Create a simple message

A message is specific to one audience and one outcome. It has a headline that names the reader's situation and a subhead that names the result. The test is simple: could a competitor put their name on your message without changing a word? If yes, it is not a message, it is wallpaper. Use the customer's language. Words you collected in interviews outperform words you invented in a meeting. A common mistake is writing about the business instead of the customer. Owners describe their years of experience, their equipment, or their mission statement, when the reader only wants to know if this solves their problem today. Read your headline out loud and count how many times it says "we" or "our" versus "you." If "we" wins, rewrite it from the customer's side of the counter. To decide which words to use, mine real conversations. Save customer emails, texts, and reviews, and underline the exact phrases they use to describe their problem. Those phrases almost always beat anything a marketing meeting invents, because they come from lived frustration rather than polish. If you have no saved conversations yet, ask five recent customers why they hired you, in their own words. You can tell a message is working when strangers, not just friends, respond to it without you explaining further. If people ask "wait, what do you actually do," the message failed the clarity test regardless of how clever it sounds. When response is disappointing, resist adding more words to explain. Usually the fix is cutting words, not adding them, until only the problem and the result remain. A plumber once advertised "Licensed and insured, 20 years experience." It was true but forgettable. After talking to customers who called at 11pm during emergencies, he changed the headline to "Someone answers the phone at midnight." That single line, taken from what customers actually valued, produced more calls than the old sign had in a year, because it named the exact fear the customer felt.

Key takeaways

• The test is simple: could a competitor put their name on your message without changing a word?
• Use the customer's language.
• Interchangeable claims communicate nothing distinctive.

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