You can develop the best marketing plan. You may have excellent audience data. But if you don’t have the right creative messaging and design, it won’t attract the audience you’re trying so hard to influence and persuade to take action.

Wondering how to make your messages grab eyeballs and command attention? 

Today we explore the third segment of the Heritage+ framework—creative messaging and design. They are the secret sauce of marketing –the way to ensure your offers “click” with your target audience.

How Messaging Brings Your Value Proposition to Life

The right messaging tells your audience who you are and what you do. It tells a human story that compels the audience to engage with it. 

Unfortunately, marketing that does this is all too rare today. Most B2B brands use boring product shots or stock images and plain vanilla wording in their collateral and other marketing pieces. They tell a very product-centric story that often doesn’t connect with the audience in a meaningful way.

Consider these two examples from the construction equipment industry: The trailer ad on the left crams a lot into a full-page print ad. But it lacks a cohesive message. There’s no sense of what the Eager Beaver Trailers brand stands for. This ad is so busy and visually unappealing that it’s easy to ignore.

The Mack truck ad, on the other hand, literally “COMMANDS” attention. It leads with a strong customer benefit and reflects the toughness and reliability the Mack brand has become known for. It instantly generates curiosity. It invites the reader to ask himself or herself, “HOW can I take command of my hauling needs?” It’s eye-catching and compelling.

Creative messaging and design helps you create a strong identity, a style and a tone that your audience comes to expect. When someone sees or hears your message, they should instantly know that it’s yours. It should align with your brand and capture its personality. 

But your ultimate goal isn’t just attention, it’s action. 

Your message should tell your audience exactly why they should take action and what’s in it for them when they do so. Why should they donate to your cause? How will attending your educational institution enhance their careers? What benefits will they get by investing in your product or service? 

To message effectively, you need to understand your audience and know their pain points. Before they look for answers, you need to have the solution ready to offer. To deliver at this level requires strategic planning and a strong knowledge of who your audience is and what they need. It comes after you’ve collected the relevant data and crafted a complete picture of your target audience.

Four out of every ten B2B buying journeys end up with no decision, according to research from the Challenger organization. Why? Because organizations can’t find the information and knowledge they need to make informed buying decisions. 

Your messaging must offer the details they need to fuel the right decision throughout their buying journey – from basic education in the early stages to purchase terms, financing options and product support services as they finalize their buying decision.

For a message to deliver the impact you need, it must be clear, concise and relevant. Creative messaging needs to convey vital information in an attractive and memorable way. 

Great messaging must also have a strong call to action (CTA) — a singular statement that spurs the audience to do what you want them to do. Download a white paper. Register for a webinar. Buy now! In many ways, the CTA is the most critical piece of your message. 

Design should reflect your brand identity and values but also needs to have a distinctive, eye-catching look and style. It should also leverage the strengths of the communication channels you’ve selected – based on where your target audience goes for information and answers.  

The very best creative messaging and design help you create a seamless campaign that commands attention and compels your audience to act. If you can achieve those two goals, your marketing campaigns will be more successful than you ever dreamed possible. 

Creative Messaging and Design: A Good, Better, and Best Approach

To understand what works well for creative messaging and design, let’s consider our marketing friend, Amy. She is an experienced marketer focused on B2B sales. She’s doing some aspects of messaging well, but there are also areas where she could improve to get even better results.

What Good Messaging and Design Look Like

Good messaging communicates a singular, unique story in a clear, compelling voice. Amy has done this well in her last several campaigns. She’s captured the unique identity of her brand and incorporated it into her messaging and design. 

Up to this point, Amy’s goal has been to grab the audience’s attention. She’s doing that well, but it’s hard to know how to persuade them to take action.

A Better Approach to Messaging and Design

To get better at messaging and design, Amy needs to take a closer look at her audience data. She should look for opportunities to divide it into several meaningful segments, such as industry, product use case or demographics. This will enable her to craft messaging that speaks to the needs of each segment and its specialized needs. 

Compared to a “one-size-fits-all” approach, a more tailored strategy should help her do a better job of capturing the attention of each audience segment.

The BEST Creative Messaging and Design

How do you create the best creative messaging and design? 

At this stage, Amy needs to focus on thought leadership. Thought leaders aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and to innovate. They set the tone for the industry or profession in which they work. 

How can Amy reach this pinnacle of marketing and design? First, she must earn credibility from her audience. She needs to take a fresh approach to her company’s messaging. She must dare to be different in ways that are relevant and meaningful to her organization’s audience. Her messaging needs to make a human-to-human connection with them.

This may involve taking a position on an issue affecting them or their industry. It may involve a cause, such as ensuring that her industry is an attractive career option to young people. Cultivating thought leadership takes a major commitment of time and consistent messaging. But the results can be amazing! It can differentiate her organization and attract more of the right customers to it in ways that ordinary messaging can’t.

Great messaging resonates with your audience. It tells your story in a memorable, unique and relatable way. All the best messaging includes a strong call to action, inspiring audiences to learn more. Creative messaging and design, done right, can help you influence and persuade a growing number of prospects, constituents and students to engage with you.

Why not invite a strategist, writer and designer to take an objective view of your marketing to ensure that it stands out and commands attention? Contact Heritage Printing today to help you take your messaging and design to the next level. Remember, every response counts!

Direct Marketing Webinar:
Creative, Messaging & Design

Webinar #3

In our 21-minute webinar learn how to get people to take action with eye-popping design and creative messaging that’s relevant to the recipient.