Winning with Words: Techniques for Sharpening Your Team's Message

Effective communication is vital for capturing the attention and interest of your target audience. In a world where we fight off thousands of messages and cold offers each day, personalizing your messaging to create urgency should be the goal of your sales engine. This isn’t just gathering small snippets of data to send someone a “happy birthday, special offer!” or putting their name in the email header. 

No, that’s what everyone else does. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

You don’t want to bet your business’s future on “sometimes”. You want a strategy that sets you apart, that communicates your unique and personal offering. You’re the business leader we wrote this guide for. 

Too often, sales messaging throws proverbial rocks at the customer’s window. With each pebble tossed, there is a small hope that this one might finally get them to come to the window. Sounds like a winning plan? Of course not. 

The best businesses don’t annoy customers into submission, they intrigue, inspire, and create an offer so compelling, they would be losing money by saying no. By tapping into base motivations and pain points, your business can uniquely position your solution as the answer the client has been looking for all along, and can significantly enhance customer engagement and drive conversions. 
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This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication, a commitment to a strategy, and the willingness by your team to think outside of the box. We play in this sandbox every single day and can teach you how to cut through the clutter to get more responses and leads for your sales pipeline. After all, you’ve read our guide to this point. What follows will help your team refocus and craft new offers that will stand out and drive more leads. We hope you enjoy.‍

Zoom in on your target audience

Before you can begin writing an effective messaging sequence, it's crucial to have a specific understanding of your target audience.

For example, imagine you're a fitness studio owner who sets out to target busy professionals.

Guess what? So are 1,000 other fitness studio owners.

Instead, let’s start by zooming in even more. Identify their base motivations, pain points, and desires. Imagine through your research, you conclude that these business professionals often have:
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1) Limited time
2) High levels of stress
3) Need effective and efficient solutions

Beautiful, now we’ve got a hyper-specific focus on busy professionals who don’t have a lot of time, do experience a lot of stress and want to do something about it, and are willing to pay for an effective solution that works within their schedule.

See how much better that is? Now, let’s start crafting. 

Craft compelling value propositions
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The customer is always on the lookout for value. From where they get lunch to what kind of car they drive, the best value (in their mind) usually wins out. Once you’ve identified your target audience and their needs, now it’s time to craft your value proposition. 

Let’s stick with the fitness studio example.

In order to provide value to your target audience, your messaging needs to focus on offerings such as flexible class times or any-time gym access, specific health benefits, and real results. Your messaging will want to hone in on each of these life-changing benefits, while emphasizing their ability to accomplish this around their schedule. 

For a potential customer who wants to shed a few extra pounds, offer them a promise. “Lose X pounds in your first Y weeks with our Z plan”.

Allow the customer to visualize their desired reality with as frictionless an experience as possible.

For a customer who needs a way to relieve stress before or after work, try “Feel your body’s stress literally melt away in our hot yoga class”, or something to that effect.

Again, we want the client to experience the solution mentally, making it far more likely they will convert. If they can convince themselves the mental picture can be reality, you’ll start winning more customers. 

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Emphasize benefits over features

When communicating with your target audience, it's crucial to focus on the benefits rather than the features of your solution. In our fitness studio example, busy professionals are looking for solutions that directly address their needs and provide tangible outcomes.

Instead of simply highlighting the features of your studio, such as state-of-the-art equipment or trendy workout classes, emphasize how these features translate into meaningful benefits for your audience.

For example, rather than just mentioning the availability of various fitness classes, emphasize the specific benefits that each class offers. Highlight how your high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions help busy professionals maximize their workout in a shorter time, allowing them to burn calories, increase endurance, and improve overall fitness levels efficiently.

By highlighting the tangible benefits, you showcase the time-saving and effective nature of your workouts, which directly aligns with the needs of busy professionals.

Throughout your messaging, use language that resonates with their desires, challenges, and aspirations. Personalize the benefits by showcasing how your studio specifically addresses their pain points and motivations.

This approach not only establishes a personal connection but also positions your fitness studio as the solution that caters to their unique needs and helps them achieve long-lasting results.

Encourage Out-of-the-Box Thinking

To stand out from the competition, encourage your team to think outside of the box when creating offers for new clients. Jersey Mike’s has long been one of my favorite sandwich companies. While I’ve experienced their superior product to the competition, many are drawn into the store by their creative approach to literally selling sandwiches. 

This commercial doesn’t emphasize the combinations or focus on the quality of the ingredients, nor does it mention the price. Instead, it focuses on the emotion a customer experiences when waiting for their custom made sub. Oh, and Danny Devito doesn’t hurt either. 

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Test, Iterate, and Refine

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Messaging personalization and outside-the-box thinking require ongoing experimentation and refinement.

For instance, if you run an e-commerce store, you can test different messaging variations and offers for specific customer segments. By analyzing data on conversion rates and customer feedback, you can refine your messaging strategies to optimize personalization and creativity, driving better results.

Your words matter.

In the space of just a few characters, you have the power to grab a new lead’s attention or be marked as read. These techniques for sharpening your brand’s messaging are proven and will help you reframe communication to be more effective. 

Still, strategy and implementation are not overnight processes. Perhaps, as you’ve read this article (and maybe even downloaded our growth tool), it’s revealed larger alignment issues. Your target audience isn’t clear or your value proposition is fuzzy. 

We can help. 

Drop us a line and let’s have a conversation. Your messaging might be stuck right now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. 

Info@thecourtsidegroup.com is where you can reach out. We look forward to meeting you and propelling your brand forward.

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