My name is Neil and my friend and former coworker Laura is an incredible writer. If your organization needs a marketing communications expert—full-time or freelance—get in touch with her!
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Yes, but she's not responsible for any of the words and errors on the site--those are all mine.
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Delivering a consistent message to your target audiences depends, in part, on finding the right balance between a clear main idea and compelling details that support that idea. If you give your audience members twelve bullet points, they won’t remember them. And if you offer only the top-level message, they’ll wonder why they should believe it.
Laura understands this and, what’s more, knows how to build a message framework that can help extended teams deliver consistent communication to target audiences. About a year and a half ago, she and I worked on a four-month project to help a major technology company with its messages. At every step of the way, Laura impressed me and the client with her ability to develop clear, consistent messages without losing sight of the underlying details.
The company had developed base messages for five solutions and four products that all related to one another. It also had variations on the messages for three target audiences: CIOs, IT managers, and system administrators. But the messages were too detailed and there was no unifying thread to help potential customers make sense of it all.
Laura developed a great two-word phrase that could be applied equally well across audiences, solutions, and products. Then she and I went back through the detailed messages to prioritize them, make them more succinct, and show how they connected back to the theme.
In the end, we delivered a 98-page presentation that included top-level messages for the three audiences, abbreviated messages for each solution and product, and comprehensive notes with much greater detail. The client could then give the relevant parts of the presentation to different marketing teams so they had the detail they needed. And all of them together could deliver a consistent message to market.
If you want someone who knows how to build a framework that enables consistent communication, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.
