
And since every written piece is a representation of your brand, the effects that you create define your brand.
Think about it. No matter what Walmart communicates to the world, everyone knows that it's a scandal-infested company that notoriously overpays incompetent executives and notoriously underpays workers. In fact, some 73% of full-time Walmart employees are on various government assistance programmes.
In essence, your brand is the outside perception of your business culture.
The other day, I saw a brilliant GMC ad on TV. It was really well done.
The problem is that GMC, a division of General Motors, has a notoriously crappy culture, riddled by lawsuits and union problems. Well, and it makes crappy cars. That's all.
The bad news is that a brand is what the market hangs around your neck.
The good news is that your culture is up to you, so, indirectly though, you can shape your brand.
And the foundation of this brand is, jointly with your Brand book, the Master Brand Message Playbook.
While the brand book deals with the style of your brand, the Master Brand Message Playbook deals with the messaging.
Sometime in 1977 Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) made a statement...
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Although he was referring to having computers run homes, with automated doors, voice-activated toilet seats and ovens. After all, he had a computer in his home for general use.
But the media misinterpreted his statement and almost buried the company. And although the company recovered, Olsen was fired.
The reason why The Master Brand Message Playbook is so important is consistency.
Yes, a certain deviation is allowed, but you have to play "within brand".
I compare this to driving.
As long as you stay in your correct lane (within brand), you can drive anywhere within the lane (creative latitude). You can drive right, in the middle or closer to the left or closer to the right. But you must stay within brand, within your lane.
Oh, and a side note. After your prospect list and offer, your words are the third most important contributors to your marketing success. Well, in a way, you offer is words, but let's not complicate life any further than it already is.
If you have quality prospects, and you offer them something that helps them to improve their businesses, then your words can make or break your marketing campaigns.
On the minimum, you must have a business plan and a marketing plan.
Since the Master Brand Message Playbook is a marcom (marketing communications) document, it's based on your business plan and marketing plan.
The business plan details your mission, vision and values for the business and the marketing plan is a big picture document of how you plan to get and keep clients, that is, how you plan to make money.
For instance, if your values include "bold", "ballsy" and "edgy", then your Master Brand Message Playbook must reflect that and you have to stay away from spineless namby-pamby language.
Leona Helmsley, the "Queen of Mean" was one of the nastiest pieces of work in 20th century's business history. She turned employee abuse into an art form and a major part of her brand. She consistently lived up to it by inventing new and more innovative ways of humiliating and terrifying her employees.
She was almost on par with the notorious Hungarian mass murderer, Elizabeth Bathory, a.k.a. The Blood Countess. Legend has it that by the time she was taken to trial, she had murdered some 650 people, apparently some kind of world record.
Some people believed that to retain her youthful looks, she used to bathe in the blood of virgins whom she had kidnapped from the surrounding villages and had them delivered to her castle for "proper utilisation".
It's highly collaborative thought-provoking and interactive process, including lots of phone/Skype calls and written interaction. All in all, lots of back and forth.
It involves all boardroom dwellers and the key people from sales, marketing and other departments.
While I facilitate the process, the overall project is led by the CEO or CMO. Definitely a boardroom dweller.
Executives who are too busy to collaborate shouldn't even consider it.
Brand messaging is either led from the top or not at all.
Well, there is a lot of back and forth.
First connect with the project leader who is either the CEO or CMO. Absolutely and positively a boardroom denizen. This is vital. I've seen many cases when CXOs declared themselves to be too busy to deal with trivia like brand messaging. They abdicated it, and then the underlings cocked it up.
Who's to blame? The underlings?
No!
The CXOs.
This is strategic work and shouldn't be performed by tactical people. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, it was some generals who planned the D-day invasion, not some privates and corporals.
Well, the sooner the better. As a business owner, you have lots of things to take care of, so you don't want to waste time suffering from "blank sheet" syndrome when every time you have to communicate with someone, you have to create your message from scratch.
It's the equivalent of starting every dinner with planting a forest out of which a rabbit runs out which you shoot and then cook.
Or you plan a nice bicycle vacation, but before you go, you have to invent the wheel and build a bicycle.
Haven't you noticed it? Once you've written down the first 2-3 sentences, the rest of the document flows out of your pencil... or keyboard seemingly effortlessly, even though you were sweating blood to come up with those 2-3 sentences.
This is what the Master Brand Message Playbook helps you to avoid.
An MBMP is an official corporate document that provides important information about the written aspects of your brand, including details about the tone of your communication, slogan, calls to action, etc.
Now, "corporate" may sound pompous on the surface, but when you, as a business, communicate with another business, it's called corporate communications. So, it's a corporate document.
It's complementary to and used together with your Brand Book that consists of detailed information about the "look and feel" of your brand, including but not limited to your colour palette, website and printed fonts, logo sizes and variations, complementary fonts, primary, complementary and background colours and much more.
Just as your Brand book is your style guide, your MBMP is your communication guide, and together they provide all the vital information you need to maintain both the style- and message consistency of your brand.
As your business grows and there is more communication between your business and your market, the higher the risk is that a piece of communication has a message snippet that goes against your brand. In some cases, it can cause serious damage to your business.
You get everything we agree that is vital to keep your communication consistent.
Think of KFC: "Finger lickin' good". It's NOT finger sucking, toe sucking or toe licking. It's always finger lickin'.
Or think of FedEx: "When It Absolutely Positively has to be there overnight." It's not "be there someday" or "be there whenever".
It's a bit like a MS Word template. You open new file, and all the formatting is done.
All Master Brand Message Playbooks are customised for individual requirements, but some common elements are...
5-8 weeks.
If it were a prescriptive service, it would be a lot shorter, but the end result would be inferior.
I also consider that all the participants have other duties, so it would be unfair to kidnap their attention and make them focus only on the Message Playbook project.
So, if you're fed up with your prospects' believing that your firm is just the same as everyone else, and want to remedy this horrific disease, then developing your Master Brand Message Playbook can be a great starting point.
Of course, it's not for everyone.
Some IT firm prefer to run massive field sales forces, and don't rely much on written communication.
And some others use written communication and let the writing do the heavy lifting of their sales. The Master Brand Message Playbook services is for them.
If that's you, maybe we should talk, so drop me an email and we can see if we have a good fit.