Messaging 101: Everything You Need to Know About Messaging Strategy
Lil Key Takeaways: This Blog at a Glance
Messaging strategy doesn’t have to be fancy or lengthy
It’s not about how it looks; it’s about what it says – clarity over pizzazz, always
Messaging is the "what" behind your words – your cheat sheet for talking to your people
Your strategy should cover the must-haves: who you are, what you do, why you’re different, and how you’re solving their problems
Pro tip: Messaging is for you. It doesn’t need to be pretty – just make sure it’s hella useful
Think of it as your brand’s sheet music – your audience doesn’t see it, but it guides the show
Messaging = the notes. Brand voice = the instrument. You need both to make the magic happen
Struggling to start? Meet the 4 Ps: People, Problems, Promises, and POVs – they’re your BFFs for killer messaging
Keep it simple, straightforward, and stress-free. Messaging should make talking about your offers easier, not feel like rocket science
The Messaging Intro Every Business Owner Needs
Confession time: Messaging used to scare the heck out of me.
I’ve been a copywriter for almost 9 years now. I’ve been talking about messaging for nearly all of that time. And only in the last two or so years have I completely de-freaked-myself out about messaging.
Brand voice? I can spout off about it in my sleep.
Messaging? For some reason, the word itself (like funnel!) just sent me down a rabbit hole of feeling like I had no idea what I was doing.
Throw the word “strategy” onto the end of it, and that combination was enough to make me want to run for the hills.
Why am I telling you this? Because you know the truth: Messaging strategy may seem like an overwhelming task to tackle. Something that makes you feel so incompetent that you think you have no business being, well, a business.
But it really (and I mean, really) doesn’t have to be.
All you need is the 101 to take the abstract ideas of messaging and make them concrete – AKA, things you can actually grasp and then use in your own “messaging strategy.”
And speaking of, tell me –what do you envision when you hear the word “messaging strategy?”
Personally, I thought a messaging strategy was this super intricate, couple-dozen-page-long Canva presentation that was fancy and full of words like “Unique Selling Points” and “Positioning Strategy.”
But what if I told you that a messaging strategy could be a half-page Google doc with bullet points? What if I told you that a messaging strategy can be, like, 300 combined words long?
When it comes to your messaging strategy, it doesn’t matter one lick what it looks like, how long it is, or how fancy it is.
Here’s what actually matters: how clearly it outlines your key messaging points for your brand or offer.
That sounds too simple, right? I promise it’s not. Let’s dive into the foundational stuff so you can circle back to that sentence eventually and be like, “hell yeah, brother! It is that easy!”
What is Messaging, Anyway?
Let’s make this simple: Messaging is the what behind your words.
Your messaging strategy is your go-to game plan that helps you remember what to communicate – who you are, what you do, what your points of view are, & what makes you different.
Messaging is the guide you pop open when you need to communicate very specific points to your people–why this offer is different, what makes you unique, and what’s transformative about your new service.
Messaging is the what you infuse into the copy you write – all the copy you write.
Words are just ways to communicate, right? Messaging is what helps you to communicate as effectively as possible to exactly who you want to reach.
What should go in your messaging strategy? The things you want to communicate above all else.
Not a super hot take here, but as a copywriter, I wholeheartedly believe that you should have messaging for everything you do, like:
Your brand as a whole
Every offer
Ever service
Every new launch
A messaging strategy (or messaging guide) is what guides you when you’re talking about your stuff, selling to your people, or communicating WHY you’re the best choice. It exists to help you.
And, importantly, it should be the thing you pop open when you need to say something – your new sales page, a new piece of website copy, an email, hell, even an Instagram caption.
Messaging Strategy is For Your Eyes Only
Here’s the most important thing I want you to know about your messaging strategy: it’s for you.
That means you’re the one using it. You’re the one it needs to *click* with. You’re the one who needs to understand it through and through. That means it can be boring. It can be straightforward. It can be bland as hell. As long as it gets the job done, you’re doing messaging right.
So often, we get caught up in the idea of our messaging strategy sounding good or looking pretty. Guess what?
Your messaging strategy can be 10 bullet points on a crumpled piece of paper – so long as those 10 bullet points make it clear who you’re talking to, what they’re looking for, and how you’re delivering to them. That’s a nice concept, but how about some context to make this idea stick?
Imagine you’re in a band for a second.
Obviously, you want the music you play to sound great. But for a band to work, you can’t just show up and all start playing beautiful music at once. You need a plan. You need to know what you’re playing in the first place. That’s where sheet music comes in.
If you all have the plan in front of you, you know what to play.
Your audience never looks over your sheet music. They never take a peek at it and say, “Oh, sure! This looks good to us!” They just hear it, feel it, and connect with it.
Your messaging strategy is the sheet music. Your messaging is the guide you follow along with so when you do start talkin’ to your people, it doesn’t just sound good, it hits ‘em hard in the feels.
Messaging vs. Brand Voice–What’s the Difference?
Remember that example I gave you about messaging being your sheet music? It’s the guide you follow, your go-to plan, the nuts and bolts of what you’re saying.
If messaging is what you’re saying, brand voice is how you’re saying it. Messaging is the sheet music, sure, but brand voice is your instrument.
Brand voice transforms what’s written on that sheet music into the beautiful sounds that get someone’s attention. Messaging and brand voice are both important. They go hand-in-hand. You can’t have hella good copy or sales strategy without a firm grasp of both.
