We’ve already spoken a bit about who our market might be. So, let’s talk about how we go from considering our market to choosing our medium and crafting our message.
We know that our market could potentially be those utilizing services, those volunteering, on those making donations. So, what we want to be thinking about is how do we use connection?
How do we leverage communication to connect with each of these individual target segments? We may do that on our website, through social media, through the use of e-newsletters, podcasts, mobile messaging, search optimization, media campaigns, direct mail, and probably a variety of other ways. All of these formats are not going to be perfect for every single market segment, some are not going to be their preferred places to communicate. We’ve got to match up those places where we’ve got our market, and where we can communicate to connect with them.
Finally, we have to share our message, what is it that we’re trying to say, in enhancing our relationship with this particular market segment. And in crafting that message, we have six key things I want you to be thinking about.
- One is personality, hopefully, your brand has a personality, and that may be very dry, and clinical and scientific, it may be very light, and funny and silly. And so most organizations are sitting somewhere on that spectrum, maybe between those two extremes. Think about what the personality of your brand is, and make sure that when you’re communicating, you’re sticking true to that personality, regardless of who it is that’s crafting that message on behalf of your organization.
- Second, let’s look at language, not only the languages that this message needs to be shared in, but the language we want to use want to be thinking about writing at the appropriate grade level to be able to reach most of our target segments. We really want to be mindful about the language, and how aggressive or how academic, we might be in our use of language. We want everybody in a particular market segment to be able to understand the message and to decode that message on their own. One other caveat I want to offer on language is making sure that you know, on behalf of your organization and your marketing, communication strategy, what types of language we are comfortable using and not using. We want to make sure that if we don’t want to step into areas that are controversial or politically charged, or use language that might stir something up, that we’re really mindful of being conscious of that as we’re putting that together. Certainly, if you’re an organization serving in politics, you’re going to talk about politics, right? So ,it all needs to be relative to what’s going on and what’s appropriate for your organization, your mission and your marketing strategy.
- Third, I want you to look at the tone, what is the tone that comes across? For me, one way I think about this all the time is I read that content back out loud. Sometimes when you write things, they don’t sound the same as when you hear them read back. Consider the tone. We all know we live in a digital world, we see text and emails all the time, sometimes tone gets misconstrued. We interpret things in a way that maybe they weren’t intended. Reading things back and thinking about whether your tone sounds like you want it to sound is really important.
- Fourth, we want to look at relevance. I always like to think about the reason that I’m sending this message. What is relevant here for the target market that I’m speaking to? Is there something that’s offering them value or adding to their knowledge or engagement with our organization?
- Next, these last two consideration are equally important in holding ourselves to good, strong copywriting principles. Being accurate and making sure that the information we’re communicating is accurate, particularly if we’re citing research or statistics or numbers, becomes very important. We want to back that up with a source if needed.
- Finally, grammar. We want to make sure it looks like we put in the time in and consideration to craft our message in the way it is supposed to be crafted. We want to be conscious of spelling, punctuation, all of those sorts of things to make sure our message reads nice and clean. Sometimes using a plugin like Grammarly or something like that can be helpful in catching anything that you didn’t catch the first time you took a pass.
Get out there and communicate and make sure your review of market, medium, and message aligns.
