Called to Action

The question

asked is how can

we make it easy

for our potential customers to say, yes.

Yes, totally.

Streamline the pathway, make it easier.

And if you put a headline,

I know I'm a headline guy,

but if you put a headline right up at the top,

that is a simple value statement

that that technical person agrees with,

then they already say yes.

And then as they go through

reading your other bullets,

then they're thinking, yes, yes,

this person is aligned with me. So I love that.

How can you just make make it easier,

ease the purchasing path? That's a great right?

Right.

Hey, fellow marketers and listeners.

Thanks for tuning in

to this episode of Call to Action.

I'm Janet Mesh, CEO and co-founder of Aimtal,

and I am the host of the show.

Very excited to be joined

by my co-host today, Tucker Delaney-Winn.

Hello.

Hello, everyone. Glad to be back.

All right, Tucker,

we're back with another episode.

And just as a reminder,

Called to Action is Aimtal’s show.

And it's where we analyze and discuss trends, hot

takes, tactics.

That's happening in the B2B marketing industry.

So we're really here

to share our knowledge with all of you

in hopes

that there's one thing

that you can take away from this episode.

So at the end of the episode, we will conclude,

and give you at least one call to action

that you can take.

Bring it to your company, try something out,

let us know how it goes.

So Tucker, definitely excited to jump into this

episode today.

As I mentioned

the topic we're going to be focus on

talking about the importance of creating a strong

brand messaging, kind of that foundation of who

your company it is.

Why is so important,

especially in the context of AI.

We've been talking a lot about generative AI,

the impact it's having, it's definitely moving

and shaking the marketing industry.

And just honestly, all markets across the world,

and in terms of,

I think what we want to talk about too Tucker,

would you call those

what's that kind of human connection you know

as were adapting with technology

and integrating

this more into the way that we work,

making sure that we still maintain

that emotional connection.

And we're also going to share

our messaging frameworks

that we use with clients.

So you're going to get

we're going to dive into the trends

as we always do,

but get some really strong tactical stuff.

I'm excited to get there.

So yeah, anything I didn't cover there

Tucker?

No, I'm really excited to dive in.

And I think we're seeing this rise

in AI but at the same time, this rise in demand

for kind of personalized experiences.

And so how do we kind of

weave those two things together

in a way that feels authentic and real?

From a brand standpoint.

So I'm very excited to dive into this today

and talk about personalized messaging,

that balance between automation

and the human touch.

Yeah.

Looking forward to to diving in. Okay,

So we're going to kick things off

as we always do.

And I just love

looking at research, data, trends,

charts, all that good stuff.

So the first one we're going to take a look

through, is from Gartner.

It is the top U.S.

Consumer and Cultural trends for 2025 report.

So there's a lot in here.

We won't go to cover all of it.

But just in the context of our topic today,

we did want to bring up,

you know, the current conditions,

going into 2025

based on this server that they did of companies.

It is just United States consumers.

Just to clarify that.

So we're we're talking in the context of,

the united states of America.

But of course, it's

one of the largest economies of the world.

So it has a pretty global impact.

So just to focus here, not great

news at all for, 2025

look ahead.

As we can see here.

So it says consumers that say they trust

big brands continue to decline.

At the lowest here,

it's the government,

then corporate America, then big brands.

interesting to me is my community,

were those

that were surveyed identified as like

my own community was in the third spot.

And then it goes small brands after that

and locally owned businesses. So

just fascinating to see actually.

But also, you know, an exciting opportunity.

I think this just shows

that there is a lack of trust.

And, you know,

the state of the world, unfortunately,

there's a lot of instability.

And, you know,

I think some of this can look shocking,

but the same time, it's

kind of not, unfortunately.

And actually, in the report, they also found that

there are a lot of cultural shifts

directly like impacting this

and audience behavior.

So they talk a lot about in the report of like,

of course, inflation, increased

costs of living,

climate change are a lot of factors here

where consumers are losing trust in brands,

especially when they're not being direct to

the customer or, not, you know,

sharing information or lack thereof.

So yeah,

definitely, a bit of a concerning way.

But of course, we're going to talk through

how we can improve these things Tucker.

And also the

I guess we can go to the next one here.

Consumers feel misunderstood was another one.

So they're feeling like they can't trust brands

and they're feeling really, misunderstood.

But I quite the dichotomy there.

Quite the dichotomy.

Yeah.

And I think

between this graphic and the last one, you know,

the last one we see.

So I think it's interesting

like you mentioned, Janet,

my community, local businesses, small brands,

have a much higher trust score than those,

you know, big brands, corporate America.

And as we

you know,

top of the call talked about personalization,

thinking about, you know, maybe the proximity

of an institution or a group to a person

seems to have a real effect.

But that also says to me that,

people want that personal connection,

people trust

groups, or communities

where they feel like they're actually heard.

And so I think even for big brands, there's

there's a nugget in there

that they can learn from

and that we should be thinking of

as we kind of guide

and consult, marketing across the world.

