The tower was originally called the “Tower of Pisa.” Built between 1173 and 1372, It stands over the Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles) in the Italian city of Pisa.
In ancient Greek, Pisa meant “marshy land.” Pisa’s soggy, shifting subsoil offers poor support for a tower, especially one without a rock-solid foundation. With only a 10-foot deep base to support a 515-foot tall structure, the foundation of the Tower of Pisa is distinctly underwhelming.
Over the centuries, 14,500 tons of tower have been pressing on the spongy ground, causing the famous lean and giving the tower its familiar moniker: the “Leaning Tower of Pisa.” By 1990, the Leaning Tower of Pisa canted 5.5 degrees out of plum, and only urgent intervention kept it from toppling.
What could have prevented this engineering disaster? Yes, the builders could have moved to more solid land, or the architects could have designed the tower differently. However, the primary problem was the inadequate foundation.
Laying a Solid Foundation for Your Marketing Campaigns
Have you ever started a marketing campaign and wondered why it isn’t producing the expected results?
- True, the business landscape is continually shifting
- Perhaps the campaign could have been executed more efficiently.
- The timing may have been wrong.
However, most marketing campaigns fail because of insufficient foundational planning. Adequate initial research is critical to understand your market, competitors, and ideal customers.
We strongly recommend creating Core Messaging for your business before planning and executing further marketing campaigns.
What is Core Messaging?
The Rosewood onboarding process begins with two key components to put our clients on the Marketing Guide path: (a) Marketing Strategy Consultation and (b) Development of a Core Messaging Document. The Marketing Strategy Consultation is a broad-spectrum analysis of the company’s market conditions and positioning, complete with a marketing strategy and annual marketing plan.
The Core Messaging Document is a descriptive build-out of the ideal customers, key competitors, and the messaging foundation we will use to speak to these customers. Rosewood’s core messaging provides key insight for our clients’ internal understanding of their market. It is also an invaluable reference guide for Rosewood’s writers and designers who create marketing materials.
Creating core messaging absorbs hours of research, discussion, and writing. A Core Messaging Document distills the essential messaging information for the company. It does the following:
- Defines the company’s brand.
- Articulates the company’s unique selling proposition.
- Profiles the company’s customers (personas) and competitors.
- Shows which products connect with which personas.
- Lays out components in a StoryBrand-inspired master messaging script.
- Establishes tone and voice guidelines for the company’s brand.
What Foundations Does Core Messaging Lay?
1. Building Brand Identity
Core Messaging forms the bedrock of your company’s identity. All other marketing and communication projects rest solidly on Core Messaging and draw consistency from it.
Core Messaging forms a template ensuring consistent branding across your marketing channels. This consistency builds brand identity and trust with your clients.
2. Discovering Differentiation
What really makes you differ from your competitors? Discovering and articulating your niche will set you apart in today’s noisy marketplace. Core Messaging highlights your unique selling proposition in a language your target audience will connect with and positions your brand effectively at the very beginning of your marketing planning.
3. Clarifying Content
Writers and digital content creators rely on Core Messaging to create advertisements, digital campaigns, and websites that speak your clients’ language. Every ad, email, social post, and piece of marketing material speaks in the same voice–the voice articulated in the Core Messaging.
4. Enhancing Audience Engagement
The primary aim of marketing is to engage with a target audience meaningfully. Core messaging developed with a deep understanding of the audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points ensures that marketing strategies resonate on a personal level. This relevance is key to driving engagement and conversion.
By identifying and understanding the target audience early on and incorporating that into the core messaging, you can tailor your marketing to address that audience’s specific needs and pain points, resulting in higher engagement.
5. Aligning the Team.
Core Messaging is a compass for your market messaging. When everyone understands the overall messaging and strategies for your marketing efforts, your team aligns with a unified goal. When everyone plays by the same rule book, your team can coordinate their efforts and convey your brand’s message more effectively to customers.
The Role of Core Messaging in Marketing for Monarch Rest
When Jolan Miller, owner of Monarch Rest Mattresses, came to us for marketing input, we didn’t immediately begin writing and designing ads, postcards, and flyers. Why? We first needed to know who his company was and what his goals were.
We also needed to determine what words, ideas, and statistics would resonate with his customers. That’s where core messaging comes in.
Luke Flory is a marketing coach who was involved in the first marketing strategy consultations with brand-new clients. He says, “Core messaging connects the insights gained in our client discovery and strategy process to our designers and writers by providing a Storybranded understanding of their customer personas and competitors and by clarifying the brand personality and writing style for this client.”
Monarch Rest’s core message depended on an understanding of three main things: its unique contribution to the mattress industry, its ideal consumers who want longevity, artisanship, and luxury in a mattress, and its competitors.
Finding Those Kindred Customers
Sleuthing those ideal consumers is the most vital part of the core messaging process. In the core messaging document, each ideal consumer group is embodied in a persona–an invented person with that group’s characteristics, problems, and goals.
Take a look at Monarch Rest’s personas:
- Dylan Uptown (an urban furniture store owner or manager)
- Landon Deals (a suburban or rural furniture store owner)
- Phil Lynn Niches (a split-focus furniture shop owner)
- Selena Betterest (salesperson)
- Val & Anya Topline (experience-driven consumers)
- Steward & Callie Spartan (a caliber-wise, cost-sensitive consumer)
As you can see, this list contains a variety of end consumers and dealers. While Monarch Rest sells and distributes its mattresses through dealers, the end consumer must be central to every project. As Luke says, “The economic driver is the end consumer.”
Yet Monarch Rest’s messaging must appeal to dealers and potential dealers. They, too, need to be fascinated by handmade mattresses and realize the benefits of selling them.
It is essential to keep these personas top of mind throughout projects. Jolan says, “Usually, when we are starting a project, one of the things Rosewood asks is who we are talking to in this brochure, website, or video. This is beneficial because it makes me think and be intentional.”
Creating Consistency
Core messaging creates consistency across projects–projects like the dealer field guide with sales tips, mattress info, and common questions or brochures, catalogs, and home show banners that align with their brand and message. Jolan says, “Our different projects are more tied together when we go back to the core messaging.”
This consistency in messaging and branding keeps Monarch Rest’s distinctive traits from becoming diluted as dozens of dealers all over the U.S. display and sell their mattresses.
By providing dealers with a stash of marketing resources that reflect Monarch Rest’s core message, we can preserve the brand all the way to the consumers. Customers can better trust Monarch Rest’s brand because they’re not hearing or sensing conflicting ideas about their products.
Creating Clarity
Core messaging creates clarity. As artisans, the Monarch Rest folks know their mattresses inside and out–the kind of high-density foam, the layers of latex, and the individually pocketed coils of a luxury mattress. They understand sleep science and industry trends. They are best suited to explain their product. But often, that much knowledge is difficult for a company to communicate simply and difficult for dealers and consumers to grasp.
That’s where we help. With our more basic knowledge, we can distill the key concepts consumers want to know in words they understand. Clear marketing materials equip dealers to sell effectively.
Jolan says, “If our customers are successful in selling retail to their customers, that is success for us. If we can have messaging and marketing materials that speak to the end consumers, it makes it easier for our customers to sell.”
Conclusion
Had the builders in Pisa taken the time to plan and craft a solid foundation for their tower, it might still be known as the “Tower of Pisa.”
Don’t make a similar mistake in your marketing. Core Messaging’s research and practical roadmap help create a solid foundation for your marketing plan.
Would you like a partner to help you establish a firm foundation for your marketing? Learn more about the Marketing Guide Path™ at www.rosewood.us.com.