Lesson nine hierarchy of messaging. The message box is an excellent exercise for summarizing your story. However, before we start rattling off our messages, there is a related framework to consider a message hierarchy. years ago while working on a product launch, my team ran into some messaging trouble. Our task was to introduce a new product to a new market segment and steal market share from my competitor. This task was clear enough.

We were already a brand leader in one market segment. Let me call that market segment A. How hard could it be to leverage that success and grow market share in a new segment? Let me call the new market market segment P. Unfortunately, for us, it was much much harder than we thought it would be. market segment B did not respond well. We struggled to understand why our marketing efforts weren't getting enough.

Traction. Like a man who raises his voice when talking to a deaf person, we thought our problem was one of volume. We just needed to talk louder and longer. This did not work. After a dismal quarter, we stepped back to do a complete post mortem on our launch activities. And what we learned surprised us.

After some soul searching analysis, we discovered that while our product was well received and market segment A, segment B had no idea who we were, even though we thought they did. When we conducted focus groups and segment B, we found that we're confused in disbelieving our messages. us they ignored them. The team was incredulous. After all, we were one of the biggest companies around solve our problem. We had to check our egos at the door and refocus on the business problem process.

Specs were trying to solve. We needed to carefully rethink our entire messaging strategy. Going for the quick sale didn't work. Instead, we needed to invest the time to build a relationship with market segment fee, before we earned the right to sell to them. We needed to establish awareness and relevance for our company in segment b, this qualified us in the minds of our prospects. Only then did we have an invitation to compare our new product with the various incumbents, and only then could we promote our differentiators with confidence.

To keep us on track, we produced a messaging hierarchy chart similar to the one shown here. This kept us humble and helped us define a winning marketing blueprint that worked. Six months later, when we reintroduced the product, we had a much more favorable response. Our problem was We jumped into the market with a buy now message. our egos told us we could ignore the foundational messaging. We assumed our target customers already knew who we were and why we were so great.

Too bad for us. Our prospects had no idea who we were and what we were actually selling. We had skipped the four steps of introducing ourselves as a credible company and creating awareness for our brand. As you work your own messaging magic, consider your messaging hierarchy. First, do they know your brand? Do they know you are a good company?

We also failed because we were in effect, shouting product messages. We hadn't invested in writing messages focused on the prospects problems, nor did we recognize that they had a solution criteria. We needed to tell them we had specific solutions to fit the business problems. And to make matters worse, we assumed incorrectly, that our brand name was enough to establish our credibility. It was not our prospects required proof and substantiation. Again, we had skipped this step in our efforts to cross the finish line.

First, we ignored the racetrack completely. That was why we failed. We had also assumed that our prospects and customers would see the product exactly how our engineering team saw a too often we miss read the market, unaware that our prospects had a different interpretation of the benefits feature and price combination. As you create your own messaging playbook, keep this message hierarchy structure in mind. Many companies have used such a structure to document their own positioning and messaging aspect created a wonderful corporate positioning and messaging guide to capture their story. Elements they included.

Were who we were what we provided value propositions, messaging matrix and message details. This guide was distributed throughout the entire company, and everyone could understand and articulate aspects of value in story. reo software prior to being acquired by Hyperion, and then Oracle produced a similar messaging map after first investing in the persona, positioning statement and messaging exercises. This messaging map became very popular within brios marketing and sales teams