Right.

I love this, this graphic, the “gets me”’ gap.

I think it's a really great way

to think about this and honestly humanize

some of the data we're looking at here.

And I think it's interesting

to kind of take a look and see,

you know,

even a quote at the top,

most companies are trying to sell me

their products and services.

I don't really understand my preferences

as a consumer.

Something that I think often gets overlooked

right at the top here is pain points.

I know we're going to talk about this later,

but I think there's that knee jerk instinct

to rush into talking about a product

or value propositions and blow past

what your audience is actually going through,

but that's actually where

you can really establish an emotional connection.

And that's huge for getting your audience

and personas

to take action,

for getting them

to feel an affinity for you

if you're able to establish

some sort of emotional connection.

And I think based around a pain or a problem

that they're trying to solve,

that's that's a huge piece of this.

So for me, when I saw that, right,

when I think about the gets me gap,

if you don't

get the problem that your audience is going to,

I really don't think you're going to be able

to connect with them around anything else.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's

like it reminds you

to like the meme culture or like that's

why it's so popular.

Because, you see,

I mean, you're like, oh, you get me?

Like, that's

exactly how I feel when I show up to work

or in my day to day or. Yeah.

So totally not that I'm saying I'm not recommend

that every company should make memes, of course,

but the point of it

is that you're really just like hitting

very directly

on that experience of someone and saying it

like it is.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I think memes

are literally a shorthand,

but they're a way to kind of cut through,

maybe something that feels

a little more institutional,

something that feels a little bit

more cold and corporate.

Going back to that graphic of where

corporate America is, you can do something

that has some humor, has some simplicity

that really speaks directly

to the heart of a problem, someone's feeling.

I think that goes a really long way.

So yeah, well, speaking of simplicity,

I love that you just saw that word

and it was not planned,

but it does actually bring us to

the additional,

Actually, later in the, the same report,

and they talk a lot

about these like brand values,

and they surveyed the same people

and found that these, you know, overall, U.S.

consumers like three brand values that mattered.

The most of them are one,

simplicity, helped me simplify my life

two authenticity,

Like are you authentic and genuine?

And then three

but actually, like number one is value.

Do you provide the best value to me?

They're kind of defining it around like price,

but I think value is a good representation

of the overall experience

of a consumer with the brand.

So curious what

your thoughts are on this one,

because you were just

kind of starting to touch on this.

So we can dive a little deeper here of, you know,

how we're seeing this.

And I think this is a really good

representation of like thinking of it

by specific audience as well.

I think the rest of the chart,

too, covers young consumers,

older consumers, even key segments

like families versus eco friendly

folks or people

who care more about convenience over

something else.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah.

Simplicity.

Let's stick on that one for a second,

because I think it's so big.

We work in B2B tech, and by nature

a lot of that is very technical.

But I think a mistake that a lot of marketers

make is thinking that therefore the audience

wants very technical language.

And, technical communications to them.

I don't always think that that's the case.

And yeah,

I think at some stage in the buying committee,

you do need to have

that technical know how, of course.

And like go head to head.

Yes.

With the CIO or others

in the organization

that need that level of detail.

But that's not

your kind of brand or even product

campaign messaging.

You should lead with. Exactly.

I think sometimes I see messaging

and it's so technical from the jump.

Adding a simple headline

above your technical language,

above your technical bullet points

that explains the value.

Then you're contextualizing

all the technical language

that you're getting into.

It's like, okay,

they're checking the boxes

if they know the technical know how,

but they also understand

the higher level value that,

you know, they're delivering. Right.

We're also just hit with so much information.

It's it's so overwhelming.

It's even

even if you have all the right

technical information,

if that's all you have, it's

just the right pass through.

Even for a technical person,

it's like

they already have enough technical stuff

that they're going through in their own job.

Looking at something with marketing

that's very technical they’re like, I don’t want to do that.

So yeah,

it's like,

how can how the question to ask is,

how can we make it easy

for our potential customers to say, yes.

Yes, totally.

Streamline the pathway, make it easier.

And if you put a headline,

I know I'm a headline guy,

but if you put a headline right up at the top,

that is a simple value statement

that that technical person agrees with,

then they already say yes.

And then as they go through

reading your other bullets,

then they're thinking, yes, yes,

this person is aligned with me. So I love that.

How can you just make make it easier,

ease the purchasing path? That's a great point right?

Right. Yeah.

I think that's also what I think

too of like this brand.

The values is it's one, communicate

your values as a company

with the intention of attracting the idea but

that authenticity point is really important

because it's not just to have- there's

so many companies in the world like,

you know, like we have our core values

and just stick it on the wall

or they never look at them

or they don't talk about them. Right.

And it's really it's like,

what is your true authentic self as a company?

And how do you represent that to your audience?

And honestly,

if you haven't done the work

on your company values

like prioritize that this year, please.

Like we did that at Aimtal

and it's a really core part of how we operate

and how we show up internally, but also for clients.