You can have clear direction on your sheet music, but without an instrument to play it, they’re just notes on paper. You can have a tuned, ready-to-play instrument, but without the sheet music, you’ve got no idea what you’re playing.
See where I’m going with this?
If you’ve got clear messaging but you’re not communicating that messaging in a sticky, memorable way–no one’s going to hear you.
If you’ve got tons of personality and a brand voice that’s a complete vibe but you’re not actually saying anything that connects with your people – no one’s going to care to hear you.
Messaging and brand voice are different – but you need both to make the sticky, toe-tappin’ music happen.
(AKA, just like you need a brand voice guide, you need a messaging guide, too).
What Goes Into a Messaging Strategy?
The Anatomy of Messaging Strategy: A Cute Lil Skeleton of Messaging Points
Our messaging strategy is built up through messaging points – little, punchy key things we need to remember about our brand, our offer, our service, etc.
Key messaging points cover the bases for what we need to say and who we need to say them to. They’re the nitty-gritty details that build up your messaging strategy. Every marketing guru or copywriter out there has a different idea about what your key messaging points should cover. And for that reason, no messaging strategy is going to be identical.
Heck, I have my own go-to list I tackle with my own clients – and I’m sure it looks nothing like another copywriter’s might. Here’s a list of the most common key messaging points we usually see in messaging strategies:
Ideal audience (who you want to talk to)
Pain points & problems
The audience’s desires
Solutions
Empathetic connections
Core messages
Promises
Unique selling positions / key differentiators
Principles and beliefs
Brand values
Positioning statements/competitor landscapes
Are all of those ^ factors that I include in my messaging strategies? Nope. Like I said, every marketing pro is going to have a different take on what’s actually helping and what actually lives inside a messaging strategy.
Here’s the most important thing I can tell you about key messaging points.
They’re meant to be straightforward. They don’t have to sound pretty, and there’s no need for them to be sexy or spunky.
Remember, your messaging strategy is for you – it’s what helps you guide your copy. You can refine and refresh how it sounds later with your brand voice and a dash of sales psych knowledge.
Tips for Creating Your Own Messaging Strategy
My biggest belief about messaging strategies is that if they’re too long for you to flip through or too complicated for you to understand, they’re not doing you any favors. Messaging should be a guide, a shortcut, a map! And above all, it should make talking about your offers easier – not harder.
That means I’d recommend you only include info that's actually helpful in your messaging strategy.
If you’re struggling with where to start with messaging, I always tell my clients to start with the 4 Ps:
People: who are you looking for? Who is this offer, launch, or service for?
Problems: What pain points or problems are they really dealin’ with?
Promises: Think about those problems – what promises can you really offer them? What transformations? Which desires can you honestly speak to?
POVs: What about this offer is actually different? What’s something you’d say with your full chest about this offer?
Is there so much more to messaging than just these things? Yes, absolutely. But this 4P system is a great way to get your brain goin’ and the ball rolling.
When you decide to jump in and tackle the 4 Ps, I always recommend a cute lil brain flow to help you dive in deeper. Often, we answer these questions on the surface (and that’s fine to start!), but the real gold happens when we get deep with these messaging points.
I’ve got a 3-step process for answering each of these 4P questions.
Give it the ol’ gut ‘n’ go: Ask the question (who is this for? What are the pain points?) and answer immediately. What does your gut tell you? Don’t think, just answer simply. Let your gut lead the conversation. Let’s say you’re creating a sale call template for photographers so they can start closing sales calls. What problem are they dealing with? On the surface - they can’t close sales calls.
Take it deeper: Your gut spoke up for a reason. But now, let’s dive in. Let’s take that sales call example further. You’re creating a template for photographer because they can’t close these calls–that’s their problem on the surface. But it goes deeper. Your clients can’t close their calls because they have no idea how to sell without selling salesy. That’s a real problem they’re dealing with. Let’s go even deeper. They don’t want to sound salesy because it goes against their whole vibe. They're scared to push their clients on sales calls because they’re in a saturated market. They know they can easily find someone else similar to them. If they push too hard, they might lose them. They need help selling without being too much.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: Take what you know and say it bluntly. Their problem? They want to sell. They don’t want to sound icky. They can’t figure out a formula that works, so they’re not booking.
Messaging doesn’t have to be an intricate and elaborate thing – it really can just be a guide you pop open whenever you need to talk about your offer.
It should be that simple, actually. Don’t let the world tell you that your messaging strategy needs to be over-the-top or 30 pages long.
As long as you can answer the important questions, know what to say, and know who to say it to, you’re doing it right.
Need a Lil Messaging Help? Boundless Has You Covered
The tricky part about a messaging strategy? Getting to the good stuff. Sometimes you’re just too close – to your offer, to your brand, to everything you know about your industry. It can feel impossible to pick through and decide what’s unique and worth talking about (something we call the Curse of Knowledge, in the biz).
That’s where copywriters (like me!) can help you dig in, brainstorm, and find the golden threads that help you pack your messaging guide with the what that makes a difference.
If you wanna chat about working together on a messaging strategy one-on-one or you’re keen to dig in and start your own messaging, we can help. Pop on over to the contact page, fill out the form, and let’s start yappin’ about messaging.
