Whether you or your company consider marketing as an expense or an essential investment for long-term business success, it’s important to consider that marketing enables companies to maintain or increase marketplace visibility, enhance brand awareness, generate and nurture leads and attract prospective customers who are actively searching for your products and services.
Though marketing and sales are used interchangeably, each function serves a unique and important purpose that contributes to creating revenue for your business. Marketing generates and nurtures leads for your sales efforts to convert purchase-ready and qualified leads into customers. Marketing and sales have different goals that are supported by complimentary communications messaging.
It’s also important to note that even during an economic downturn, growth is absolutely possible. Consider the unique opportunities to garner higher visibility of your brand, products and services, expand your prospective customer audiences and strengthen your market positioning as your industry peers and competitors reduce or eliminate their marketing spend.
A prudent marketing strategy includes taking a no holds barred approach to evaluate your current marketing activities and return on investment, modify current strategies and spend to optimize for success, identify new customer audiences and create a game plan that capitalizes on the current marketplace conditions.
Regardless of the size and the economic environment, ensuring your marketing message resonates with your targeted audiences can yield significant competitive advantages, including increased sales opportunities and ultimately revenue.
It’s well known that persuasion is a key element of successful marketing communications. Yet, a critical persuasion component is frequently overlooked: message framing which increases resonance with targeted audiences, decreases marketing spend and boosts return on investment.
What Is a Message Frame?
In a nutshell, a message frame provides a context or “frame” for the audience and enables them to interpret the message for the marketer’s benefit. In a way, message frames create a shorthand between the marketer and the audience, which can trigger emotions, shift perspectives and increase resonance.
Message frames are common in many disciplines, including journalism, politics, behavioral economics, negotiation and business. Examples in business include brand taglines, symbolism, storytelling and similar persuasion methodologies that help the audience emotionally connect with the brand, product or service.
The most effective message frames utilized four components — including value statement, issue, resolution and call-to-action — and are informed by the brand voice and customer journey as follows.
Value statements create common ground with the targeted audience through communicating a shared value or worldview to establish credibility and entice like-minded people. ‘Issue’ provides the context such as pain points or opportunities to help the audience understand why they should investigate your product or service. ‘Resolution’ delivers the benefits or future state experience by using your product or service. ‘Call-to-action’ gives actionable tasks that engage prospects to visit your website, schedule a consultation or demonstration or make a purchase.
Creating higher message resonance enables targeted audiences to proactively participate in the persuasion process fueled by shared values, worldview and the ability to interpret the message through their own words and personal experiences.
Professor and Communication Expert Matthew Nisbet of Northeastern University stated that “Frames provide people a quick and easy way to process information …. This gives the sender and framer of the information enormous power to focus attention and influence how the receivers will interpret the message …. They help us organize complex topics and issues into coherent, understandable concepts. It is a form of agenda-setting.”
For targeted audiences who are unfamiliar, uninterested or unmotivated by your brand, products or services, message credibility, multiple data or stimuli and a concerted communications effort are required to engage and prompt the desired action.
Without a doubt successfully delivering marketing messages at any time can be daunting and is especially difficult in a challenging economic environment. Message framing is a powerful and proven game-changer that can break through the myriad of competing messages to resonate with your target audience. It’s time to lean in on your marketing and grow your company.
