How to develop a clear marketing message

If you’ve played the game telephone, you know how a message can get mixed up before it reaches its target.

One person whispers a message to the next person, and so on, until it reaches the last person. Most often, that message is nowhere near the starting message.

Marketing can be kind of like that, if you’re not careful.

The single most important aspect of marketing is to make sure that the message you want to convey is the same message that your audience receives.

That means your business needs to develop a clear, concise message that is easily relatable with your marketing efforts. Here’s how to make sure you’re coming in loud and clear.

Craft the Message

Figuring out what you want to say could be the hardest part. Sometimes, marketing messages go out with little thought at all other than the end goal. Determine what you want the end goal to be and then discuss how you can make that happen.

Brainstorming is the first step. Maybe your business determines that you need to get more new customers, and you think you can do that with a special offer.

The returning business from these new customers would far outweigh the money spent on that marketing campaign. This is just one example of an outcome from a brainstorming session. You’ll be able to be much more detailed with a specific case.

Eliminate Jargon

Messy words and muddled messages happen when you overthink the message or assume your audience knows more than they do. Take a look at your message and act as if it were the first time you were hearing of your company or the special offer.

Would you understand it? Does it get the point across? Would you be likely to follow through with whatever you were asking for? You could even ask somebody who isn’t familiar with the marketing campaign if they understand what you’re aiming for.

Use the Right Channel

Sometimes it’s not about the message you’re creating and it’s more about how you’re delivering it. You could have the best copy and it might completely flop because you didn’t get it to your audience in the right way.

For example, if you’re trying to reach an audience of mainly baby boomers, your first choice to reach them probably wouldn’t be snapchat.

However, if you were trying to reach a group of teens with your message, snapchat might be the way to go.

Figure out what makes the most sense. Also, don’t forget that you can tie in different parts of your marketing campaign to different channels.

Mobile marketing trends that will dominate in 2016

There’s no doubt that mobile marketing is the future. In fact, for the first time ever, mobile internet usage has surpassed PC internet usage. So, what’s in store for marketing? Check out these mobile marketing trends from Entrepreneur.com.

Instagram Ads

The reach is massive, everyone is on Instagram and the only way to create a post that allows the user to engage is through a paid ad. The fact that you can't put a link in an Instagram post has frustrated marketers since the platform launched. Well, now you can, and if you want that ability you have to pay to play. Creative advertising content on Instagram will dominate the first half of 2016.

Mobile Video Ads

Mobile video advertising is growing quickly. As eyeballs shift away from the TV screen to the smartphone, advertising dollars are quickly following. The ability to not only capture a user's attention with a video, but also to redirect them to a website or an app plays a key role in the growth of the mobile video format. The mobile video market is expected to reach over $13 billion by 2020 and has already grown rapidly in 2015. The first half of next year will see this continued growth.

Mobile Payments

Mobile payments will gain a larger adoption among consumers in 2016. According to a report from Forrester, mobile-based payments in the U.S. are expected to reach $142 billion in volume in 2019. Brands and apps will integrate mobile payment features to appeal to the growing base of mobile-first consumers.

Proactive Personalized Information and Ads

Four of the largest players in the mobile space (Google, Bing, Apple and Facebook) have all been investing an enormous amount of time and resources into powering "virtual assistant" type technology. Google created Google Now, Bing has Cortana, Apple has Siri and Facebook is testing M. The goal of all of these companies is to become the best personal assistant you've ever had and in large part to provide personalized information and ads proactively before a user even makes a request. This represents a fundamental shift in the way we think about mobile marketing.