The onset of a new business campaign is promising and uncharted. The slate is wiped clean, and your team can focus on a new target market, a new category, a new message and a new set of assets. As with anything that turns into a pot of gold, messaging takes time and preparation. Without a strategic thought process behind the messaging, the effort behind the email and cold calling campaigns will not pay for itself.
Think of business development as a set of customized B2B marketing campaigns between your agency and the corporate prospect. Regardless of success or failure in the past, you must keep the B2B prospecting fresh, clever and enticing, and one size certainly does not fit all. The most successful wins come from tenacity and the ability to switch up target markets and messages often (at least every 30-60 days).
A brief messaging strategy:
1) Gather up some of your best work, favorite success stories and think about a common success theme. Does the success stem from consumer insights? The proprietary research? The industry? As you dig deeper into the success and the ensuing metrics you have garnered over the past few years, you will begin to develop a realization, a point of differentiation, a niche and an expertise to showcase to prospects.
2) After you have identified a theme, develop 3-4 messaging hooks to address the prospect’s pain points and challenges; you will use these messaging hooks for content development in email campaigns.
3) In conjunction with the email messaging, consider driving prospects to a micro-site or blog tailored specifically to their challenges and needs. Include relevant work examples, research, case studies, contact information…and a voice.
4) Use the messaging points to further define a target audience and categories. A good way to begin brainstorming an initial data set is to list out 10-15 dream clients and account for the similarities. More than likely, a good portion of your dream client list will fall into the same category/industry which will coincidentally align with your messaging points and expertise.
This post, of course, is a 10,000 feet overview of new business campaign messaging, but if you can take anything away from it, take away this: your agency has tons of room for targeted messaging and a point of differentiation – it’s really right under your nose (and more than likely under your research director’s nose, your creative director’s nose, your account planner’s nose and so on). Collaboratively, your team should be able to compare success to reap targeted messaging fortune.
Thank you for the useful and insightful article. I found it extremely informative and have asked our entire biz dev team to read and comprehend the importance of messaging. In fact we’ve begun to think about topics we can take a thought leadership position on and proclaim in our outgoing message(s).
Thanks again.
Bruce