Messaging Strategy: Why What You Say Matters

If you want your creative business to make money, your job is to find the point. This is what people mean when they tell you to develop a "messaging strategy."

Messaging is one of those words you'll start seeing everywhere once you know to look for it. But to the artist who just wants to sell art, it may seem confusing. Isn't messaging just copywriting? Is this another piece of jargon made up by consultants who want to sell things?

Answer: No and probably yes. But it's still worth digging into, if only for the sake of giving you something to think deeply about the next time you get outside for a walk.

What are you offering and why should anyone care?

This is the foundation of your messaging strategy. The business books will call it your unique selling proposition (USP), but it's less complicated than acronyms make it seem.

The easiest way to figure out your answer is to get into conversation. Maybe you're telling someone what you do and you get that tingly feeling inside, thinking, "Whoa, I've never talked about it like that before. That feels good."

Or maybe you're explaining your business to your Dad's friend's cousin and their eyes light up with understanding. (What's better than someone nodding when you talk about your niche interests, really? When someone you wouldn't expect to get it gets it, that's a good sign for the words you're using.)

You'll really know you've nailed it when you explain your work to someone and they exclaim "I know JUST the person you should talk to!" To me, a referral and/or sale is your best evidence that a messaging strategy "works."

Of course, the question then becomes:

What is the difference between "messaging strategy" and copywriting?

When you Google it, this distinction is often explained with the phrase "messaging is what you say, copywriting is how you say it."

For me, this is easier to understand when I remember the difference between elements and interconnections. 

You learn about this more in-depth in Self-Advocating Systems, but for a quick primer: Elements and interconnections are two distinct "parts" of a system. (And yes, your business is a system made up of systems. If you don't believe me, watch this.)

Elements in this context might include the specific words or phrases you use. Personally, I've been vacillating between calling Pretty Decent an "Internet Café" vs. an "online community" vs. a "virtual gathering place" for years.

These differences in word choice, tone, tagline, etc. can really make a difference — they are variables, after all. But it's how those elements are interconnected that often leads the real transformation.

In other words, it's not just about the words we use. It's the way those words are interconnected and reflective of our larger business and brand strategy. This includes your colors and the fonts, yes, but also the imagery you use, the sensory experience you create, the community you foster, the values you embody.

What picture are you painting for your audience about what life might be like after buying your product or service?

What persuasive case are you making for why what you've created is valuable?

Imagery, strategy, vision, messaging—unlike slight edits to word choice or button color, these are not individual elements that we can drop in and test like a controlled variable.

These interconnections are our hypotheses. They're the foundation of the experiment itself. That's what we consultants mean when we ask you to care about strategy — it's why I advocate so strongly that you learn and practice the interdisciplinary skills that make you better at thinking like a strategist.

This workshop and Notion template is a good place to start.

Bored on the Internet?

✷ Just learned about "information radiators" and very excited to say this is exactly what we build for ourselves at Big Paper Planning Day.

✷ In our Internet Business course this week in The Study, we talked about sales pages, which led us down the rabbit hole of Loop Earplugs. What we found was not just an innovative product, but a classic entrepreneurial story of noticing a problem, iterating on a solution, and pivoting when the original packaging wasn't selling like they needed it to. 

✷ Loved this feature on Greta Gerwig from Vanity Fair, and in particular this quote about coolness: "Such speedy analysis allows her to be both cool and uncool at once, the former being the vital ingredient to surrounding herself with artists, with people who 'put themselves in the way of art,' the latter being the vital ingredient to capturing adolescence."

⚛ Mini Lab: Tools, Trends & Experimental Ideas ⚛

Are you putting you shop on sale next week? If so, it might be a good time to experiment with TikTok shop. 

Like any social platform with a new feature, it seems like TikTok may be favoring accounts who are using their in-app shopping mall to sell products. I learned from the Link In Bio newsletter that skincare brand Dieux went from an average of 5k views/video to 146k views/video after launching on TikTok shop.

Setting up a shop is relatively simple, it took me about a day to get approved. Once you're set up, prepare to receive at least one email a day from their in-house team with content creation tips like this inside.