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Refining Your Marketing Messaging Framework
If creating marketing materials – content, sales pages, emails, etc – feels like pulling teeth, you might need to pass off your marketing to a strategist like me. But, you also just might need to spend some time refining your messaging and creating a framework.
Having a marketing messaging framework that you can rely on when creating your marketing is an important aspect of speeding up the process, and ensuring that you’re showcasing your expertise to the best of your ability. It also makes your offers sell more easily. So, in today’s episode I’m sharing four questions that you’ll want to ask yourself in order to come up with your own messaging framework.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there!
- This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- This week’s action step: ake some time this week to brainstorm answers to those four questions and create a brand messaging document for your business.
- This week’s book recommendation: The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
If creating marketing materials, content, sales, pages, emails, et cetera, feels like pulling teeth, you might need to pass off your marketing to a strategist like me. But you also just might need to spend some time refining your messaging and creating a framework. Having a framework that you can rely on when creating your marketing is an important aspect of speeding up the process and ensuring that you’re showcasing your expertise to the best of your ability.
It also makes your offers sell more easily, which is a nice side perk. So in today’s episode, I’m sharing four questions that you’ll want to ask yourself in order to come up with your own messaging framework. You’re listening to episode 165 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.
This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your copy@amandawarfield.com / book.
How do I run a successful business from my home? How can I possibly wear all of the hats? Am I the only one that struggles with staying organized? What am I supposed to do about work-life balance? How can I create a solid schedule and routine? How do I even stay productive? And the biggest question of all, how do I manage it all?
And can I really create a business that I love without being chained in my laptop? Welcome to The Chasing Simple Podcast, where hard conversations and actionable education meet simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, time management coach, online educator, and crazy Cat mama. My mission is to help overwhelm biz owners get more done and less time so that they have more time and energy for what matters most.
If you feel overwhelmed or occasionally lost in the roller coaster, that is entrepreneurship, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. Those things you’re feeling, you aren’t the first or the last to feel that way. The hard things you’re going through, someone else has already been there too. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and a judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love support. Practical tips and advice on simplifying your biz. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?
Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that Master’s of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focus journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.
To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amanda warfield.com/book. I’ll see you there.
Let’s start with the importance of having a framework for your marketing messaging and why it’s so beneficial to your business. So first, it drives consistency and it makes it simpler to show up.
So when you know what you’re talking about, creating that content and creating your marketing is so much. Easier because you’re not wondering, what do I say today? You have this framework of messaging to fall back on that you can then throw in however many different examples and make it what you will, and it just makes it easier to show up, which makes it consistent, right?
If you’re showing up consistently, it’s simpler to show up. You show up consistently than your people get to know you better, but it also drives consistency in and of the fact that your messaging is consistent. And this is so important because. If you don’t have consistent messaging, your audience does not have a clue how you can serve them, and if they don’t know how you can serve them, they’re not going to give you money to serve them.
You have to be able to keep things super simple and you have to keep things consistent with your messaging. If you are hopping around from topic to topic to topic to topic, and you’re never being clear about, this is exactly what I do, your people will never be able to understand and they won’t think of you when someone needs what you do because they don’t know what you do.
And so consistent messaging helps. People understand and it helps give you the vehicle for growing your business. Now, it also makes it easier to adapt your messaging for collaborations. So when it comes time to collaborate with others, their audience may be exactly the same or as we talked about an. The episode two weeks ago in episode 163.
It may be an adjacent audience, so people that can still benefit from you but may not be your exact audience, and you may need to adjust your messaging in order to serve that adjacent audience really well. So for example, most of the time I am speaking specifically to educators. About their content marketing, right?
My audience, my niche is mainly educators. Now, if you’re not an educator, does that mean you’re not welcome here? Absolutely not. Of course not. You’re very welcome here because you can still benefit from what it is that I’m teaching, hence the idea of adjacent audiences, right? But most of the time when I’m presenting and speaking, I’m speaking in front of educators.
