Creating B2B Takeaway messages

A takeaway message is a message you want your audience to take with them – be this from your marketing literature, from an event, from a meeting or an article. As marketers we are taught the importance of messaging early in our careers. We use marketing to ensure that the idea an audience is left with is the one you want them to have. In theory, it sounds an easy enough concept. However, when it comes to the practicalities of writing material or presentations, how can we ensure that our good practice is not lost and that our audience takes with them what we intend?

Kiss it simple – don’t overload your audience with unnecessary details. In marketing literature or articles, because of their longer shelf time, you can get away with placing half a dozen messages or so as long as they are relevant. For a presentation or a conversation, you really only have the chance for the audience to take one thing away. Aside from how you made them feel – a great excuse to get those rapport skills honed – a takeaway message is your chance to get them coming back to you for more information.

Make sure you repeat your takeaway message – Repetition of the message makes it familiar. The more familiar it is the more likely an audience is to believe it. And if they believe it, they’ll remember it.

“Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” – The audience needs to know what your product or service will do for them, rather than how it works. Will it save them time? Will it make them more efficient? Will it make them look good in front of their boss? This is what you need to tell them rather than where the parts were sourced from, or what the delivery timetable is. Details such as these will come out further along the sales process. If brought out too early they will clutter the messaging.

Representative – Make sure your takeaway message is representative of who you are as a company. Resist the urge to oversell your products or your place in the market. Over promising and over stretching yourself does not build a healthy client base. If anything it makes potential clients check the facts all the more. Honest is indeed the best policy.

Make sure you repeat your takeaway message – sorry, couldn’t help myself.

Make your takeaway message unique – USPs. Make sure you know and, more importantly, your sales people know your unique selling points. This is what sets you apart from your competitors and, when selling the benefits of your product or service, is what allows you to match your product to their needs. These are the core brand messages which you will try to get across in the majority of your marketing activity.

Make your takeaway message actionable – what do your audience need to do next? Call you, email you, speak to you right now, think about things for a bit? Every message should have a call to action.

What has been the takeaway message in this article? Only a small one – for you to consider what you want your audience to take from your next communication with them.