And if you're if you need some inspiration,

we can just jump back.

We can show the slide again.

But there you go.

That Gartner report definitely hits on

some that you can build off of.

But it's not just about your company.

I think it's the point you're making Tucker.

It's you don't want to be

overly self-promotional.

Like as you're saying, it's not just about me.

Us us us, buy our product.

Like, you obviously need this.

It's like,

no, people actually do need to be convinced to

in order to convert them.

So it's like you really

you need to deeply understand

who are these folks like,

what's their world beyond work?

Like, what are

what's even going on in their day to day?

Where do they live and work online,

like in person?

You know what content they're consuming?

What are they not consuming?

Like who are they being influenced by?

You know, I think to the point on emotion,

like a lot of emotion comes

as part of like decision making in business.

As much as we want to think that,

you know,

that's something separate is really not.

But what better way to connect with that

by tapping into that kind

of like more human emotion

in your own messaging as a company?

100%. I love what you're saying.

It's like getting

getting out of your own brand

and your own company and mentality.

When you're creating marketing communications

and getting into your customer's head.

I,

I'm kind of like militant about this,

but whenever I write landing

pages or when my team does,

I never

allow the word “we” or “our” on those pages.

Oh yeah, we or are.

And like I see so many companies leading in that.

Like we will provide you

with innovative solutions, right?

Right.

Always in the frame of you, yours, you know,

what are you as the customer, the buyer

going to experience.

And I think

when you start

writing and talking in the language of “you”

and the person that you're actually

trying to connect with,

that really helps with that shift

to get people

to think about, okay,

how do I connect with this person?

We're getting towards the “how”,

but we want to spend a little bit

more time into the “why”

and the “what” before we get there.

Because you can imagine

people are like,

well, like,

how do I even get all that information,

which I'll share in a moment.

But I do want to share another report

that I found from Qualtrics.

They did a state of brand experience

management report,

and they discovered ten drivers of brand trust

among global consumers.

So pretty cool to see,

you know, have like the US specific market.

But now this is a little bit

of a global perspective.

So there's a lot on here.

There's ten listed

at the top says respects and protects customers

data privacy and security.

Really important good value for the price.

They're they're talking

in the context of like product.

And then also like protecting my personal data.

So there's a lot of weight behind protecting,

you know, the consumers information online.

However the next like additional ones

in the top ten really interesting

is like kind of later on here

it says I find these ones

maybe they're not as quantifiable,

but I almost see them as bit more

like emotional or

so.

For example,

one of them is treats customers

well even in tough times,

consistently delivers on what they promise

or is reliable and dependable.

So of course there's ways

you can like, quantify that

with like customer service response times or,

you know, just in terms

of actually delivering on, hey,

this is our product.

And, you know, in your marketing,

when they get the product, it's

that's the experience.

But I, I thought this was fascinating Tucker

because just- a lot of this resonates

resonates to me as a more subjective,

feeling or like a approach to brand trust.

And like,

they're really high scores,

like 70% of people surveyed, like, agreed

on these ones.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, it's easy when you're crafting

messaging to think about like,

oh, what's our like, really unique value proper.

What's our kind of like

core differentiator,

whether you're thinking about product and feature

or whether you're thinking

about kind of more of that like value

qualifiable value.

But reliability, as you just noted.

And it pops up like 3 or 4 times in here.

And I think that's another thing

we don't want people to

overlook is just thinking about

how are you conveying

the sense of reliability and trust.

Even the earlier bullets.

People want to be respected

around their data and privacy.

That's also people are looking to trust.

I feel like that's a theme

through all of these, is

they want to feel like they can trust

your company, your community.

So how do you kind of infuse trust

through all of your messaging?

And that's just something

that I think people

really need to think about

when they're doing this stuff.

For sure. Absolutely.

Okay.

So one way that I guess I'm kind of getting into

just to add some layers on to this now

it's like get established trust.

You now have this like

strong messaging really clear like foundation.

And there's a part of it where

we talked about this in a,

in our last episode

of like 2025 marketing predictions and trends.

And part of it is that as you just saw,

people want to make sure

that they're like data secure.

They're not giving as much data and information.

But on the other hand, they want the experience

to be very personalized,

like it feels more trustworthy

when the communication,

when the experience is more personalized,

which is a whole thing in itself.

But what we're discovering

and testing out at Aimtal

is that

we can really actually

we can use generative

AI to help

with kind of creating a more personalized,

at scale messaging,

communicating with their audience.

But what's interesting, too,

is that the challenge for marketers

is they're finding that balance

between the power of AI

and building genuine trust pretty difficult.

So I want to spend a little time here.

I think obviously everyone's talking about this.

We're looking into this, experimenting

with like, AI agents.

I know we're getting really excited

about all the possibilities.

Especially we're talking about a lot of data,

like there's a lot of information

out there about people.

How do you like, kind of take that, process it,

and create these personalized experience so,

pitching it back to you Tucker.

