• Your product – It might sound like an odd question but how well do you know your product? Are you sure it does what you think it does? Are you promoting the right features and benefits? What priority should you give them? Getting to the core value of your product is an essential first step in defining a successful marketing message so it’s important to start at first principles and make sure you really ‘get it’.
• Your audience – How well do you know your target audience? Do you really know what turns them on, the pain points and the issues that keep them awake at night? Are you addressing one audience or several? You need to make sure you’re speaking the same language as your target audience so it’s important to get under their skin and really understand the issues that drive them.
• The competition – It’s key to look at the competition in the broadest possible sense. That means considering all the alternatives to your product, not just company A or competitor B but the option of doing nothing, building it in-house or buying it later. A well honed marketing message should address all of the alternatives that your customer might consider.
• The medium – Web pages are different to marketing brochures and email newsletters have different needs to web banners. You need to adapt your message for the medium – can you say it in 100 words? Can you say it in 10? Can you say it in a picture or a 10 second animation?

Making sure that your message is consistent and that it resonates across different media is a key element of successful marketing. That’s why the messaging development process is so fundamental to a successful campaign. It’s the foundation that all marketing success is built on so it pays to devote the proper energy and attention to it.