And when I say educators, I don’t mean necessarily teachers, I just mean anyone who is using their business and their marketing to teach others some kind of skill. So for me, I’m an educator on marketing, right? Anna Dearman Cornick is an educator on time management, and Sarah Becker is an educator on finances and I’m trying to, there, there’s so many examples from all of the different guests that have been on the podcast before, but the point is, is that they are in some way teaching others something, and those are the people that I’m typically speaking to. So my examples most of the time are about educators and are about using courses in your business and using courses in your marketing and things like that.
But there are many, many, many times where I’m going on a podcast and their audience, Are not ed educators. Their audience is photographers, or their audience is shopkeepers. And so my examples and how I’m saying, my messaging needs to be adapted in order to speak directly to the problems that they have, because the problems that a photographer has in their marketing are not exactly the same as the problems that an educator has on their marketing, and can I help solve those problems for both of them? Yes. And the underlying issue is that they need simplicity, right? But the examples need to be different in order for it to click. But if you don’t have that framework for your marketing messaging, it’s gonna be really hard to adapt that messaging for collaborations.
Which when you are consistent with your messaging and you are able to adapt for collaborations, well, that framework helps to drive sales because when people connect with you and they connect with what you’re teaching, they are going to say, oh, I want more of this. How can I work with her further? Or How can I work with him further?
How can I work with them further? Right. And then the final thing that I wanna share today about how important it’s to have a framework for your marketing messaging is that it makes offer creation much more powerful. Instead of saying, well, I wanna create a membership for my business, you’re able to say, I want to help consistently hold my people accountable to doing this thing that I teach.
I want to help consistently support my people in doing this thing that I teach, with this framework that I have with this messaging, there’s a difference there that’s going to make what you create much more powerful, much more easy to understand for your audience. They’re gonna say, oh, that membership is or is not for me, versus just kind of skimming over it because it’s not gonna stick out in their mind at all. It may be that’s not for me, but it’ll at least stick out in their mind. And it also makes it so that you’re not creating a million different offers in your business. When you’re really clear about your messaging, it makes it so much more likely that you’re going to be really clear about the offers that your business actually.
Needs and aligns itself with. So all of that five minutes of me talking about the importance of this, but how do you even come up with a framework for your marketing messaging? I’ve got four questions for you. And these four questions are not going to be the end all, be all of your messaging. There’s a lot more to messaging than this, but this is the, the starting place for this framework.
And if you can have a document. In place with these four questions answered. Every time you go to create your message, your marketing, and every time you go to create a new offer, it’s gonna be a really great thing for you to fall back on. So the first question is, what exactly is the problem that you’re solving for your audience or your clients?
Again, we’ll take my business as an example for this. For me, I am helping my audience, my clients, solve the issue of marketing, taking up so much dang time and mental fatigue. In all of my different offers, the purpose behind it and all of my marketing messaging, the purpose behind it is how do we simplify marketing?
That’s the problem that I’m solving for them. Now, what does that mean for you? Maybe you are a health coach and the problem that you’re solving for your audience or your clients is that they feel shitty. They do not feel good each and every day. They’re tired. Their body moves slower than they would like.
They have aches and pains and you help them gain back that energy, right? The problem they have is that they don’t feel good. Maybe you are a. Maybe you own a shop and you sell home decor, and the problem you’re solving is that someone doesn’t like the way that their home makes them feel. Currently. Maybe you’re a coach that helps with goal setting.
Well, the problem is that your audience, your clients aren’t reaching their goals, so, You help them reach their goals. Okay, so that’s the first question. What exactly is the problem that you’re solving for your audience and clients? And those were kind of generic, but if you can get more specific, great.
Get even more specific of exactly what the problem is. Now, how does said problem affect their life or their business? And this is where the gold is going to come in. For mine, my business, the problem is that. My clients, they either don’t market because they don’t have time, so they are not making the money they want to make or they’re spending all of their time marketing so they’re not.
Moving the needle in their business, so they’re not growing their business in the way they want. The bottom line is that they’re not seeing the business growth they want because marketing is taking up too much time or they’re not doing it. And then I can go on and talk about, you know, that makes them feel this and that makes this happen.
