• Message Mapping defines a unified voice for your company to speak to potential customers
• Customers need to recognize and understand the value in your brand to ultimately prefer
your brand over the competitions
• When the message is on target, you will have meaningful and successful conversations
with your various audiences that truly connect.
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| Demonstrating how the process of Message Mapping delivers your brands; Value Proposition, Brand Promise and Brand Position. |
Our Message Mapping process defines a unified voice for your company to speak to potential customers. This process, illustrated in the graphic, has an end goal that clearly defines the Value Proposition, Brand Promise and Brand Position for you. When the message is on target, you will have meaningful and successful conversations with your various audiences that truly connect.
Brand Preference
Understanding what prospective customers need to believe, in order to recognize, understand the value in and to ultimately prefer your brand, is the foundation of any marketing communications effort and the goal of the Message Mapping process.
The Process Overview
We develop a questionnaire that is sent to all who can comment and have knowledge of your company. The questionnaires are then returned to us and we review prior to conducting a live Message Mapping session.
Sessions take a minimum of four hours, and occasionally last all day. Participants are chosen based on relevant experience, knowledge of your company, competition, or marketplace. Richards facilitates the live Message Mapping session, where we identify target audiences, tough questions those audiences may ask, and what things each audience "needs to believe" about your brand.
Following the session, Richards develops a scorecard of relevant “needs to believe” statements, which is then distributed to the participants. Each participant is asked to assign a level of importance to what the target audience needs to believe. Those levels are:
> A Tier One Message that clearly identifies who you are and what you stand for.
> Multiple Tier Two Messages that articulate points that makes you who you are.
> Differentiating Statements that identify things you do differently or better.
> Supporting Facts that make your claims believable to the public.
Ultimately, there can only be one Tier One Message for each target audience. Tier Two Messages are like category headings under the master concept of the Tier One Message; there are usually multiple Tier Two Messages. Differentiating Statements and Supporting Facts will be linked to specific Tier Two Messages.
Richards reviews the scorecards along with our own notes and provides you with a document that defines your Message Map. In addition to the Message Map itself, Richards provides a recommendation for:
> Value Proposition
> Brand Promise
> Statement of Differentiation / Proprietary Statements
> Positioning Theme
Marketing strategies and tactics can then be established and marketing communications can be created that differentiate your company's scope of capabilities and present the benefits and value of these capabilities to your target audience.
Can you describe the unique personality of your brand?
