One of the most effective strategies for cutting through the message clutter is to have consistency of message. Convincing non-marketing leaders of the need for consistency of message can be one of the hardest things to do as a marketer.
To be effective your message must be clear, concise and repeated frequently. In a mass media strategy, that means replaying the same ad on the same media over and over and over again. In a new media strategy, while message repetition has a place, message consistency becomes more important. Your message will be displayed differently and probably less frequently on different media. Done well, it could be MANY different media. So if someone sees your message on a banner ad, a magazine ad, a retweet, in a radio story and on your blog, there had better be the same message elements running through each of those, or you have lost out on a golden opportunity to drive home your key message.
One of the scariest things about social media for most marketers is loss of control of the message. The conversation of social media is much more difficult to manage than the monologues of mass media. One of the exciting things about social media for most marketers is that you can interact and engage customers and potential customers directly.
There are some things you can do to help make sure your message is heard:
- Select a strong, simple message and use it consistently and constantly in everything you do.
- Make sure your message is heard and understood and used by all internal audiences because internal audiences carry your message out into social media. Make sure they are carrying the message you want them to!
- Make sure your strong, simple message is translated effectively into tweets and posts and blogs, so that wherever and however a prospect or customer is interacting with you, she is getting that same strong, simple message. This can mean changes in length of message, language of message and format of message. It should not mean a change of the core theme of the message.
- Use that strong, simple message over and over and over again. About the time you are getting so sick and tired of that strong, simple message that you can't stand seeing it anymore is about the time that your audiences are starting to notice it. Continue to use it. Fight with your boss and your bosses boss when they insist on a new message. They will be glad that you did in the long run!
- Resist the urge to complicate things with additional messages, sub messages, tangential messages or anything like that. Companies that have been most successful in marketing and messaging in both traditional AND social media have presented a strong, simple message and stuck with it.
- Make sure your message means something to the audiences that matter to you. If your strong, simple message is in jargon or uses terminology that is unknown or unfamiliar to your audiences, it is NOT a strong, simple message to that audience.
- I do want to be clear. A strong, simple message is not necessarily a simplistic message. "Acme Industries is good" does not qualify as a strong message. Your message should identify your organization. It should emphasize or highlight some reason prospective customers should consider becoming customers. This means it should emphasize or highlight a solution to a problem commonly shared by prospects.
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