What your thoughts are on that first

and then I'll share some of mine. Yeah.

So I think there's another instinct or,

you know, these kneejerk instincts

or reactions to be like, oh, we got to use AI.

I just throw it in, I just start using AI.

And I think sometimes

I see that, especially

in terms

of creating content or generating content,

you use AI to generate content.

A few things one, I've heard,

you know, a phrase that I really like.

The AI is an accelerant of what you already have.

So if you've kind of got a bit of a mess

behind the scenes,

AI is just going to scale and,

you know, make a mess here.

I think building

the foundation

is really important,

but I think outside of just generating content.

You just noted this,

Janet

AI is really great at gathering and orchestrating

data, specifically customer data,

whether that's already in your CRM

or if you're going

and grabbing it from,

you know, different data sources that you have.

And I think that's almost a place

that I would point people first

before you start going off

and trying to create new content using AI.

If we're if we want to be

talking to the right audience,

let's look at using generative AI to gather

customer data, gather,

you know, consumer insights that you can use

to inform the content

that you're, that you're creating

and make it more personalized.

And I guess also to your point,

like it's like you're saying is use,

what you already have

you've already are allowed to use not,

you know, like

that's why you mentioned like in your

if you have access to your CRM,

make sure that your people have already,

you know,

consented to that

and make sure you're processing in the right way

is really important.

But and for sure,

and even things like this, like

there are research reports where you can pull.

That's what we've been doing.

Like we're taking like

all these research reports,

it helps you like synthesize

and analyze this information.

Of course,

you should probably read it yourself,

but at the same time, like,

it just it saves you a few steps and really helps

you just

kind of understand a little bit broader

and then into the detail.

And so the,

you know,

the experience of your,

your potential customers and audience.

Yeah.

And kind of as we're saying,

just to

to bring some more data to the table, you know,

from Gartner,

they had a recent,

marketing predictions, webinar.

This was one thing that, that jumped out to me,

just that AI agents are becoming

the primary source for doing exactly

we're talking about gathering consumer data,

85% of it

going to be collected by either

automated interactions.

Think about a workflow and HubSpot,

or by AI agents, by 2027.

So this really jumped out to me.

And to me, this is just a huge shift

in how we are researching potential buyers.

You know, it's no longer okay.

Let me just have an SDR

go and look them up on LinkedIn.

Obviously that's still useful,

but a lot of that can be automated.

And not just automated,

but yeah, organized really nicely.

So it comes back to you for sure.

And if you can write the right,

scripts and prompts to kind of,

give you that information in a nicely,

palatable, digestible way,

that's that's a huge help.

All that said,

humans still need to be very involved

in this, right?

You know, whether it's

gathering insights and actually

verifying, like, hey, is this right?

Does this actually make sense?

Or certainly

when you get to the stage

of creating truly authentic and personalized content,

that's where you absolutely still need a human

to review, collaborate, edit,

make sure it actually sounds human. Right.

I still go back to, the, INBOUND.

Kind of keynote speech earlier this year

in September of 2024, where they said,

“AI handles simplicity and humans handle subtlety.”

And I think that has stuck around with me

because it's really important,

especially when you're crafting communications.

There are subtle nuances that

the human still needs to make sure are right.

For sure.

Yeah.

So Actually, in Gartner's consumer report,

they also found that 72% of consumers

actually worried about

AI content being misleading.

So I think, just to your point, is not

I agree completely like brands one,

to be authentic and honest and trustworthy,

you need to be upfront, like how you're using AI.

I think it's also helpful.

I think people want to know.

It's like

it's almost a little bit of like

gatekeeping the information.

It's like,

okay, like

how was this created with a human and an AI?

Like, I think you can just kind of

put a little disclaimer on it

and just share, like,

yeah, we use it

like a little bit of AI

to help with the research or in these ways.

Yeah.

That goes a long way of just,

you know, sharing

that kind of visibility

into a little bit of the behind the scenes.

But having that a human oversight in the process

is super important.

And you did mention like prompting

and I, I love this concept,

especially for marketers.

Honestly, for anyone is becoming like

there's like one skill to learn this year.

It's like AI prompting.

Yeah, becoming like an AI prompt engineer.

Because you need to tell and give the

AI agent, like, exactly what you want

and what to do.

Like, it's not it's what you said.

It's like it's pretty much trash in trash out.

Chris Penn talks a lot about this.

He's a marketer

and he talks a lot about generative AI and it’s impact

and how to do these things.

So I've learned a lot from him, which is cool.

But as you mentioned, Tucker

like gathering and synthesizing

all this information

and data is exactly

I think if you're not already doing

is a really great place

to start to like kind of start

to build those foundations.

And,

you know, that's what we're gonna get into,

like creating that really strong messaging

and brand values, rally

propositions, targeted

messaging for the core audience is like we

on the one hand,

we're talking about

like kind of the content creation generation.

But there's also like the training of the model

to like be that, just think of the AI agent

as your direct report or your coworker

or like the copywriter company, right?

