Chapter 8- Step 5: Create Messaging

At this point, you want to start formatting a set of outreaches to your client base. Before you get overwhelmed with this idea, let me console you by saying that it’s a pretty straightforward process.

Remember the pain points that you learned about and gathered in chapter 6? Well, now it’s your job to take away the common words or phrases you acquired when finding these pain points, and use them to create a message that best relates to your audience.

With these phrases you’ve collected, you’re going to go ahead and format 3 different outreach messages to send to your consumers. These 3 outreaches are divided by the success (or lack of success) from the previous outreach. They include:

1. Education

2. Call to Action

3. Breakup

Outreach 1: Education

The start of your chain of messages will begin with education. Here you will provide your audience with information, whether it be on their pain or on your product. This is where you address the pain points of your customers and explain anything that you think they should know. There are several ways you can go about this educational outreach. A few common examples include:

1. Opening up with a question that you already know the answer to.

   1. Ex: “Do you experience (pain point)?”

      1. Going this route, you want to be as specific as possible. If there are multiple pains your audience is experiencing, you can start by bullet pointing all of them OR you can choose to create different cohorts.

2. Providing a solution

   1. “Introducing (your product)! The solution to (pain point)!”

      1. Quickly give your audience the solution to their pain within 30 seconds of your message.

      2. This is your product/service.

3. Call to action

   1. “Want to accomplish (goal)?”

   2. “Want to do (goal) but don’t have enough time?”

      1. A brief call to action which is both personable yet not too salesy.

      2. Don’t get too in-depth with the call to action here. That’s what the next outreach is for.

At the beginning of your outreach, you don’t want to come off too strong or too salesy and push your clients away. You want to slowly warm up your leads to your product over time so they are inclined to return back. It may be hard developing the language, but be sure to send out several different initial outreaches and take notes of which are leading to more responses or inquiries.

As the first outreach, don’t expect too many responses. That isn’t the focus of this initial task. What the focus is, however, is laying down the groundwork so that you may set a precedent for future outreaches.

Remember at this point as a startup, you have no brand equity or trust. So in a sense, you’re building up a relationship with your clients from the ground up. It all takes time.

Outreach 2: The Call to Action

You’ve already laid down the groundwork with your first outreach, so this next part will go a little smoother. When formatting your second outreach, you are going to:

1. Include the body of the email from 1st outreach down below.

2. Mention to your clients that they can follow up on email as well as any other channels. (Ex: Voicemail, LinkedIn message, SMS, Social Media DM, etc.)

   1. SMS Ex: “If you want to learn more, reply YES”

   2. Email Ex: “Follow us on Instagram for new updates on…”

3. Acknowledge they are busy and that you value their time.

   1. Here be empathetic with your customers. They’re busy yet are giving you a small window of their time to hear you out. Try to be as specific and relatable as you can when creating this description.

      1. Ex: “We know it’s hard keeping up with our newsletter when you have a family to take care of which is why we’re glad to introduce…”

   2. Remember, it’s not just acknowledging that they are busy, but knowing why they are busy. It’s important to know your customers inside and out to help build trust. If you come across as someone who understands their plight, they will trust more of the solution (your product) that you are suggesting.

4. Your Call to Action

   1. Here if possible, you want to try and focus on getting them on the phone. You learn the most from your audience in that way. A few examples of call to actions include:

      1. Survey / Qualification Form

      2. Webinar (group demo essentially)

      3. Product Demo

   2. Essentially here, you want to draw in your audience to learn more about them and their needs. This helps you refine your product over time and understand what it is that your customers want.

      1. Ex: “Exclusive (product) tips! Enter your email below for access!”

      2. “Sign-up for (service) now and receive 5% off!”

   3. With a call to action, you’re able to figure out what motivates your audience which you can use again and again in the future.

Call to Action Example:

Hi (Name)

I wanted to follow up on the email below and the voicemail I left the other day regarding (product/ service).

I know you are super busy and your time is valuable. I’m happy to offer a $100 stipend in exchange for your feedback on... As a startup in (industry), (provide information about your product/service here).

We’d love to know your thoughts, hesitations, ideas, around (product). If you’re interested, please let me know some days/times that work best for you this week or next.

Thanks.

____________________________________________________________________________

Hello (Name),

Are you having trouble with...

Outreach 3: The Breakup

If at this point in your outreaches or messaging tactics aren't working/ have been met with few responses, it’s time to approach the breakup. You’re going to be blunt with your audience to get to the bottom of what hasn't been working with your previous outreaches. Here you will:

1. Call out the elephant in the room.

   1. No one wants to be marketed to or sold to so you’re going to address this head-on in your message.

2. Restate the pain and the value

   1. Be humble in this approach. Approach it with an “I know we are THIS today but we are trying to be THAT tomorrow” mentality. Try to be aspirational.

3. Make the call out very specific

   1. Your only goal here is to get a response!

      1. “Don’t want to bother you, just let me know if this isn’t a good time or if our product is not a good fit”

   2. This comes after you’ve re-explained the pain and value so that the audience can tell you what exactly isn’t clicking.

   3. ANOTHER OPTION:

      1. Provide a list of pre-written responses for them to choose from. Different options as to why your product might not be a fit.

4. Don’t be afraid to get a NO.

   1. A lot of times, this is equally if not more helpful than a YES, because then you can solve or create rebuttals for the NOs or understand your true product-market fit.

Breakup Example:

Hi (Name)

I don’t want to bother you, so this will be my last email. I’d appreciate any thoughts as to why (product) is not a fit for you? Feel free to respond with any of the pre-written responses:

a. This doesn’t relate to me.

b. We don’t need it.

c. We see no problem with how we are already.

d. We’re happy with the (products) we use.

e. Wait, I didn’t know (product) was (attribute). Can I still get access?

This isn’t a one-email, press send, and expect magic process. It’s going to take several trials and errors finding the language that works best with your audience. Be sure to keep an eye out on what relates to your customers best and remember to keep tweaking your messages if it seems like they are not working.