Know exactly what to say

The road to developing a message that your customers (and potential customers) truly find helpful is laden with traps, and we've all fallen into at least one of them.

Trap #1 • Shop Talk The people who need your product or services don't understand your product or services like you do. If they did, they could do it themselves. Maybe they do get it and just don't have the time. Whatever the case, you're a specialist. Your customer is not. Don't speak to your customer using specialist terminology. Don't assume they get it. Speak the language of someone who needs the product or service.

Trap #2 • "Tell your story!" For years and years, this was the way we were all taught. Tell the story of your business - why and how you do what you do, and you'll allow people to form an emotional connection with your brand. That was the mission. Now, that's not the case. While there's still value in creating the environment for an emotional connection to your brand, we have to assume that people are going to do business with you if you solve their problem and can do it better than anyone else, not because you're the third generation of your family running this business.

It's not your story that matters. It's theirs - your customer's story. In their story, they want to be the hero, and you get to be the one who shows them the way. That's what matters. Don't tell your story. Tell theirs.

Trap #3 • The Blinking Cursor By far the most common challenge for business owners and managers trying to write marketing messaging for their website, a blog, anything, is getting good and stuck. They'll stare at a blank screen long enough to get frustrated, and that painful experience will delay their return to the blank screen a little longer every time. Paralysis by analysis, sort of.

When this happens, you're feeling the lack of a system to understand your potential customer's desires and challenges. There's a system. You just don't have it yet.