In this issue:
ICYMI: Same newsletter, fresh look. Here’s the full story.
Housekeeping note
Hi, everyone! You may remember me as your friendly, neighborhood content strategist, Liz Moorehead. I’m back again this week to keep you company, while Jill is enjoying some much-needed R&R. Because time off is important.
“I think I have a brand messaging problem, but I’m not sure”
When I ask business owners I meet with to “show me on the content doll where it hurts,” more than half the time, that’s what they tell me.
My brand messaging is all wrong.
I think.
Yeah, my gut says it’s messaging.
… but I don’t know.
If this is how you’re feeling, I know it sucks.
You’re the authority of what you’ve built. In fact, you are likely the business: your vision, your voice, your ideas are the engine of the language you use to sell what you do.
So, when you start feeling new pains in your business -- less excitement, reduced lead flow, more objections, more pushback -- you might wonder if the language you’re relying on is the problem.
But is it?
Sometimes, yes, you do have a messaging problem: it’s outdated, it’s self-obsessed, etc. It’s time for you to make a change. Then there are cases where your messaging isn't the problem at all. Instead, your messaging is adjacent to the real issue: a gap inside your business that you haven’t named yet, or you’re not willing to look at.
How do you tell the difference? This is the question you need to answer before you take action. Overhauling your brand messaging -- even if it is the right move -- can quickly become a very costly wild goose chase if you don’t figure out what’s actually going on.
So that’s what we’re going to talk about today: how you know when you’ve actually got a messaging problem, and when brand messaging is an accidental scapegoat for something else happening inside your company.
You have a brand messaging problem if…
Let’s start with the obvious stuff.
These are the symptoms I see that make me immediately smash the “brand messaging problem” button for a company:
Your brand messaging has always been a problem, if you’re being honest. You can capture attention and attract referrals, but it usually takes a conversation or two to get someone to truly “catch the vision” of what it is you do or sell. Historically, you’ve considered that a symptom of the complexity of what you do, or just how the game works. But that’s not how it should be.
You or your sales reps have a bank of their own content (decks, one-sheeters, etc.) they’ve created that (they believe) better explains your products and services. Why? Because what already exists on your website or in other marketing materials don’t get the job done. The thing is, you may not even know they’re doing this. You might have to ask. Sales reps often feel like islands-of-one, where they need to fend for themselves to hit their numbers.
On the service delivery side, your people are chaffing. From their perspective, what’s being told or sold to prospects is out of whack with what is actually true of the product or service in some (or many) ways. So, their job feels harder than it should be.
You’ve made big changes to your business, but “you’ll get to messaging later when you have more time.” When I say big changes, I mean internal (leadership shake-ups, new/different products, new/different target customers) and external (economic shifts, industry changes). When big changes happen, it’s sometimes easier to keep moving, but you’re going to pay for the lack of change in your messaging.
You’re intentionally gate-keeping your “secret sauce.” Maybe you’re worried about competitors. Maybe you’re worried about people taking your processes and doing it themselves. Doesn’t matter: we live in a world where that kind of gate-keeping is costing you more than it’s protecting you.
You haven’t touched your messaging in 2+ years. Think about where you were in your business two years ago. Think about where the world was two years ago. If your messaging is still the same today, that means you’re still communicating to the world in a way that’s tone-deaf to where you are now.
In the heat of the moment -- when you’ve got a team that’s strapped for time and you’ve got “more important stuff to do” -- messaging work doesn’t feel mission critical. These types of brand messaging problems, however, are like the worst kind of compounding interest for your business.
By the time you finally look at changing your messaging, you’ve got a bigger problem than when you started.
You don’t have a brand messaging problem if…
Now, this is where things can get a bit tricky and (occasionally) downright uncomfortable. I’ve worked on messaging projects over the past 15 years for a ton of different industries: SaaS, financial services, DoD contractors, manufacturing, home services, healthcare, private equity, ad tech, medtech, business consulting services, and many more.
Across all of those projects, I’ve noticed a weird, almost counter-intuitive pattern.