Like whomever it is, they need the context.

Like they need the information.

Like, okay, so what are our goals as a company?

How do we sound to customers?

What are we going to say in that situation?

And should we change the way we're saying that

depending on who we're talking to,

like it's

the same concept just applied in a different way.

Totally. Yeah.

And I think that's like another,

misunderstanding sometimes.

Like, AI

makes things easier and faster,

but there's a lot of legwork upfront.

Right?

And this is something

that we showing up a lot for, for our clients

as well.

you’ve really got to create that

strong messaging framework, as you said,

as you would for any copywriter

who is on your team

so that they know, okay,

I got to make sure I hit

on these value propositions.

I gotta sound kind of witty

or I've got to sound very analytical.

You've gotta give that context

so that when you're feeding the

AI models, they understand what they should do

and they can test it out.

And I love that you brought up

Chris Penn to because we had the chance

to see him at the Marketing Profs B2B forum.

And what,

what a great presenter,

but what a great framework.

I think it's the ideal framework of,

how to kind of lay out,

how you want to prompt generative AI.

And certainly that was a wake up of theirs.

There's

several steps

you really gotta take in order

to really get it right.

But when you do,

you can just see how much more effective

the output is. Right?

Yeah.

But also that that's

where like too

you can use like agents and gems like Gemini has,

they got gems

where you can create that to

then save you time in the future.

It's like you put in all that like legwork. Yeah.

And then you can, you know,

save it and capture it

in a way that you don't always have to prompt it

every single time.

So it's a pretty cool feed,

like it's really starting accelerate,

make things more efficient.

But at the same time, I agree.

Like I think there's

this like misconception too,

that it's like saving you

a lot of time in some capacity.

Yes, it will,

but it does require

still a lot of time and effort to even

just get these foundational pieces,

the data together.

And to your point, before Tucker,

like that,

your data needs to be like

your information needs to be strong.

Like if it's a mass

and that's

where we're going to start to see a lot of,

I think, struggles

for companies

to adopt generative

AI because their back end is a nightmare.

You go into a CRM and you're like, yeah,

do we have frameworks here?

Do we have any like methodology

for organizing things?

Because otherwise

we're just going to pull up contacts

that aren't really a great fit.

So we're going to pull up insights

that actually aren't

really what we're going after.

So totally agree.

And then the consumer is like, you don't get me.

Yeah.

It's like, well you don't obviously.

Yeah, exactly.

We don't exactly.

Well, just one final, chart

I wanted to bring up.

This was like, even actually pretty recently,

summer 2024, not that long ago.

But,

I mean, there's a lot

this is like a whole other thing about,

you know, how Google is

taking and surfacing this information,

especially with AI overviews coming out.

We talked about this in a past episode.

Emily on our team would really deep dive

like what this looks like

and what it's going to mean

for the future

of Google and SEO and search optimization.

However, when I saw this, I was like, wow.

Like, I think there's a lot of talk about,

you know, you hear in headlines like how big

these other companies are

and how much they're growing

and scaling, and it's true.

They are taking over.

I think we'll have to add DeepSeek into here,

of course, as well.

But look at that gap there.

Like with Google.

There's still drawing some of the biggest gen

AI sources, destinations and information.

Even Geminis like is owned by Google.

Like it's

they have a still have a massive market share.

So I think it's also you know,

thinking in that context of like is your is

your data optimized like is your content

not just working for it,

but it's also not just for like the AI we talk

a lot

like don't

only create and optimize things

for the AI models.

Like that's not only what it's about,

it's really

the point we're always making

is it's about the people

making sure you're providing

that to them in those ways.

But I just thought this was pretty fascinating.

When I saw this, I was like, wow.

Like,

think you

hear a lot of different things in the industry

or just like online on LinkedIn,

but Google is still leading the charts.

I think people don't have to freak out so much

if they're, you know, pivoting to other places.

Don't get it too extreme with shiny object syndrome.

The point I want to make is like,

go back to your foundation, like your

your like the frameworks that you have,

like are things

strong for you to be able

to take advantage of these opportunities?

All right.

Tucker, we talked a lot about why

this is important.

We love to look at this,

like macro climate.

What the kind of powers of these

how it's influencing, what's moving and shaking.

Trying to give some visibility here

of where the market's moving, industry changes

and where to focus. So let's talk about that.

I want to get into the “how” so like how okay cool.

You guys are talking about messaging and values.

Like how do I even

where do I start I guess is a good question.

And how do I do the thing?

So let's talk through that.

Like I guess how we approach it at

Aimtal for clients we wanted to share

that first and foremost.

Yeah, absolutely.

So creating messaging guidelines

you use this word foundation Janet.

And I think it's

really foundational that companies do that

even before they start a go to market strategy.

Before they start certainly running ads

or putting things out in the market.

I think the best companies we've seen

either have messaging guidelines set up

or that's

the first thing they do with us

to get the foundation right,

and then they start building out other things.