And yada y yada thinking really dive deep into exactly how it affects it. Um, for the goal setting Coach, how does this problem affect their life and business? Maybe they are feeling. Depressed because they’re feeling stuck. Maybe they are feeling like they’re just never gonna be able to achieve their dreams, and that their life is always gonna be a mess, and that they’re just stuck with where they are.
If you are that shopkeeper, well, maybe it makes them not wanna be around their home. Maybe they’re embarrassed to invite people over because their house doesn’t feel like that. So that’s the second question. And again, the more specific you can really dive into how it affects them and how it makes them feel, the better messaging and marketing materials you’re going to have.
The third question is, how do you solve that problem for them? What specifically do you do to solve that problem for them? For this shopkeeper, well, you sell them products that makes their house feel like a home. For the goal setting coach, you have a set of, you know, you’ve got your own specific. Way of doing things where you’re going to walk them through and hold them accountable to actually achieving those goals, and you’re gonna help them break it down, you’re gonna break down those goals so they actually are achievable, right?
That’s how you help solve them for the health coach. You help them, how it affects their life and business. They don’t have energy to go about the day. Maybe they don’t have the energy to be the parent they wanna be, whatever that looks like. How do you help solve that? Form ’em? Well, you give them tiny steps to take to build upon so that they can better take care of themselves in, you know, with exercise, with diet, whatever it may be.
And then for me, I help my. People solve the problem of not having enough time by either doing it for them. They either hand off their marketing and say, do it for me, or I give them tools to simplify their marketing with. Contact bashing bootcamp, or they purchase a template that will make it so much faster to write their launch emails.
You know, there’s all these different tools that I have within my business that will help enable you to simplify your marketing and get the job done faster. And then the final question is, what is the outcome of solving that problem for your audience or client? Well, what’s gonna be at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, for my students and clients?
It’s. They’re able to have their marketing go out without it taking up all their time. They’re able to grow their business and find a little bit of balance there for the goals coach. Okay. Well, they’re actually going to hit that goal. They’re going to achieve the goal that they’ve set out to achieve for the health coach.
They’re going to have energy back for the shopkeeper. They’re gonna have a home that they actually love to invite people in, and they’re gonna actually be able to host events and be proud of the home that people are coming into. So those four questions, what exactly is the problem that you’re solving for your audience or clients?
Two, how does said problem affect their life and business? Three, how do you solve that problem for them? And four, what is the outcome of solving that problem for your audience or clients? It is a really good idea to do this for your overall brand and business, kind of like what we just did, but as well as for each offer that you have.
And that way you have this whole suite of messaging that you can look back on. So when you’re marketing a specific offer, you’ve got really specific messaging, but when you’re just talking in general as a whole, you’ve got your overall brand. So, This week’s action step is to take some time to brainstorm answers to those four questions, and create a Word doc for your business with your brand messaging.
And if you wanna keep on going, create a Word doc for each offer that you have, and you’ll have a brand messaging suite that you can rely on or that you can hand off to your own social media manager or your. Marketing strategist to, or your copywriter to help create those materials for you. This week’s book recommendation is The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner, and I gotta be honest, I don’t fully remember this book even after reading the.
A little blurb about it, and I’ll be totally honest and say that I have to read the blurb before I tell you about every single book, which is why I use Good Reads and make sure I read them so that I know which ones to recommend. Because as soon as I finish reading a book, it’s out my mind. But this one was rated five stars, and I’ve told you before, I, I do not rate five stars very often.
And again, you only hear about the four and five stars. So it probably sounds like I do, but of the books I read, the vast majority get. Fours and below. Anyways, it was rated five stars. I don’t remember what it was about, but it’s definitely worth the read. And so I’m gonna link to that in the show notes, and that is this week’s book recommendation.
And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your life in biz.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world to me if you’d leave a rating and review. This is a great way to help spread the word about this podcast and help other wonderful women like yourself find it. You can find this episode show notes, as well as tons of other great resources over@amandawarfield.com.
And if you aren’t following me on Instagram yet, I’d love to connect with you over there. I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield. Shoot me a DM and tell me what you love most about this episode. Thanks for being here, friend. I’ll see you next time.
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