Top 4 Components of Messaging document

Hey, Guys!

Task for this week: to compile a messaging document.

We continue to share with you Tap2Pay PR strategy magic. In this publication, you will know how to compile a messaging document (Document with the main facts about the company: description, differentiator, mission, and values, boilerplate (unified template for journalists), creation history). It is very important for pitches to journalists and investors.

Last week, we analyzed Tap2Pay.me’s place in the value chain determined the key competitive advantages and explored the communication level of competitors.

Conclusions from the competitors’ communication strategy analysis and preparation for the creation of a messaging document.

1. Keep in Mind and DON’T Do it!

Go through the table with slogans and “selling” phrases of your competitors and write out the most frequently repeated words. They must either be avoided or used consciously. Under conscious use, we mean the opposite of the competitors’ position, a new perspective in the interpretation of words.

Today more and more technological B2B companies speak the language of competitors – and they sound very similar. They use the same positioning, they promise the same thing and use hoary cliches like transformation, empowering, innovative, disrupting, game-changing, etc. (in the iconic series “Silicon Valley” they start laughing when every startup promises “to make the world a better place”).

Only in the Business Intelligence market, there are seven companies that promise to help customers make decisions faster, more efficiently and on the basis of better information. Among them are such famous players as IBM, SAP, SAS and Information Builders.

“Obvious repetitions should be avoided. For example, if your competitor says that he uses eco-friendly packaging and you say the same, then this will not become an impulse for making a decision in your favor.”

In addition to the careful usage of the competitors’ words, try to use those phrases that the client believes. The words that brands use do not always correspond to what buyers want to hear. Here’s a good McKinsey study on this topic.

Analyzing Tap2Pay.me’s competitors, we found that every second competitors’ slogan includes the following words:

Ease of use (easy/simple — more than 70% competitors use this)
Privacy
Security

2. Keep in Mind and DO it!

In addition to that, in the process of competitors researching, we paid attention to the media that mentioned them. What for?

“Many brands use publications about competitors in order to “sit on their tail” and get a publication about themselves under the sauce “logical extension” of a series of articles.”

For instance, the project Gentlemint built its brand, positioning itself as “Pinterest for men”. While Pinterest was on the rise as tremendous press exposure, the guys from Gentlemint got in touch with the same journalists and pitched them about themselves as a company that solves the problem of an untapped male audience.

Journalists love such kind of stories 😉

A useful exercise is to look for surveys about competitors in which, in addition to the brand equity, they also talk about shortcomings – and write to reporters that your product solves the same problem, but without the mentioned drawbacks.

It is often called Drafting Technique. Participants of cycling or car racing use this term in a situation when two racers are too close to each other. One of them, who is slightly behind, makes less effort to move at the same speed. Another one is going and shearing through the air streams thereby paving the way.

As for Tap2Pay.me, we compiled a list of journalists who wrote about competing companies and expressed some doubts.

“For example, in this article on Facebook Pay, there is a rhetorical question whether we want the social network to know about its users even more than now. One of the ways of the future approach to the author of this article may be: “Tap2Pay.me is the comfort of Facebook Pay, but without the need to share even more information about yourself with the social network”.

3. Stand Out!

Most of Tap2Pay.me’s competitors do not have a founding history (except for big players like PayPal and Venmo). So, we can focus on this.

Almost no one talks about the person who is at the head of the business, and why we have to trust him (with the exception of Apple Pay and Google Pay, whose leaders’ faces everyone knows).

4.Keep the dialogue going…

First of all, maintaining a dialogue with users and changing a conversation into an informal one through the social media is important for building brand loyalty. Analyzing competitors’ strategy of communication in social media, pay attention to the content, the frequency of publications and the existence of a common line of conduct.

Most of Tap2Pay.me’s competitors post only news about the company. It may be interesting if it’s Apple / Google, but it’s not interesting at all when it is referred to the release of a new version of the small startup app. A lot of them post educational content – incoherently and haphazardly. It’s not effective.

In addition to that, sometimes the founders of large companies like AirBnB, Twitter and AngelList, ask customers in Twitter what new feature they would like to have. Here are some examples:

This tactic allows you to attach the client to your product emotionally because now he participated in its creation.

Finally, taking into account all the conclusions from the communication strategy of your competitors, you can build your own communication, the first component of which is Messaging document.

Messaging document is Necessity.

First, it helps to limit the list of facts that you need to report on the company.

Second, it also helps to synchronize external communication, which is especially important for managers, PR managers and other employees making public statements. If all employees speak about the company in a unified language, your message will linger in the listeners’ minds.

Creating a messaging document, we follow four rules:

Clarity,
Short,
Coherence,
Data-driven (focus on facts and figures).

Clarity – absence of jargon, technical language, etc. To be clear is not to make the audience feel stupid.

Short – you have only 7-8 seconds to deliver a message.

Being brief, you have more control over the message and the situation that your audience hears. If you answer the journalist’s question with a lot of details, you will give him too much freedom and words which he can choose. Finally, he can not choose your key message.

Coherence – key messages should be repeated several times to be learned. You need to repeat it because the tenth time, perhaps, will be the first time when you will be heard.

Data-driven – several numbers that are heard at proper time convince the listener like no other.