So yeah,

I think kind of just to kind of share a bit more,

we obviously like to make messaging guidelines

that are really collaborative and iterative.

It's not something that you create

and then set on the shelf

or hideaway and a Google Drive folder

and never use again.

The point is to make it very actionable and,

you know, updated quarterly every six months.

The way we typically start

is by doing discovery sessions and just gathering

ideas, opinions, interest from our clients.

I have recently been using the phrase

“unfiltered brain dumps” going into these

discovery sessions and there's like,

give me all the trauma.

Yeah, yeah, authentic authentic emotion.

But but what I often find is when

people are really unfiltered,

that's when the real truth comes out.

That's when the passion comes out,

and that's when the nuggets come out.

That actually can translate

into really key messaging.

The other thing we do is listen to sales calls.

I had an instance recently

where a client send it.

I said,

give me a bunch of sales

calls, give me everything you got.

Listen through those.

And the prospect on a call said

something that just perfectly captured

what this product did.

I said- Oh that right there,

and that became the headline on a landing page.

So it's it's just getting

give us, give us everything,

getting all that information,

hearing the stories about,

you know, the company,

the values, the pain,

the problem they're trying to solve.

That's where we like to start.

And then

we'll start orchestrating

that into a more cohesive,

messaging strategy and guidelines

so we can pull that up.

To show

looks like I know if there's anything

you want to add to that.

No, I think we can just get right into it.

So we look at this,

I think this could look really familiar

to a lot of people.

We're not like,

it's not rocket science, actually, but

however,

I think it's a really important

framework to look at.

We call like universal messaging

framework for the brand.

You can also apply this to not just,

so we can do this for the brand,

but then you can also do this

for specific campaigns.

So what's

the specific messaging for that campaign.

And then also like in the context of the audience

which we'll talk through in a moment,

but to take it from the very high

level, starting

first we'd like to call

it messaging pillars.

So like what are like

three pillars, what are three like themes,

like strong themes that you want

your company to represent?

I guess we can even say

this is like the core values.

What are the three core values that you want

a potential customer,

your audience to associate with your company.

And so we actually put

together a couple examples.

So say this is

for, you know, a cybersecurity company.

They may want to be agile,

trustworthy and optimized.

Like when you think of the

the company in their product, that's what

they want to evoke to their audience.

And then we take it down a step.

And to your point, the,

the pain points of the target is

this is really how we like to look at it.

It's like, what are they struggling with?

Like how do you get

from like this challenge to this like really high

mighty value

that like you're going to improve their life.

So we wrote some of these down,

you know, really thinking of like,

what's kind of like

the opposite of this,

like Mecca of

of what you're going to solve for them.

So for example, like if,

if they want to be more agile

by using your products, maybe

right now

the team's following a waterfall approach.

They're planning everything out.

The the organization is really slow

to adapt to changing innovation.

Takes a long time to move things forward.

Anything you want to touch on further there.

Tucker?

Regarding the pain points? I just can't hammer,

enough how important these pain points are.

Another tip,

I might say, for anybody

creating messaging frameworks

when you're doing pain points,

sometimes we’ll start by writing them out

as I statements, literally.

You know,

putting yourself

inside the brain of your customer and be like,

what is hitting me up?

Or what am I so frustrated about?

And writing those out like I,

you know, I'm struggling with this.

I get my job is on the line.

Really trying to get emotional here

and, identify those pain points

that have you tearing your hair out.

That's a hard thing for me to, you know, pretend.

But, Yeah, that's that's just so important.

And also for,

for any copywriter or anyone out there,

if they don't know these pain points,

they're not going to be able

to write- also in sales.

Like I think it's even more important for the sales team.

It's like if you don’t understand

like what the problem they're having.

Like you can't talk to them

about what you can do for them. Yes.

And this is actually where I think

going back to discovery, it's so important

because what I find is that salespeople

know these pain points.

Yeah.

Like they just know it.

And it's kind of like,

of course these are the problems, right?

But it's really important to have them

say it out loud, put it on paper so that we can,

very accurately articulate

those pain points to marketers

who are going to help the sales team.

So that's where it's

kind of like

sometimes I find myself really

pulling the thread with the sales team. Right?

But really, what's

what's got them tearing their hair out,

so for sure. Yeah.

And then that goes into

like the value proposition.

So then like what are what,

what's the value

actually providing

through your product

your company, your team to your customer.

Like what's pretty much

what are you promising to them.

So staying agile, there's I've

you can read a bunch of these examples here

about keeping focus on agile.

It's like okay, the value

proposition is with our product

you can cut up deployment time

for months, days or weeks. Two days. Yes.

And that's you know, it's like okay, awesome.

Like how let's let's do it right.

And that's really where like the,

the meat and potatoes of your campaign

and your, your selling and all that.

This messaging is like

compilation comes together.

And then finally

we like to, as you were mentioning,

like the, like I statements,

there's a, there's a few more things

that like you can obviously like add in here,

you can go like a bit deeper.

