Have you ever seen the musical “Gypsy”?
In one of the first scenes, Baby June and her sister Louise are onstage auditioning at a vaudeville theater. During their duet, their mother, Mama Rose, who is the quintessential stage mother, stands up and screams, “Sing out, Louise!”
Well, sometimes, when I’m reading certain websites, I feel like a red-faced Mama Rose as I start to internally scream, “Tell it to me straight, Louise! For heaven’s sake, just tell it to me straight!”
This is my overly dramatic response to websites that don’t have a clear, easy to understand “pitch” or marketing message. You know, those websites that look like there’s a lot of something going on yet you’re not quite sure what. You have to comb through a lot of clutter to figure out what this business or artist is all about. Or there are so many different messages and colorful graphic ads flashing at you that you’re not sure what to do or where to go to find what you are looking for.
Hypebot just that reveals what your potential clients and fans really want when they come to your website. And it’s not confusion and mixed messages, believe it or not. It’s not pretty graphics, flash video and lots of links. What they want is ease. They want a website that makes it easy for them to find what they’re looking for.
So, let’s make it easy for your website visitors to find what they are looking for… especially if they’re looking for your services! Let’s make sure your website has a clear, compelling, easy to understand message, or pitch, that let’s your potential fans know that, yes, they are in the right place!
Your Pitch… or Tag…. or Marketing Message
A long time ago, I used to teach a course called “Your 20 Second Connection: How to Create Conversation, Connection and Curiosity Anytime You Answer the Question “What Do You Do?” (Yes, I DO like long titles. Thank you very much.) This course taught entrepreneurs how to create and deliver a clear, compelling marketing message that sparks people’s interest and gets them to say, “Wow! How do you do that? I could really use that right now!”
Your marketing message or pitch, whether verbal or written, needs to have that same ability to spark the interest in your potential client or fan.
The Basic Components of Your Compelling Marketing Message
Let’s use my pitch as an example:
Firecracker Communications makes it fun and easy for creative entrepreneurs and artists to attract tons of enthusiastic fans and build a thriving business online (by implementing proven Internet marketing and social media strategies.)
I put the last part in parenthesis because in some instances, this is just too much information.
This pitch includes the following basic components:
- Who you serve (your ideal audience or market) Yes, I know the proper grammar is “whom do you serve” but that sounds silly, doesn’t it?
- What solutions, satisfactions or benefits you offer that specific market.
- How you deliver those solutions, satisfactions and benefits (products, processes, information, etc.)
- What makes your offering or business unique or best suited to serve your target audience.
Now, in some instances, you don’t want to include all these elements in your pitch. For instance, you were using your pitch as a tagline for your website, all these elements would make your pitch too long and cumbersome. Nevertheless, you should be able to pull all of this information out of your pocket when you need it.
So, answer these questions as best you can:
Who (Whom) do you serve?
Who is your ideal target market or audience? Who do you serve? Who do you work with?
Get specific about this, and find a way to identify these clients or fans in your marketing message. For example, in mine, I work with creative entrepreneurs and artists.
What solutions, tools, satisfactions, benefits or pleasures do you offer them?
Let’s say your ideal clients are stay-at-home moms with small children and your business sells kitchenware equipment. How do you solve your client’s problems or make their lives easier? Do your products allow them less time in the kitchen and more time for themselves? Are they child-safe so moms don’t have to worry about their children hurting themselves in the kitchen? Are they easy to operate so a mother can set it and go attend to other things?
Here’s a tip: we’re after the end result here, NOT the process by which we get to the end result. In other words, the “what” of your pitch shouldn’t be about the features of your kitchenware but “what” your market will experience as a result of using your equipment (more time, less stress and worry).
How do you deliver those solutions, satisfaction and benefits (products, processes, etc.)?
THIS is where you talk about the tools, processes and products you offer. For instance, staying with the kitchenware theme, your “how” is “by providing moms with safe, child-proof kitchen equipment that works with a push of a button.”
What makes your offering unique or different from any other out there?
Sometimes, what makes your service different is you: your story, your experience, your perspective or approach. The way you do business. Or it can be the quality of what you offer. Or a guarantee.
Again, in the instance of the kitchenware example, your products could come with a lifetime guarantee. Or maybe you come to your client’s house rather than making them come to you. Or maybe it’s that you’ve tested and continue to use every single piece of equipment you sell… and you don’t sell it unless you love it.
One more my mentors, Sandi Krakowski, used to own a kitchenware business where her tag line was “If it’s not in my own kitchen, it’s not in my store,” which was her clever way of saying, I only sell what I use myself.
Now that you have the elements of your pitch, can you create a statement that not only delivers this information but sparks the interest of your ideal client or fan? It may take some work and some practice and some feedback from colleagues you trust, but once you have that clear statement, you can use it in a variety of different ways:
- As your elevator speech
- On your website
- In all your marketing materials, from business cards to emails signatures to business proposals.
ARTISTS! You need a pitch, too!
My friend Ariel Hyatt was the first person to wake me up to the fact that musicians are missing the marketing boat if they don’t have a clear, compelling pitch. Her book, Music Success in 9 Weeks does a great job of walking musicians through the process of creating their pitch (and what to do with it once they have it).
How can you describe your music or art in words? What comparisons can you make that your ideal fan will understand? How can you go beyond genre and category to give your fan a clear hit of what they will get when they listen to you or go to your show?
One of the most effective ways to do this, as Ariel points out, is to relate your sound and style to that of other well-known musicians or artists your fans may know. This way, they have a place to start, a point of comparison. Here is an example of a pitch created by one of Ariel’s clients:
“As an artist, Kelly Richey has been described as “Stevie Ray Vaughan trapped in a woman’s body with Janis Joplin screaming to get out.”
I would take this a step further and include what the listener will experience when they listen to your music (or view your painting or come to your performance). Will they be uplifted? Will they be tapping their feet or shaking their booty? Or falling into a peaceful trance? Will you take them on a trip down memory lane, except with different scenery? Or will you zoom them into the future, to a place they’ve never been before?
Big, Important Tip
Your marketing message has to feel good to you.
Whether you are an artist or an entrepreneur, you want to create a pitch that you feel connected to, one that feels authentic and true to who you really are. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to fully stand behind it or speak it without choking on your tongue. You have to believe your own pitch. If you don’t, it will always feel off-target, overblown and foreign to you… no matter how good it may sound to your friends and fans.
So, do you have enough to get started writing your own pitch or marketing message? Start with these basic components and then play with it. Use every day but lively language. Practice saying it out loud to be sure it feels good to you. And share it with those who can give you positive, constructive feedback.
Once you have it just the way you want it, USE IT! Put that puppy on your website where everyone can easily see it and read it. Put it on your social media sites, your email signature, your business card… on all your marketing materials.
If you’re ready for some help crafting your marketing message, or if you have a question, please leave a comment below and we can talk about it!