How to Craft a Compelling Message That Gets You Results

When it comes to marketing, do you ever feel invisible? As if no one is paying the slightest attention to your message?

You’re spending all of this time writing marketing copy, emails, social media posts, blog posts, and website posts and they’re falling on deaf ears?

No matter how hard you work, how much blood, sweat, and tears go into your writing, your ideal prospects just aren’t buying.

If this sounds familiar, you’re in luck. Today, I’m sharing my advice for crafting a compelling message that converts your ideal prospects into ideal clients.

Your ideal clients see you and hear you and know you. And to know you is to love you, right?

Right.

So let’s get started.

A compelling message comprises two important elements: your ideal clients and your offer.

You’ll find your compelling message where those two elements intersect.

Ideal Clients

I’m a big believer in the power of identifying an ideal client as opposed to a target market or niche.

Whereas target markets and niches are based on external factors/demographics, ideal clients are based on internal factors like desires and fears.

Here’s my favorite illustration of this distinction:

A target market might be stay-at-home moms. A niche within that target market could be stay-at-home moms looking for a work-from-home opportunity.

And within that niche lies an ideal client.

For example, one stay-at-home mom may be looking for a work-from-home opportunity because she needs to contribute financially to her household. Her family needs two incomes to pay the bills.

Another stay-at-home mom may be looking for a work-from-home opportunity because she wants something of her own; she wants to use her professional skills, and she wants to develop an identity separate from that of a mother or wife.

Take a moment to think about the difference between the mindsets of those two women. Two completely different ideas are keeping them up at night.

In the first example, the mom is worried about paying the bills. And in the second, she wants to develop a new aspect of her identity.

So when it comes to messaging, your message to each of these women would be completely different.

People respond to specifics. So it’s important that your message address the specific worries or fears of your ideal client. The more specific you are in describing their unique situation, the more they’ll feel like you’re speaking directly to them; that you understand them. And the more they feel like you understand them, the more they’ll believe your offer will help them.

Now, if you aren’t sure what’s keeping your ideal client up at night, ask! Send out a survey or hang out where they hang out—Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.—and be a great listener.

Your Offer

Once you understand specifically what’s keeping your ideal client up at night, you can craft your offer so it’s clear you will solve his or her specific problem.

The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

One of my longtime clients, The Coaches Console, provides coaches with an all-inclusive software that streamlines and automates all the back-end elements of a coaching business: marketing, lead generation, client conversion, client enrollment and agreement, client support, scheduling, client notes … everything!

So what keeps their ideal clients up at night? They want to make a difference in the world. They’re passionate about coaching. But they find the business side of coaching overwhelming.

So The Coaches Console’s offer is their software—which solves their ideal client’s problem by taking all the guesswork and overwhelm out of the business side of coaching so that their ideal clients can focus on what they love best: coaching.

The Intersection: Your Compelling Message

So now you know what keeps your ideal client up at night. And you know what your offer is, and how you position it as a solution to what keeps your ideal client up at night.

It’s time to create your compelling message.

Let’s look at the three ideal client examples I’ve addressed in this post:

Stay-at-home moms who need to make money. These women are up at night because they need an income. So if you’re offering them a business opportunity, your compelling message would be: “I provide stay-at-home moms an opportunity to make a reliable income while still having time to take care of their families.”

Stay-at-home moms who want an identity separate from wife and/or mom. These women are up at night because they want to do something of their own. So if you’re offering them a business opportunity, your compelling message would be: “I provide stay-at-home moms an opportunity to have fun as entrepreneurs while still being there for their family members.”

Coaches who love coaching but are overwhelmed by the business details. These coaches are up at night because they want to focus on coaching and want to run a profitable business—but don’t necessarily have the business acumen to do so. So if you’re offering them a software to take care of all those business details, your compelling message would be: “We give coaches the tools they need to streamline and automate their businesses so they can focus on coaching.”

Your message, which happens at the intersection of Your Ideal Client and Your Offer, will be compelling once you make it clear that you will solve your ideal client’s specific problem.

If you are ready to start writing your compelling message, spend some time getting to know your ideal client and what keeps her up at night. Spend some time crafting your offer as the unique solution to that problem. And that, my friends, is where your compelling message is born.

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