You know the feeling when you reading something, and almost involuntarily go "ah, yes!" or "ooh, that's interesting." That's when you know it's resonating with you.
It's speaking to something that's going on in your life, something you're doing quite a bit of thinking about.
Resonance is the intensity of an emotional connection between the messaging and the user.
Resonance describes the reverberation of messaging within the consumer’s life and work. Messaging resonance connects your company and product to your prospective customers.
It's when the message reaches the human on the other side of the screen.
B2B is still human to human.
If a guy named Dave is your target customer, there's no B2B Dave and B2C Dave. He is always the same person. A human being with his feelings, preferences, quirks, and biases.
Before you scale that ad campaign, you need to be sure which specific messages really hits home with your target audience. Putting money in ad campaigns with an untested messaging is likely a huge waste.
Your startup can't achieve product-market fit before achieving message-market fit first. Your messaging needs to resonate with an audience before they're ready to give you a try.
Founders and marketers are so involved in their businesses that over time, they lose the ability to step back and look at the business from their audience's perspective.
These are the most common problems we see with messaging:
1. Clarity problems
Clarity trumps persuasion. If they don't get it, they won't buy it. Using simple, clear language is the foundation of effective messaging.
2. It's boring, "meh", so people tune out
If the copy is boring, people will stop reading. And it certainly won't resonate with anyone. Optimize for conversational language. Write as if you'd be talking to one specific individual.
3. It's overly ego-centric or fact-centric instead of being about the user
If you talk too much about yourself or hit them with factual statements about your product, it's not about the user and their benefit anymore. "What's in it for me" should be the leading principle when crafting your messaging.
4. Sameness
Sameness is the combined effect of companies being too similar in their offers, poorly differentiated in their branding, and indistinct in their communication.
If you're competing in a mature category, odds are you come across just like everyone else in the industry. Most state their value proposition as if they were the only company doing what they’re doing.
5. Not enough information
Research firm IDC says that 50% of purchases are not completed due to insufficient information. We see this all the time - people read everything and STILL have questions. These are your blind spots. You're too close to your product. Only people new to your business and from your target audience can open your eyes to your blind spots.
