The basics of brilliant marketing messages

The more time we spend doing digital marketing audits for people, the more we realize people don’t know the formula for brilliant marketing messages so we thought we’d share some thoughts:

Brilliant marketing messages get to the point

Weak marketing message meander

EG “In today’s highly competitive world, our XYZ software helps companies run their processes more efficiently.”

Brilliant marketing messages tell you what’s important; the best marketing messages use customer testimonials:

EG “Using XYZ software helped us to halve our manufacturing time.”

Brilliant marketing messages don’t use obscure technical terms that nobody really understands.

EG “Our software creates an integrated framework for profitable customer interactions.” What?

Brilliant marketing messages use plain and simple language.

“Our software helps your sales team build relationships more easily and close deals more quickly.”

Brilliant marketing messages are informal

Weak marketing messages sound like they come straight out of a textbook.

“Our strongest form of leadership is behavior that is consistent with our vision.”

Come on! How about...

“You’ll always know where you stand with us. There will be no nasty surprises.”

 Brilliant marketing messages come from the customer’s perspective

Weak marketing messages refer to the seller’s point of view

“Our world-class design team created ABC software to be flexible and user-friendly.”

Boring! And irrelevant. I want to know exactly how much time I’m going to have to spend learning how to use your software 

How about a customer testimonial saying: “ABC product is so intuitive, it took me five minutes to understand the basics! 

Brilliant marketing messages are original

Weak marketing messages can be copied and pasted to any product or service

“Our award-winning services decrease cost and increase revenue”

Brilliant marketing messages are one of a kind and come straight from the customer’s mouth.

“I’ve saved so much money on marketing, it’s like winning the lottery!” (Yes someone did say that about EMARI once - sorry not sorry for the #humblebrag)

Brilliant marketing messages are entertaining

Because all work and no play makes marketing BORING.

“Our nationwide network of facilities and crematoria ensure a consistently high quality of care”

YAWN. Brilliant marketing messages have a little bit of humor and stand out. If I'm talking about funeral planning surely something like....

“Are you making plans for your wife's death?”

would be much more interesting to read. That was actually a tagline used by Abbey Life back in 1925!

Brilliant marketing messages don’t need explaining

So many messages need decrypting before they make sense to anyone

“We’re the double deuce in your multimedia deck”

I mean seriously? What the hell does that mean? Why can’t you just say:

“Our video ads are so good, people can’t wait to see and share them”

So there you go!

Marketing can be seen as a dark art and this confusion means people are often drawn to experts and gurus who tell us that they have the answer and that you’ll get the results you want if you just follow their method or process or Master Plan.

But as compelling as these experts are, we’ve always been drawn to the stories of historical campaigns and looking at more modern tactics that didn’t go quite to plan. Not because we want to revel in other’s misfortune, but because we’re intrigued by how these mishaps happened and what we can learn from them and avoid them in my own work.

Now we want to share that learning with you – we’re hoping by sharing these examples with you it can help shorten the marketing learning curve and give you a few quick and easy ways to improve your marketing messages. If you need some help, let’s get started!