When messaging is actually the problem, everyone acts like it’s the worst kind of homework. So it’s hard to get folks to make it a priority outside of super obvious circumstances like a product launch. They just want “the right words” to appear.
On the other hand, when messaging is being looked at as “the problem,” but it isn’t, there’s a strange, sudden urgency that appears to slash-and-burn all the words, because new messaging is being looked at as a silver bullet. Then conversations about deeper problems are deprioritized.
Some of the most common examples I see of that are:
Internally, you’re not aligned at the right level of who your ideal customers are and/or the priority order of who is the most important among those profiles.
While you’ve got “enough” of the details baked out, you haven’t made certain fundamental decisions about a new product or service that any good messaging strategist would want (e.g., processes, outcomes, expectations). But you’re expecting “good, high-level messaging” to either make the value clear or tell a compelling enough story where the lack of those details isn’t a problem.
Either at a company level or a product or service level, you’re communicating in a way that is aspirational, rather than reflective of reality.
You’re solving for imagined problems or questions you want your buyers to have rather than the real ones they do have.
You can’t tell me what problems your ideal customers have right now, in their words, without doing research or “speaking from instinct.”
Yes, these are problems where messaging can and should be part of the solution.
But messaging is like a mirror. It’s only going to reflect back to you what’s already true. So, if you’ve got in-house dysfunction (lack of alignment around ideal customers, vague ideas about products or services, etc.), that’s all your messaging will show you.
Messaging can’t solve those types of business problems. You can only work on messaging once you’ve done the real problem-solving first.
Ask yourself the right questions
Before you decide your messaging needs to be rebuilt, get more specific about what feels broken.
Are people confused by what you do? Are the wrong buyers showing up? Is sales explaining around the website? Did the business change while the words stayed the same?
That’s messaging.
But if the real issue is an unclear offer, internal disagreement, or a version of the business you wish were true but haven’t built yet, don’t ask the words to do work the business hasn’t done.
Better messaging can sharpen reality for your buyers.
It can’t invent it, and it can’t make an unclear business clear.
The sooner you know which problem you actually have, the less time, money, and energy you’ll waste trying to rewrite your way out of something that needs a bigger decision.
Start-stop-keep: messaging edition
Ready to get started? Great, here’s what you do:
START asking smart questions about what’s really going on inside your business before you assume it’s a messaging problem.
STOP ignoring warning signs like your sales people creating their own materials or service delivery teams feeling like their jobs are getting harder.
KEEP revisiting your messaging on an annual basis; you don’t always need to make changes to it, but don’t let the language of your business rot on a shelf for years.
Need more help? Book a free 20-minute strategy session.
Important Dates
TODAY, July 1:
Federal student loan forbearance expires
State and local labor law changes take effect
July 3: Observance of the July 4 Independence Day federal holiday
September 15: Multimember LLC and S-corp extension filing deadline
October 15: personal and C-corp extension filing deadline
Things I’m Monitoring: Scratchers and Pub quiz
Your questions answered
ICYMI, here are resources you should know about:
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When chaos is the status quo, how do you make smart business decisions? We’re dealing with a whole new level of stuff -- some parts are noisy, some parts are real, and some parts present genuine threats. Your abundance mindset needs to coexist with the reality of your physical safety.
Media Kit
Color me completely not surprised, Polymarket has been lying. Polymarket, the betting platform that has a tendency to showcase the absolute worst in humanity, is in big trouble: they’ve been paying influencers to make undisclosed social ad content pretending to win big on the platform -- even going so far as to create fake versions of their websites for these influencers to use to make it seem like they’re making a ton of money. Will they see consequences for their actions? Under this administration, folks aren’t hopeful. But remember, undisclosed ads are illegal.
In happier news, a duck joined a Scottish World Cup parade in Providence. Most of the news isn’t great right now, but I cannot tell you how healing it was to watch this waddling little rockstar decked out in the Scotland flag. Scotland may be out of the World Cup, but the way they waddled into our hearts will be remembered forever.
Thank you for reading! If you have feedback or suggestions, hit reply or email me at [email protected]. If you’d like a thought partner on your growth plans, book a free 20-minute Strategy Session with me.
