The power of a strong key messaging framework
At the heart of clear, compelling communication are well-chosen key messages.
These messages are essential to communicating who you are, what you do and the value you offer your audience. They help you articulate what your brand stands for and what sets it apart from competitors. And they help focus what you say to achieve a greater impact.
When you define your key messages, you create a powerful point of truth for your organisation.
In this article, we:
explain key messaging frameworks and how they help organisations
share some examples of how messaging frameworks can be used
describe the essential foundation of a good messaging framework
share some of our simple tips that can be used to create key messages.
What is a key messaging framework?
Key messages are carefully crafted statements that define what you need your audience to know and understand about your organisation.
A messaging framework includes your key messages and their supporting messages. It shows how different points fit together, alongside proof, statistics and facts.
When messages are arranged in a framework, it makes it easy to understand:
whether some messages are more important than others
which messages to start with
which messages are for a specific audience
when to layer in more information.
A key messaging framework can be prepared for your entire organisation, a particular division or a specific campaign.
“Key messaging is particularly important when you’re talking to an unconverted audience. Some of your target audience will readily listen and support your organisation. But a significant part of your target audience will be hesitant. They may:
– have limited knowledge of the problem you help solve
– be unconvinced of your experience
– already support another like-organisation
– believe misinformation about what you do
– be confused about your offering.
And this is when clear, consistent messaging—relevant to your audience—is crucial.”
Why create a key messaging framework?
Your key messaging framework will quickly become one of the most important guiding documents in your organisation. Here are just some examples of what it can achieve.
Inspire collective understanding
The process of creating a key messaging framework is engaging and valuable. By taking the time to articulate and sequence the information you need your audience to know, your team develops an agreed understanding of your brand or offering, the benefits it provides and where to position it in the marketplace.
Gain clarity and consistency
With a key messaging framework, your team can clearly and consistently explain what your organisation does, as well as how and why. The framework establishes a shared understanding to help take your organisation forward.
Save time and resources
With a key messaging framework, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel with each new project. The framework provides a foundation for creating future communication work content, allowing you to create on-brand content quickly.
“Across all of your communication, it’s important that your organisation doesn’t contradict itself.
If you want your audience to choose to support your organisation, or take action to help your cause, then it’s important to show up as an expert and trustworthy leader.
Misalignments and inconsistencies in your messaging will be easily picked up by your audience, undermining your credibility and building mistrust.
And mixed, confusing messages will leave your audience wondering what’s most important and whether their support can really make a difference. When you’re sharing complex or technical ideas with your audience, sequencing and structuring information well shows respect for your reader’s time, helping them easily make connections and draw conclusions.”
Creating a strong foundation for a key messaging framework
Before you start drafting your key messaging framework, it’s important to lay the groundwork. With careful research and planning, you can ensure your framework is both robust and effective.
Understand your audience
Key messages should always start with a strong understanding of your audience. Start by listing the different audiences you want to reach. What needs do they have? What’s important to them? What value do you offer?
If you can’t survey or interview them directly, you can try:
asking your team for observational information
analysing the data in your CRM
researching online forums and social media accounts where your audience spends time online.
Once you know who your audience is and what they care about, you can tailor your key messages to align with their wants and needs. If you have multiple audiences, you may need to prioritise who your messaging will speak to or create key messages that target each specific audience.
“Tailoring your messages requires audience research. And this research needs to go beyond demographic information. You want to learn:
– how they feel about what you do and/or what you offer
– what misinformation already exists about your organisation
– what gaps they have in their knowledge
– what information they’re interested in
– what information they want prioritised
– how their goals align with yours.
Understanding this information allows you to construct your messaging in a way that your audience will understand and be more receptive to your point of view. It helps bridge the gap between your position and your audience’s needs.”
Understand your brand positioning
Uncovering what makes your brand special or different is essential to crafting strong key messaging. Your brand positioning should underpin your key messaging, ensuring they echo the value your product or services provide.
There are questions that can help you and your team think about your offering and what makes it valuable to your audience.
Q. How do you make your audience’s life better?
Q. What direct benefits do you offer your customers?
Q. What problems do you solve?
Q. How does your organisation make people feel?
Writing key messages
Your key messages need to be carefully articulated to reflect the core truths of your organisation. And they need to resonate with your target audience, inspiring understanding and action.
Here are six of our tips to help you create strong key messages.
Make it concise. Key messages aren’t intended to be marketing copy. They should be short and factual, usually framed as a single sentence.
Keep it simple. Write your key messages in easy-to-understand language with minimal jargon or acronyms.
Be strategic. Ensure your key messages align with your organisation's values and the benefits and value you offer.
Stay relevant. Include a balance of what you need to communicate with what your audience wants to know.
Put your audience first. Tailor your messages to the needs of different target audiences (if relevant), with specific language and depth of information.
Be specific. Include key details or proof points to demonstrate your authority and expertise.
When you create your key messaging framework, consider how each message relates to each other and support one another. Are any messages more important than others?
How to use your key messaging framework
Once you have your key messaging framework, you can use it to support your organisation in many ways.
To audit existing communications
Use the framework to update the key messaging on your website, emails, campaign pages, brochures and social media.
To help craft a powerful brand story
Using your key messaging framework as a guide, you can shape your expertise into a narrative that connects with your audience and helps them understand what’s most important about your organisation.
To scaffold all communications work
Ask team members to refer to this framework at the beginning of a project. This will ensure that your brand messaging is consistent across all projects.
For example, if you are preparing for a pitch or conference presentation, highlight the relevant messages in your framework to start creating an outline.
To share with stakeholders
Your key messaging framework can help employees and contractors quickly gain an understanding of your brand priorities.
To inspire new content
As you audit existing communications, you may identify important key messages that are rarely communicated across your marketing assets. This can guide the creation of new content.
For example, if you uncover key messages that should be featured more prominently, a new video, article or social post could focus on this message.
We’d love to help you
At Storyflight, we work with purpose-driven organisations to create impactful key messaging frameworks. Our signature process helps teams share their expertise and establish a shared vision.
Step 1: We schedule a virtual discovery meeting to gain a deep understanding of your brand and offering.
Step 2: We review your existing communications and research your competitors and target audience.
Step 3: We develop your key messaging framework, including key messages, supporting messages and proof points. The structure of each framework is tailored to your organisation, the complexity of your offering and the number of target audiences.
Step 4: We talk you and your project team through the framework at a virtual meeting, explaining our rationale.
Step 5: We work with you to refine and approve the messaging.
Step 6: We ensure you know how to implement the framework across your brand communications.
This process takes two to six weeks, depending on your teams’ availability and the length of reviews. You can learn more about our key messaging package here.
If your organisation is ready to develop a key messaging framework, we’d love to talk about how we can help.