Product Messaging Techniques - What is it?

Once you have an understanding about your audience via personas, you are ready to start work on your product messaging. Your first task in product messaging is to describe your product. Your goal in defining the product for the audience is to answer the question "What is it?"

The first mechanism we use to describe our product is by assigning it to a category. Our product is a type of "...". This mechanism is not a suggestion. It is required. If you do not tell your audience which category your product is in, their ability to remember it goes way, way down.

Categories provide two advantages:

1. They provide a filing location in the brain. The brain can quickly attach a relationship between the category and the product because the category exists.


2. The category provides a richness of existing information for immediate understanding. All of the attributes previously understood about that category now apply to your product.

SIDEBAR:

In certain situations marketers may determine that they want to create a new category. By new category I mean a category that is significantly different from any existing categories. I don't mean sub-categories such as fluoride toothpaste which is a sub-category of toothpaste.

However, new category creation is risky unless you truly have a unique invention. When you create a new category, you have to spend significant effort on defining and describing that new category. All of those associative characteristics that come with an existing category have to be created and installed in your audience's memory. Your audience must be able to easily recall the category along with its full meaning. That doesn't happen overnight. Our brains build connections over time. The more time, the more expansive the characteristic connections.

This means that inherent in the new category introduction is a lag in memorability, meaning, and further association. By further association, I mean that until the category is well situated in your audience's mind, it will be difficult to relate your product to it. Until the category is rich and memorable, your product is not going to be recalled. This is why new category creation is risky.

By introducing both your product and the new category at the same time, you create a time lag in recognition and understandability.

END SIDEBAR:

Once you establish the category, you can elaborate. However, you must select your adjectives carefully. Hyped, over-used, general words (revolutionary, improved, powerful, ...) don't get any memory space. They are essentially meaningless and are ignored by your audience. What your audience wants is short, sweet detail. It is your job to give that to them succinctly.

Remember, there will be plenty of time to take an interested audience through your product in greater detail. Your purpose in the initial product messaging is to help the audience decide that they are interested.