An important part of your marketing is the overall company messaging, which should change slightly based on audience segmentation. I first learned about this through Michel Neray from Essential Message in a section on sales techniques. The idea is to determine whether your audience is sold on what you do, also if they are sold on you so you don’t waste time selling them on something they already believe in through your company messaging.

Company Messaging Should Always Reflect a Strong Brand Foundation

I’m about to tell you how to adjust your company messaging according to your audience, but it should always be based on a strong brand foundation. That includes positioning and selling statements or taglines that reflect your differentiator, company values and character. They should be known, accepted and used company-wide so the company messaging put out by everyone is consistent.

Decide What You’re Selling Prospects on to Craft Your Company Messaging

What I mean by that is – taking our business of marketing for example – are they sold on marketing at all, or do they think it’s all a waste of time? A few simple questions can determine this. The way the answer would affect our company messaging is this: if they already believe in marketing, I wouldn’t waste precious attention selling them on marketing, but would focus on convincing them to use Rapport to do it. The company messaging might be around our great creative, we’re on time, on budget, easy to work with, etc.

However if they weren’t sold on using marketing to build a business, I would need to start there. The company messaging may be something like ‘get the attention of the right people to increase sales’. To complicate matters, they may be sold on neither, meaning you have to sell them on both. See what I mean?

Which Segment Do You Want?

For most companies the pool of prospects probably falls evenly on both sides – sold on your category or not. The division of your audience is easier to determine one-on-one and you may be reluctant to choose one for larger marketing initiatives not wanting to alienate anyone. However, if you can, use it to your advantage and create your company messaging to speak to the audience you want to attract most.

For example, I would rather go after prospects that are sold on marketing, so I just need to sell them on Rapport. Why? Because we’re an action-oriented company so we don’t enjoy spending a lot of time convincing someone they need a website (for example). We’d prefer to dive in with their full support and do the very best job on their website and other marketing as we can, with great creative execution of course.

We do offer strategy and planning, that’s deciding what things to do, when and how to target it, versus convincing them that they need to do it at all.

Segmenting Your Company Messaging

If you have a new or unproven service or product offer, you are likely need to start by convincing people that they need the category through your company messaging. Whereas if your ideal audience already believes they need what you sell, your company messaging should be all about buying it from you, because you’re the best.

Learn more about creating a strong brand foundation.