Classic

Message, Market, Media

Message, Market, Media is the best framework I’ve found to consistently capture attention and generate qualified leads. I learned it from the copywriter and author Dan Kennedy.

The question it answers

Which piece of this campaign is broken: what we're saying, who we're saying it to, or how it gets delivered?

Use it when

A campaign that works in one channel flops in another.
You’re counting on word of mouth because the product is great.
A media rep is pitching you the next silver bullet.

It’s the wrong tool when

Leads are coming in, but aren't converting. That's often a sales team issue.
A campaign is already working. Don't take apart a winning recipe to test a new channel.
You don't know who your market is yet. Without a defined ideal customer, you're tuning the message and the media for nobody.

Cutting through the noise

Every funnel starts with attention, and every prospect in every market is exposed to over 30,000 ads a day. Your job is to get noticed through all of that. It’s easier said than done.

Message: what are you saying?

This is your copy, the words you use to persuade prospects. The classic mistake owners make is thinking a great product or service will spread on its own because people will tell others. It may happen, but it’s unlikely to cause fast growth. It’s much easier to create demand by learning how to tell people how well you meet their needs.

Market: who are you speaking to?

This is your customer avatar, the profile of who you want to attract. A great shortcut to growth is to pursue higher quality clients. It doesn’t take a rebrand. It takes a willingness to go after them on purpose, and to say no to prospects who would keep you from serving the larger ones.

Media: how are they receiving it?

This is the delivery: in person, phone, mail, TV, radio, online. It’s where most marketing activity happens, because new media keep appearing, and each one comes with sales reps and training programs promising a silver bullet.

It’s a recipe, not a checklist

Get all three right and it works almost like magic. That doesn’t mean you can swap one piece and keep the same results. Peanut butter and jelly works great on wheat bread. It doesn’t necessarily work as well on sourdough or cheese biscuits.

One company ran a direct mail postcard (media) offering a free consultation (message) to a list their broker found (market). Qualified appointments cost $120 each. They closed 20 percent, so each sale cost $600 against a $4,000 average sale. Very profitable.

Then they tried Facebook ads. They uploaded their past client list to find similar people, reused the postcard image and copy, and sent traffic to the same consultation page. After 1,000 clicks at $1.25 each, not one person filled out the form. Facebook can still work for them. They need to fix the targeting (market) and change the offer on the landing page (message).

Where owners get it wrong

They keep the message and the market, swap the media, and expect the same results. When a proven campaign fails in a new channel, check all three pieces again.