The most powerful messaging you can create comes from the words of your market. You have to spend time qualitatively interviewing your customers one-on-one — and the customers of your competition — to understanding what’s thrilling, compelling, emotional, fascinating, and motivating to them. The goal is to understand how they use, think about, talk about, and what they want from your products and services. What you uncover becomes your best possible messaging.
I tell my clients all the time: if you’re not uncovering your messaging from your customers, you’re just guessing from a conference room.
In case you’ve missed them, I’ve recently written three op-eds for Mashable, about how recent problems at Best Buy, RIM, and Microsoft come down to marketing, and how each of them can dramatically improve.
I am a marketing consultant with clients that include TiVo, Logitech, T-Mobile, Sprint, Yelp! and ZAGG. My new book, Evangelist Marketing, was published last month, and is 288 pages on topics like this one. My Web site details my work.
The Evangelist Marketing Minute is a weekly thinking launch point that is always short enough to read in about 60 seconds. Your email address is never shared, with anybody, for any reason.