What Does the World Need to Hear from You?

Your Message Matters

We all send messages out into the world every day. Our lives are full of emails, tweets, proposals, presentations. But what does the world REALLY want to hear from you?

This is a question we ask in our training all the time. It often results in blank stares or confusion. The messages you create do matter, but not all messages are created equal.

In fact, messages have different expectations that are impacted by a variety of factors: the intention, the audience, and the urgency.

Leadstra has developed what we call a Message Matrix to help influencers craft and categorize their messages. We’ll go into more detail in future articles, but here is a quick overview.

The Intention

Perhaps the most critical element of any message is its intention. We believe that all messages should have one of 3 intentions:

1. To Connect
2. To Engage
3. To Educate

We’ll go into more detail on each of these categories later, but think about the messages you create. Is there a defined intention? Do you mix more than one intention in the same message? Do you measure the effectiveness of your messaging based on its intention?

The Audience

It is possible to argue that the audience is as important as intent. Every person who hears your message will filter it through their perspective. That means that for an idea to create impact it must be matched to its intended audience.

We break potential audiences up into four groups:

1. Prospects – those who are considering doing business with you
2. Clients – those who have done business with you
3. Referral partners – those who regularly pass referrals to you
4. The Marketplace – general audience made up of everyone who can hear your message

Looking at this list, can you see how a person in one of these groups would have a different reaction than one from another group? For example, would you want to have the same conversation with a prospect as you do a referral partner? Hopefully not.

Urgency

The final message filter is urgency. How important is the information you are conveying? Urgency is different for each of these groups.

If a sale is ending tomorrow, there is a higher urgency to alert prospects than referral partners. And you’ll probably be looking to generate engagement rather than educate about this high urgency issue. At the same time, if everything you communicate contains a high degree of urgency, you risk wearing your audience out and diminishing your voice.

So how effectively do you manage your Messaging Matrix? Sign up to be a Leadstra Insider and download our Messaging Matrix worksheet. Or reach out if you’d like help.

And please leave your comments. We’d love to hear from you.