We Smoke Fish: The Art of Strategic Messaging Focus

Inspiration comes from the most unlikely of places. Most marketers will accept that, particularly in B2B, messaging suffers from being overly complex, written in superlatives and, if it were to be believed, the humblest of products may be about to solve all the world’s issues at once.

Yet finding the very essence of simplicity of messaging approach can be hard.

I was out and about at the weekend supporting my daughter’s love of dance at a festival in Ipswich. With hours to kill, my wife and I headed up the coast for a walk on a beach and a dose of sea air.

And there I found it – the best example of strategic messaging focus that I could ever hope to come across.

With it, the inspiration to write about the importance of strategic messaging focus. What does focus mean? What is simplicity? How you know when you’ve got there? How do you stay true to your focus across your whole organisation?

The hut in this picture, on the edge of the beach, stands for what strategic messaging focus means:

Simplicity – just three words to describe what they do.

Alignment – product that delivers on the message and doesn’t deviate from the focus.

Consistency – wherever the target audience approaches from, the message is consistent.

Why does this hut makes such a great example of strategic messaging focus?

Simplicity of Message

WE SMOKE FISH.

That’s it. The features that make this so simple are:

• No ambiguity. They smoke fish. They don’t catch it. They don’t sell you raw fish or cooked fish. Just. Smoked. Fish.
  
  
• No nonsense. They don’t dress their message up. This isn’t “In an ever-changing fishy world, we’re bringing game-changing Enterprise-class smokery” nor are they “re-defining fish smoking for the 21^st century”. Just. Smoked. Fish.
  
  
• Easy language. There’s no attempt to confuse the reader or use language that might not translate with the audience.  Cured? No, it wasn’t ill.  Preserved? No, it’s not some form of art that has been protected from the ravages of time. Nor has it been canned, pickled or salted. Kippered maybe? Good luck with translating that! Just. Smoked. Fish.

Product That Aligns And Delivers

When you have refined your message to such a point of simplicity, the good news is that your audience is going to get exactly what you do. Now your product had better deliver.

In our fish hut’s case, it’s very clear that product and marketing are on the same page when it comes to being aligned with business strategy.  In fact, the strategic message is so simple that marketing hasn't attempted to 'jazz it up'.   The business is smoking fish. The message is We Smoke Fish. The product? Yes, you guessed it. Smoked fish. Check out the menu….

What’s important here is that product has remained true to the intent. There’s diversification in terms of the number of smoked products. There’s just one rule. It must be smoked fish.

This kind of focus brings a few advantages:

• A 100% clear core brand. Each new product developed relies on two simple rules. It must be smoked. It must be fish. The audience is left in no doubt, allowing the brand to be built around this core offer. If you like smoked fish, this is the place to come.
  
  
• No chasing ‘bright and shiny”. Sticking to the focus can be tough. Imagine what a great business we could build if we diversify – we could smoke…anything! Not here. Focus is kept on what they do well. Resources are concentrated on the one core offer. Anything else is an unnecessary diversion.
  
  
• Customers ask for what you do, and not for what you don’t do. With zero ambiguity, there is no confusion over what you might be willing to do. No time wasters here looking for something not on the menu. No one asking if you could “just do this one extra thing”. When you get clear, so does your audience.

Consistency – Wherever Your Customers Are Coming From

Here’s the last part where our hut has got it nailed. Customers come from many directions. There’s risk that if the message they see from one direction is different from another, it creates confusion, uncertainty and unwillingness to engage.

Not so here. From every side of our hut, the message is clear and consistent.

There’s even room for some individuality in the messaging. Every side tells the same story, with a small twist in how the message is delivered – a different ‘voice’ in each case.

We could, as potential customers, wander around this hut for a while. Maybe walk back and forth. Wherever we approach from, or are likely to approach from we see the same clear message. It makes it easy for us to recall the business and to know that whichever message we listen to, that what we’ll get will be the same.

Now, marketing, product and sales (our voices on all the other sides of the hut) are aligned. The result? Customers on an otherwise grey and forgettable February afternoon queuing up for smoked fish.

How To Get To Your Own “We Smoke Fish” …And Stick With It

In our Blog Why Bother With A Marketing Strategy? one of our key takeaways was that marketing strategy will ensure everyone knows “what” the message is and can understand and deliver it consistently.

This puts marketing strategy as the owner of messaging focus for the organisation and of getting to your own “we smoke fish”.

By developing a strategic focus to messaging, each area of business can align to the common focus and ensure that what is  marketed, what is sold and what is created and delivered is the same and is aligned to the strategic focus.

Simplicity of Message: The 100 to 1 Technique

To get to your simplest message, work through the following.

1. Write down your overall message to customers in 100 words. Use whatever style suits you – long form sentences, bullets, whatever.
2. Now write it again in 50 words.
3. And again in 30 words
4. Refine now to 10 words.
5. Then 5 words or less. 1 word if you can.

This fifth revision is your “We Smoke Fish”. It’s a super simple exercise to start, and fiendishly difficult to complete.

With this exercise complete, you have distilled your strategic message to its very essence.

For marketing, this means that any planned campaigns or activities can be held up to this core message and check if it aligns. Wherever the story is seen, it is consistent.

For product, roadmaps and development can be tested against this focus – are they developing to focus, or chasing something new, bright and shiny? Note: there are guidance processes for strategic development that cover new, bright and shiny. This is about ensuring core development stays true to the business goal.

For sales – whoever is telling the story, wherever they tell it, the core message is consistent. And with security in knowing what the core message is, it leaves freedom to put it in their own words without fear from the rest of the organization that they may be going off topic.

This component of marketing strategy is part of the marketing bridge. It ensures that your business avoids the ‘three Ds’ of messaging failure – Dilution, Diversion and Difference.

If you’re interested in smoked fish, that hut can be found in the picturesque seaside village of Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast.

If you’re interested in getting to your own simplest message, visit Chiltern Marketing Strategy and learn how we can help build your marketing strategy bridge that connects growth strategy to action.