But we find these are like

the core areas that you really want to flesh out

and kind of just go.

We've provided

like a couple examples for each one,

but we usually like 30 per section, if not more.

And that just comes back

to like the more data the better,

especially if you're going to start

to like

train your

AI agents and models to like, sound and speak

and help you create this content,

you need to give them

as much as you possibly can.

So these key messages are really important.

So as you say, like unlock

Gen AI innovation for your users,

book one central hub for governance could be,

you know, a key message.

It's like,

okay, you can really help me consolidate

a lot of this stuff, or just across the board.

And we like to even just use these key messages

as like

ways to think about and talk

about the product or company,

but they can also just become straight up

copy to use.

Like,

you should just be taking this out

and putting it onto your website pages,

into your social, into your ads.

So like email everywhere.

And that's what I like about this too.

It really helps

you think of it in a more like integrated

approach of like, how are we communicating this

not just,

you know, a 1 to 1,

but across all channels as well?

Yeah.

And I think that's a really important point too,

is that your messaging guides

should be actionable.

You should be including honestly copy that,

you can copy and paste into messaging,

not the only copy, but some starters

so that people can really put it into use.

And then you start testing that.

So for sure that's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

It's also just fun.

Like yeah that's like building it out

like like a like a house.

See here. Get the roof.

You get the get all the levels. Go deeper.

And everything.

The other part of that

we always make sure that we talk about

and make sure it's really clear is,

so there's messaging, like the personality,

the values of your company,

but there's also like the voice,

the tone of your brand.

Yeah, this is really important.

And I think it's a step that's often skipped.

So what I'm showing here on screen

is brand tone scores.

So starting to define like what are those

almost like adjectives of how you would,

if your company was a person,

how would they sound.

Like what would they talk about?

How would they write?

And you can define these things.

You can change. We just this is an example.

So like you're courageous or you’re cautious.

Are you conversational or formal witty or serious.

Enthusiastic or matter of fact. Right.

And I like the scoring method

that we kind of

you can change this however you want,

want it however you want.

But it's really helpful

to like define these like kind of

to the sides of ways of the,

the tone of speaking or how you want the,

the brand

and anyone actually

because because people

will put their own

like subjective way of speaking

or talking or writing.

But you want to have that consistency.

Consistency builds trust.

So this helps

make sure that things are consistent

to your customers,

to your leads, to your audience,

wherever that you're interacting with them.

And also what we're realizing

this is extremely important and helpful to train

generative AI models

on, you have to be really, really specific and clear

of how you want it to like sound

and how it should like,

especially if you're using it

for like content creation or editing.

It's like,

okay,

you don't just say, like, now

rewrite the sentence, right?

You need to be like,

rewrite it to sound more conversational

with a bit of a witty tone,

but still be matter of fact

about these specific topics. Like that

context in that direction is

very different,

and you'll get the right outcome of it.

I think that's where people need to spend,

where we talk about like,

you need to put in the legwork,

you need to like spend time with it, train it.

But this foundation of the brand tone

and defining these is, is a way to get started

and really important

to talk through and not just,

you know, in the marketing team.

Like going back to what you're saying,

Tucker, go

talk to the other people at other departments.

Get your executive team's opinion

here, where customers are saying,

how are people talking?

What's kind of, try

to bring all that together

to boil it down to this.

Totally agree. Yeah.

And just another use case is like

usually the person who's writing

your social post is not,

you know, the head of your marketing department.

That's another person who would really value

this.

We've talked before

about how

LinkedIn and social media

is kind of the new front door of your company.

And if you know someone on social is using

15 exclamation points

because they haven't aligned.

Oh, actually,

our tone is super analytical and serious.

Like that's a huge problem.

So just another use case where like,

I think sometimes people can be like,

oh, brand tone of voice,

do I really need to focus on that?

Yes, because,

oh, you're going to have people talking

in a way that doesn't sound at all

like the brand you're going for.

And going back to the slides earlier

where consistency, reliability

is super important.

You need to run a consistent experience

across the board.

So yeah, and it may seem like it's not authentic

to say

that you have to define

what authenticity is right for your company.

Like how do you you you follow my thought there,

but I do

I do think like it's getting a little

getting like a inception level there.

But like to be authentic

you had to identify like how how are with

what is authenticity to our company?

Like what,

How are we authentic? What does that sound like?

What does that look like?

Yes. How do we show up in those ways?

Not just in terms of the product,

but actually like the

the way

you communicate in person

and online to your audience.

Which brings us

to the next point around audience,

because we're talking about the brand.

So sure, you have your company

really important to be very clear there,

but it's just not going to resonate

if you're not

tailoring your messaging

to specific audience personas. Yep.

Yeah.

So we brought this up.

We don't have a specific messaging we have,

but this is like go a little bit deeper.

We talked a lot about the pain points

which you have here, but I find that talking

about,

being really clear of like

what are their goals

and their role?

