WELCOME to Core, a newsletter with news, nuggets, and information on best practices in business-to-business marketing. With it, we hope to share information vital to any organization looking to generate results and accelerate growth through intelligent strategy, branding, marketing and public relations. In this edition: Messaging at its Core.

1 - It’s the target market stupid!
Know who the target market is for your product or service. Companies often surmise that their current customers are the best ones for new products, but that may not be the case. Similarly, don’t assume that a specific vertical is best for your products, or that the CEO, COO or CFO is the buyer, when they couldn't care less about your product. Understanding whom you are targeting is the first step in any messaging effort. (For an example of targeted messaging in action, see www.flohealthcare.com/flo.html – notice there are three distinct targets, with tailored messages for each.)

2 - Research! Research! Research!
With the target in hand, good messaging requires good research. Whether you are doing incidental research by calling ten or twenty prospects, or you are doing in-depth discrete choice analysis, you need to understand two critical buying criteria.
One: why would the customer actually buy the product?
Two: what do customers care about when they buy the product?

3 - The features vs. benefits war
Too often messages are focused on describing who the company is or what the product does. While this can work in early stage markets, where one is educating the prospect on a new solution, too often it is an internally-focused message on the latest bell or whistle. Focusing instead on the benefits first – how does it improve my business and/or life? – will get buyers interested in learning more.

4 - Let’s get emotional
Study after study shows that emotional messaging works better than functional messaging. B2B marketers too often make the mistake of thinking that buyers within businesses just want the facts, which leads to very functional messages. What is missing is a connection to the target’s emotional triggers. What fears do they have at work? How are they motivated? If you can tap into these, your message will go further. (See a message built around the emotion of trust at www.leica-geosystems.com.)

Where to from here?
Read. Discuss. Ask. Start by reading. There are too many great books on marketing positioning and messaging to mention here, but if you are just getting started, we would be happy to suggest some. Then, get a discussion started within your company. Talk to sales and service personnel, as they are involved with positioning products before and after the sale. And, of course, ask us – we are here to help. We created Core with the goal of enhancing your marketing practices. We hope you enjoyed this edition.

Sincerely,

Arketi Group
core@arketi.com  

PS. Please visit our website to learn more: www.arketi.com.