Key Messaging and Positioning Strategies: What Are They?
Common marketing mistake: Brands write what they want to write about, not what their audience wants to hear. This satisfies internal teams, but often leaves leads or prospects confused and unresponsive. It means you don’t have all the components of a content strategy in place.
What you want to say and what your audience wants to hear can sometimes be at odds, leaving your teams hamstrung. How are you supposed to know what you want to say to people who visit your website or open your email newsletter? Then how do you say it and why do you want them to consider your products and services. Does content marketing have to be this difficult?
We’re here to help with the headache. Today we’ll get into key messages and positioning definitions, and talk about the nuances among product positioning, strategic positioning, and so on. Alright, put on your fun-pants and let’s go.
Key messages: Short, quick phrases so people remember and care about you
A key message is a specific thing you want your audience to remember about you that also explains the value or service you provide. It’s a valuable tool that tells people what you do, what you offer, and why they should buy from you. It’s a quick and sticky message your target customers will remember about you, like “15 minutes could save you 15% on your auto insurance.”
We talk a lot about key messages because they’re super important. There’s even a formula you can use to build a key message. But don’t be fooled—just because key messages are “simple” enough to boil down to a formula doesn’t mean they’re easy to write and deploy. In fact, they can be quite forgettable.
When companies write content for their website, they’re typically singing from the heart: here’s what we do, here’s what our product does, here’s why we think you should buy it, and here’s what it costs. It feels natural, but unfortunately it’s the totally-backwards way of doing it.
You want develop key messages that speak to your audience through their pain points, especially if they don’t know anything about you or your brand. If you don’t have a sticky message they can quickly understand, they’re going to forget you and what you do.
Make sense? Good. Let’s talk positioning.
Positioning: Distinguish yourself from the competition
When it comes to consumer perception of brands, products, or services in your market, you want to stand out from your competition in a positive way. You can do this in a variety of ways:
Strengths and weaknesses: We’re great at X, they’re not
Key benefits: Our service makes you more efficient
Market position: “We’re #1 in customer satisfaction”
Market research: Focus groups show that customers prefer a service that is…
Unique competitive advantage: The only white earbuds on the market
User stratification: Used by professional athletes
Quality: Made from 100% organic ingredients
Ideally, your positioning will lean on a small number of aspects or characteristics a customer can remember and associate with you. You’re not going to use all those tactics, but you might use a combination of them.
All this stuff is positioning.
Brand positioning: Why you’ll love us
Product positioning: Why you’ll love our product
Market positioning: Who will buy our product
Price positioning: Why our price is right for you
Your positioning will help your audience know whether your product is right for them. Is it too expensive or too cheap? Is it from a brand I trust or am I taking a chance?
The difference between key messages and positioning
Key messages and positioning are important inputs to your content strategy. They’ll inform what you want to say any time you communicate with your target audience. (And when you have content goals, you can gather metrics to see if you’re meeting your marketing plan goals.)
Geico’s key message “15 minutes could save you 15%” tells you very little about their positioning, other than they want you to save money and they can get you a quote in a few minutes. But is it better insurance? Are they a great insurer? Do customers like you buy their insurance? None of these questions are answered in their key message because it’s all positioning.
Positioning supports key messages, but they are very different and serve different purposes. The first headline on their website says, “The Insurance Savings You Expect” and a little further down it says:
See Why People Switch to GEICO:
85 Years of Experience
$500+ Average Annual Savings*
97% Customer Satisfaction Rating*
Okay, so now we’re seeing some positioning. They’re building trust (brand positioning) by telling us they’re been around for 85 years. They’re implying that you could save $500 or more per year (price positioning). And they’ve got very high customer satisfaction ratings (product positioning). None of these attributes about Geico are key messages.
They’re not targeting anyone in particular, there’s no pain point being addressed. And, would a price-conscious customer really care about years of experience or customer satisfaction? Probably not. So, we can conclude these are purely positioning statements.
You won’t remember most of these things and they’re not here for you to remember (positioning). But you’ll remember the 15 minutes, 15% thing. It’s quick, short, and memorable (key message). A key message can target potential customers whereas positioning can show how your product is unique in an easy to understand way.
Learn more about key messages in our course
Hopefully we’ve just demystified some abstract marketing concepts. Key messages and positioning are two different topics that require hours of work to understand well enough to fit into a larger marketing strategy.
Now that you have a basic understanding, you might consider taking a look at our DIY Key Message Workshop or hire us to take you through it ourselves. Of course, you are welcome to reach out if you have any questions, especially if you want to talk about the other services we can help you with.
