Communicate your strengths to get attention and drive action

Relevance
Written By Greg Harbour
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My message isn’t connecting with my ideal customer and conveying my unique expertise
My message isn’t connecting with my ideal customer and conveying my unique expertise
 
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Communicate your strengths to get attention and drive action

Your message is your defining headline that helps you outperform other contenders, obscurity, and indifference. An effective message should be a refinement of your perspective, tailored to effectively connect, engage, and influence. A message that resonates with your target audience is more likely to get attention, earn the chance to convey your information, and prompt action.

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Context
Context

With your position calculated in the previous step, you know who to target on which problem and how you help solve it. In this step, you’ll use this information to craft your headline message to get their attention. In the next step, you’ll expand on this message with value principles that retain their attention and engage them further.

If you’re not sure what to decide for this step, use your best guess and move on. Your perspective will develop and you can always update previous answers as you go, so don’t feel too constrained by what you’ve already written either.

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Clear
Clear

Standing out to your ideal client means out-competing the other 9,999 messages they’re exposed to daily, and you’ll probably have a couple of seconds to do it. Don’t waste an opportunity with a message that’s more complex than it needs to be. An effective message gets the attention of your ideal client, and interest them enough to read the next thing; not tell the entire story. Relevance, brevity, and language are the three elements of an effective headline message.

Compelling
Compelling

Your audience will want a good reason to choose you over your competition – or take action at all – so your headline message will need to include a benefit that’s relevant for them. Insights on your ideal client’s aspirations and problems, and where they overlap with your unique expertise, should drive this decision. While it can be tempting to list features here, an aspirational benefit is proven to usually work better, so save the features list for later in this framework.

Actionable
Actionable

Your headline message should be written to work independently – as well as get your audience to stick around to read the next piece of information – because a large percentage of readers won’t read any further. To ensure the exposure you get is not wasted, your message should encourage action. Framing your benefit in active language including verbs and imperatives is proven to prompt more action.

 

Actions

 
Featured
Reach the right people with what matters to them
Relevance
Reach the right people with what matters to them
Relevance
Relevance
Featured
Understand your audience's problems and how you solve them
Insight
Understand your audience's problems and how you solve them
Insight

Knowing the challenges and aspirations of your clients – and how you help solve them – will help you invest in the right path forward. It should clarify the true value you provide and what sets you apart in their eyes. Insight into the benefits you actually deliver helps you focus your work to gain more productive opportunities.

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Insight
Match your model and approach with the best opportunities
Position
Match your model and approach with the best opportunities
Position

A smart strategic position addresses your ideal customer’s priority problem with your key strengths to move you forward. It should achieve product-market fit through clear assessment of your value, natural demand, and your business strategy. An accurate strategic position helps ensure the work you invest will be effective and profitable.

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Position
Communicate your strengths to get attention and drive action
Message
Communicate your strengths to get attention and drive action
Message

Your message is your defining headline that helps you outperform other contenders, obscurity, and indifference. An effective message should be a refinement of your perspective, tailored to effectively connect, engage, and influence. A message that resonates with your target audience is more likely to get attention, earn the chance to convey your information, and prompt action.

Read more →
Message
Greg Harbour

Simplify your expertise to connect with more people and make a bigger difference. Greg utilises decades of creative communication experience to help leaders resolve their innovate, meaningful, comprehensive vision into a clear, compelling, and actionable proposition to reach the right people, motivate action, and create momentum.

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Match your model and approach with the best opportunities
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Motivate action with credibility and unique perspective