Effective framework to get your message across

How to demystify your marketing communications so that potential clients really understand what you do.

How many times have you been in a situation where someone tells you what they do for a living, only to leave you clueless about what they mean? “I’m a business development and operations leader” or “I’m a marketing strategy consultant”. Most people don’t know why those positions are needed or what they entail.

Those familiar with the terminology, concepts and value of their own work (sometimes unknowingly) mystify it by using their own language and ways of communicating. This can make it difficult for people on the receiving end to fully grasp what it is they do or what ideas they have. Whether you are a chief executive or a full-time mother, we all have ideas that we need to communicate: a new product coming to market, a strategy you want to sell your boss, values we are trying to instil in our children.

The book Made to Stick describes this phenomenon as the curse of knowledge. This happens when our ideas are masked by abstract ideas that fail to drive action: "becoming consumer-centric" or "world-class customer service" are along these lines. They may be very clear in the minds of the executives who advocate them, but the employees that are charged with implementing these general concepts won't really know what to do.

In 1990 a Stanford PhD dissertation was carried out by a psychology student named Elizabeth Newton to further understand the curse of knowledge. As part of the research she created a game where a group of people were each assigned one of two roles: "tapper" or "listener". Each tapper was asked to pick a well-known song, such as Happy Birthday and tap out the rhythm on a table. The listener's job was to guess the song.

Over the course of Ms Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only three of the songs correctly: a success ratio of 2.5 per cent. But what made this research worthy of a Stanford PhD dissertation was the answer she received when tappers were asked what they thought the success ratio would be. They predicted 50 per cent. The tappers got their message across in only one out of 40 taps, but they thought that they would get it across in one out of two.

It can sometimes be hard for professionals to get away from this mysterious coded language and communicate the value they provide in a way that makes sense to the listener. One way to do this is to think like your audience, and ask: “What’s in it for me?” from their perspective.

For those looking to attract new clients, seek out a job, or simply be known for what they actually do, I offer the following structure: Target, Issue, Outcome and Story.

Target

Who ideally do you serve or sell to? Based on your capabilities, interest and objectives, what niche should you be targeting? Define who the best clients are for your services.

Issue

What problems, issues or challenges do you solve? Why do your clients need your services in the first place? Why do they need you? What’s frustrating them? What are they struggling with? What’s missing for them?

Outcome

Your promised ultimate outcomes. What exactly will your clients get if they use your services? How will they benefit?

Story

Stories not only communicate who you work with, what their problems are and the outcomes you deliver. The format of a story makes this much more real and much less conceptual. Who has used your services and what results did they get? For example: “I worked with a client who was losing $1 million a year due to attrition. The client was working hard to reduce this figure but was not making much progress. We worked together to restructure the hiring and training process. Now, instead of losing that money on lost talent it is being fed into the client’s bottom line.”

A simple framework like the one above can be an effective way to structure your message and sell big ideas to attract new clients.

Ahmed Al Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies improve their marketing and sales results.

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