Or there

the common objections

that they may give

you are some really other really helpful ways

to think through,

like the conversation you would have,

and then kind of trying to dig

into that emotional connection.

It's like,

is this person

trying to get like a promotion at work?

Okay, like,

are they in a position

where they're always trying to like up-level?

How do we look, make them

look more like a champion?

How can we offer them a solution that they can

advance and really, like, advocate for us?

Yeah, I love that.

And I love that you added goals here, too,

because I think

I have espoused the virtue

of getting into pain points or challenges.

But before you can even understand their pain

points, you need to understand their goals

and what their job is

and what they're trying

to do in their day to day.

So I love that,

and I find this

one of the most fun things we do in

our jobs is understanding

everybody's little world and and what they do,

so that you can then say, oh, what are you

what are you trying to accomplish? Okay.

And then what are those roadblocks?

Okay, so now I understand your pain point.

Now I understand how my solution

can really help you.

So yeah, I, I love starting with the goals here.

I think that's so important

when you're talking to different,

different personas. For sure. Yeah.

And then also like

this is where you can have like

adjust your voice and tone,

to the persona as well.

So you have like,

this is how we are as a company.

But you can also get really

and you need to get really specific of like

how do we speak to these specific people,

this specific persona?

So maybe it's like a manager,

they're not like, you know, a senior executive.

It's like a manager level.

Want to come off a little bit more approachable

or maybe a little bit

more coaching them

enthusiastic, bringing some humor at wit,

not don't,

and then also be like

like define what not to do.

Because a lot of

being very clear of

try this, do more of this

but also less of very formal language

or overwhelming them with too much information,

like too many decisions to make.

Maybe they can't make all those decisions

and then they'll feel,

you know, a little bit of imposter syndrome,

whatever it is,

the coming back to the emotion,

the emotion

will come to play with this

and how people are showing up

and how they're making decisions,

how they're kind of moving forward,

what their priorities are in connection

to, like the company's priorities.

So, definitely defining these things,

I think spend time here to just really,

try as much as possible to get real data,

but also just trying to put yourself

in this, empathetic

seat with your with your

potential audience and customers.

Yep.

Your leadership

versus your practitioner versus your kind of,

domain owner all have very different

goals, these pains and things they want.

So really getting super familiar,

with each of them

is critical in order to kind of craft messaging

that's actually going to motivate them,

make them take action,

and ultimately lead to a purchase, for sure.

So a lot of great information.

Thank you, Tucker, for joining me

on this episode of Called to Action.

We covered, you know,

building out messaging frameworks, how

to do it, giving a little bit of structure there,

the importance of voice and tone,

really connecting,

doing the research of your audience

and connecting with them at that emotional level.

And then how AI is started to fit into all this

and how you can leverage

it's just start to really go deeper,

I think is a big part of it.

And starting to use the tools, allow

you know yourself to just advance

and hopefully kind of scale things as,

as much as you possibly can.

So as we always do,

we can sum up with, one call

to action to our audience.

Just to recap the episode,

I can start

I think I'll be going to go with

I never planned these, by the way.

These are always just,

I don't plan if it's like, hey,

you know what else I like?

Make sure to mention it just that's a

give a little breakdown

of the fourth wall here, a little for our audience.

But I'll say my call to action to all

of you listening today is

actually organize your data information.

I think I keep thinking

what you mentioned, Tucker.

Is your CRM clean?

What's the status like audit your systems,

make sure you have consent from folks

to process that data

and then use that to start to develop out

research, analyze,

synthesize that information to lead into building

things like messaging frameworks.

Yeah, I love that.

I mean, what's your Tucker?

Do you want to. you can. Yeah, I think- close us out.

Of course

you mentioned, Christopher

Penn and I want to give the recommendation

to the listeners

and viewers to go check out Christopher Penn

and then try his framework.

That rappel framework, when you're prompting AI

I think that's been really helpful for me.

And I think it's just,

I always like having a good framework

to use when I'm trying something new.

So go check out Christopher Penn

and what he has to say about

AI prompting and then give it a go on whatever.

Let us know.

Yeah. And let us say yeah, that's a good point

like, go try it.

I think there's a lot of,

I mean, if you can,

I think this larger issue of

like you have access to in your company or not,

but if you do

and you can securely use these tools

like just start, just start.

Yeah.

Just go do it. Yeah.

Just go do it.

Awesome.

Well, of course

we'd love to hear from folks

who are subscribed listening to our episodes.

Let us know.

Like, how are you approaching

messaging, positioning, brand, voice

and tone at your company?

Anything that you always make sure

as part of that that we're overlooking,

we'd love to know.

Also like, what are ways

you're planning to leverage

generative AI

with crafting your messaging,

content creation, research, data analysis?

Let us know in the comments.

We'd love to hear from you.

And of course, as we all say, subscribe.

Like stay in touch with us.

We we'll be producing

and consistently sharing Called

to Action episodes throughout the year.

But until next time, we'll see you then.

Thanks everyone.