3 mistakes you’re making in your messaging

Hi there 👋,

The other week, I spent 12 hours reviewing 19 brand’s messaging.

Yeah, safe to say that a lot of caffeine was involved in this experiment.

I must say I was flattered that incredible brands like Zoe, Vivo Barefoot, Trip CBD and Edgard & Cooper reached out.

I wanted to understand how brands were aligning their messaging with their customer feedback.

But I didn’t just want to know what they were doing well, rather I wanted to find the opportunities for improvement.

And I found them.

Here are the 3 most common mistakes I came across in my lengthy search.

1. The homepage banner is too vague

You’re looking at prime real estate right there. Your homepage banner is your first impression to your customer, and we all know how important that first impression is.

So why are brands remaining vague on their homepage banner? Why are they scared to get specific? Why are they getting caught up on some high-level feature rather than the bones of the brand?

Take Edgard & Cooper as an example, a beloved dog and cat food brand:

Their banner focuses on junk free food. They’re very proud of this, and I get that.

But according to their reviews, that isn’t why customers are choosing them:

Solution: Focus on the biggest JTBD on your homepage

As a good brand, you likely have multiple Jobs to Be Done, but mentioning them all can lead it to resonate less. Instead, focus on the most important one.

Check out this great example by FeetUp:

While ‘Every Body’ can seem broad, their products enable different bodies to be able to do yoga comfortably. They also focus on the end goal of enjoying your practice.

Not sure what your Jobs to Be Done are? Check out this article I wrote.

2. You’re missing the opportunity to reinforce your messaging

When I looked at Trip, a CBD drink brand, I was initially impressed.

Their homepage started off strong with an eye-catching and informative banner.

I felt like they missed the opportunity to reinforce their messaging through the website, by highlighting:

• How does it differ to indirect and direct competitors? Why is it a better choice?

• What are product-specific benefits? Why should I choose one flavour over another for the oils? Is it just about taste or do these ingredients hold additional benefits?

Solution: Question how all of your images and copy are reinforcing how you help with those JTBD

Trip does this well. Instead of just showing all their reviews, they choose the ones that signify pain points and how their brand helps you to overcome - it does their marketing for them!

Be critical in everything you put on your website. Everything is an opportunity to speak to your customer.

3. You only use classic category pages

Sometimes you have 2-3 vital Jobs to Be Done for different customer’s needs and pain points.

If you have multiple products, I don’t advise going for traditional product categories. These aren’t telling your customer anything.

Instead, consider grouping and explaining your products through the pain points they address. This allows your customer to immediately see what they need.

Solution: Use JTBD category pages

Take Zoe as an example. They offer a personalised nutrition program based on the world’s largest nutrition-science study.

One thing Zoe can help with is menopause symptoms. So from their homepage, they have a specific link to a page explaining this in detail.

This allows customers to immediately understand how Zoe can help them better than any other product, as it’s catered to them.

I previously worked with Nikura, a brand of essential oil blends, that does this extremely well. They have category pages for sleep, de-stress, memory and more.

Alternatively, you could implement a quiz to provide this function. This gives a more personal touch to recommendations.

Recommendation

In every edition of Growth Waves, I also share a related resource to check out related to the week's topic.

I feel like people know they should work on their messaging, but it feels like a big vague project without impact.

Firstly, it isn't, my Message-Market Fit Programme breaks it down to actionable steps and where you can see results within the same quarter.

Because it is research focused the chance of driving impact is far higher and the great thing about improving your messaging:

It helps you across all your marketing channels and communication.

Secondly, if you aren't sure it is the right area to focus on I thought I'd create a little checklist. If you answer yes to most of these questions, focusing on messaging is likely to deliver strong results for you.

Here you go, do you have:

1. A low click-through rate on ads?

2. A low conversion rate?

3. Strong bottom of the funnel metrics?

4. That it takes ages to convert a new customer and get them onboard?

5. That your team and communication isn't consistent as to what makes you you different?

6. That your persona is quite vague and broad?

7. An unclear idea of what your customer's job to be done is?

Then giving messaging the time and love it deserves could be highly impactful.

If this is the case and you are considering my programme, but still have questions, I'm always happy to jump on a quick call to walk through them.

I have to confess something: it was a bit nerve-wrecking publicly reviewing some big D2C brand's websites. Even more then writing an email about what they could have improved.

I'm fully aware that it's easier to come in as an external and notice these things. It could also 100% be that for these brands, that isn't where the impact lies.

For me taking the time to review so many brands was about figuring out the common patterns in messaging mistakes whilst hopefully providing some value and new ideas.

One could almost call it an experiment...

Daphne