Many companies struggle to create believable messaging. Few people directly tell you that they don’t believe your marketing. Yet, you know they don’t trust your messaging blindly either. It’s likely one of the main limiting factors of your marketing results.

The common solutions are band aids like testimonials and guarantees. To be fair, those (and many other trust band aids) can make a positive difference.

However, the band aids don’t solve the two fundamental issues that make most marketing hard to believe.

Pulling punches is NOT the solution

The first instinct for many marketing professionals is to consider how to soften their promises or otherwise make their claims more palatable.

However, unless your promises have been blatantly exaggerated, toning them down is unlikely to help. That happens for two reasons.

People doubt all marketing promises, not just the greatest promises. As long as you’re selling something actually good, people will naturally feel skeptical about almost any reasonable claim you make.

A more mundane promise typically generates less interest (and sales). So, even if more people believe it, you likely won’t make more sales overall.

You need to be inherently believable, no matter what you promise.

2 keys to believable marketing messaging

Countless things affect how believable your messaging is. This time I wanted to highlight a couple of fundamental aspects that get a lot of attention in discussions, but often get overlooked in practice.

That is to say, everyone talks about doing these things. Yet, very few companies actually keep these things in mind in all their decision making, which shows as lackluster marketing results.

Keep your marketing messaging consistent

You can’t promise everything to everyone and make it believable.

That sounds clear, yet few companies have a consistent message. Rather, they talk about one thing in one campaign and another in the next campaign.

Are you more likely to trust a company that always focuses on the same thing or a company that always changes their focus?

That may seem like an oversimplification. But it’s a great guideline to remember; if your marketing messaging isn’t consistent across campaigns and platforms, it erodes trust.

Align everything around your message

No matter how specific and consistent your message is, if you don’t align everything around it, it’s hard to believe it.

For example, many companies talk about great customer experience in their ads. Yet, when you click their ad, you end up on a page that doesn’t make it easy for you to move forward. You won’t associate them in your mind with great customer experience if your very first experience with them makes you frustrated.

This is rarely a conscious process. People don’t think, “Based on your marketing message, I have to assume you want me to believe X, but now I experience something that’s not quite aligned with it.”

However, whether people specifically notice the disconnect or not, it makes a huge impact on your results. Even if they don’t notice it consciously, they simply don’t trust you enough to move forward.

When you know what are the specific reasons people choose you, it doesn’t guide just your marketing messaging. It guides all business decisions.

For example, one of my clients is in an industry where the market leaders have a lot of little limitations in their service. The most impactful limitations relate to what their services can do. The main reason people choose my client’s service is the lack of those technical limitations. However, we also make sure to avoid any other types of limitations the competitors have. For example, our pricing is much more straightforward and doesn’t include limitations the competitors use to justify additional fees.

When everything you do supports a consistent message, it’s easy to believe… even when you promise something great.

How to make effective, believable messaging easy

This comes down to two steps.

First, you need to understand what exactly makes your target customers choose you. (Otherwise your marketing messaging won’t have much impact.)

Second, you need to have a clear marketing message that tells everyone what to actually communicate with marketing and how to do it effectively. (Otherwise your marketing messaging won’t be consistent.)

In other words, you need a Stand Out Message Blueprint.

It clarifies what matters most to your target customers. It tells exactly what are the most important things to communicate with marketing. And it even gives practical examples for you to use.

If you’d like a Stand Out Message Blueprint for your company, get in contact.