Develop Your Message

The fourth step in developing a promotion plan is to craft your message. Promotional Plans or Communication Plans bring together everything you’ve learned about:

The Product
Your Community/ Target Audience
Your Pricing

The most effective and persuasive messaging outlines how your product aligns with the target audience’s values and provides them with a call to action⁽¹⁾. Gather your team, review the information you’ve collected about your product, audience and pricing, and get started!

A) What is the Purpose of Your Message?

Whether you’re trying to increase sales or build awareness, it’s important to know why and what you are communicating. With your team, decide what the purpose of your message is. For example, do you want to⁽²⁾:

Increase awareness of your product or service?
Educate your target audience?
Recruit volunteers?
Develop partnerships?
Raise funding?
Sign participants up?

B) Know Your Audience

Knowing your target audience is key to writing successful promotions. You want your message to resonate with the target audience and reflect what they care about⁽¹⁾.

HINT: With your team, refer back to what you learned about your audience in Step 2 of Developing a Promotional Plan to help you identify a key list of values, interests, or motivators that you want to highlight or align your product within your message⁽²⁾.

Step 2: Get to Know Your Community

C) Write Core Messages

A core message is a powerful statement that captures the “What”, “Why & How”, and the Call to Action⁽^1,3). With your team, brainstorm core messages that promote your product or service. Use these questions to guide your core messaging development⁽³⁾:

What is the overarching message you want to communicate to your audience?
Why is this message important to them?
Why is your product or service unique?
What are the benefits or value to the audience?
What are the barriers or challenges, and how are you addressing them?

What:	Why & How:	Call to Action:
The product or service you are offering.	Why the target audience should care or how your product is different. Highlight the benefits, value alignment or solution your product or service provides for the target audience.	What are you asking the target audience to do? Use the purpose your team identified above in Stage 1: What is the Purpose of Your Message to write your call to action.

As you and your team write your core message, use the following questions to refine your core message. At the end of your core messaging brainstorming session, aim to have no more than five core messages with supporting points for each of them⁽³⁾.

Ask yourself, is the core message⁽³⁾:

Is your message at most 1-3 sentences that can be spoken or read in 30 seconds or less?
Can you revise your message so you can say it in the time it takes to ride an elevator to the top floor?

Does your message define, differentiate and address the benefits of your product or service?

What does your community need to know?
Is there extra information that can be removed from the core message and shared as supporting messaging once a person has expressed interest?

Is your message written persuasively?
Does it motivate your audience to act?

Is your message easy to understand?
Can you revise the language to avoid jargon or acronyms?

Is your message easy to remember and repeat?

Does your message use an active voice?

Is your message suited to your audience?

Does your message sound natural and conversational when read out loud?

Make Your Message Stand-Out

Today, people are flooded with messages. It’s important to make the most of the attention your target audience gives you. Check out these strategies to make a positive impression and write a core message that stands out!

Repetition

Consistency and repetition matter when it comes to promoting your product. On average, people need to see a message seven times before it resonates with them⁽¹⁾. Use your core messages to your advantage!

Use your core messages daily in your communications, from conversations with your team, volunteers, participants, leaders, and community to your written outreach, social media posts, newsletters, and more ⁽¹⁾!

The more people see and hear your messages, the more likely they will be motivated to action.

Persuasive Messaging

Altering four factors can boost and create persuasive communication.

Read through each of the factors below and think about how you and your team can apply the principles to make your core message more persuasive⁽⁴⁾:

A communicator, whether a person or an organization, is more persuasive when they have:

Credibility: Work to establish the qualifications of the communicator to build trust.
Knowledge: Share how the communicator has the knowledge or expertise to talk about a subject.
Similarity to Audience: Choose someone similar to the target audience’s age, cultural background, lifestyle or other demographics

The most compelling way to deliver a message is face-to-face.

Easier to get the audience’s attention
Harder for the audience to say “no”

Make the most out of written communications by:

Adding colour and design
Personal touches like addressee names, handwritten greetings or signatures

Increase the persuasiveness of your message by:

Capturing the audience’s attention using novelty, contrast, surprise, design, volume or duration
Using repetition and consistency in your messaging
Highlighting the benefits and rewards to the audience
Highlighting minimum cost, effort or time
Getting an endorsement from someone of status in the community
Creating scarcity or a timeline that people need to act by

Messaging is more likely to be persuasive when the audience:

Likes and respects the communicator
Is positioned to believe or value the message
Receives messaging that directly appeals to them
Has the capacity to take action. For example:
- The action is realistic
- They have enough time and resources to take action

Message Mood & Tone⁽²⁾

Strike the right balance with the mood and tone of your messages. People will disregard the message if you choose a mood and tone that is too negative, frightening, or makes your audience feel too guilty.

Aim to keep your tone positive and focus on the strengths and solutions instead of the needs or gaps.

Sticky Messages⁽⁵⁾

“Sticky” messages are messages people remember about the desired behaviour or program. To make your messages sticky, add:

Credible sources of information
Memorable sayings
Stories that appeal to people’s emotions
Specific and clear calls to action
Personalized benefits (for example: minimizes time, lowers cost, positive consequences)

Plain Language Messaging⁽⁶⁾

Using plain language ensures that your message is:

Easy to read
Easy to understand
Easy to act on

Did you know that 49% of Canadian adults have low literacy skills⁽⁶⁾?

Use these tips to write in plain language⁽⁷⁾:

Use clear and descriptive titles
Use lists instead of long sentences
Write in short sentences (15 to 20 words)
Use simple, common words
Define acronyms before using them
Cut down your word count and remove unnecessary words
Only include important information
If you’re using many complex terms, define them, provide examples and consider including a glossary
Use an active voice
Use first or second person (we, us)
Aim for a Grade 8 reading level or lower

HemingwayApp online tool⁽⁹⁾checks reading level
Before and After ⁽¹⁰⁾ simple words and phrases examples
Canva Magic Write ⁽¹¹⁾: AI text generator for simple wording, taglines and captions

Key Considerations

What is an Active Voice?

An active voice is where the subject is performing an action. For example: The girl is riding a bike. For help writing in an active voice, check out this blog post from Grammarly. ⁽⁸⁾

Delivering Your Message

When thinking about how to best share your message, consider:

How to make your messages equitable and inclusive
Where to place the promotions

Making Messages Equitable and Inclusive

As you and your team prepare to distribute, market or share your messages, review your messages to check for equity and inclusion. With your team or the community consider promoting your messages as needed:

In large and small print
In multiple languages, as needed by the community
With closed captioning on videos
Using multiple distribution channels (i.e. newsletter, phone calls, and social media)
Using multiple formats (i.e. video and written text)

Apply an EDI Lens to your Messaging

Visit the People Pillar of the Healthy Communities Framework and follow the suggested steps for applying an EDI lens to your messaging.

Check Your Assumptions
Ask About Inclusion

People Pillar

Where to Place Promotions?

A) Use the information you gathered about your target audience in Step 2 of Developing a Promotional Plan to determine which tactics to use in message delivery (i.e. Social Media, Email, Phone calls, Flyers, Word of mouth, Webpages, and others).

B) With your team or the community, decide which promotional tactics you want to use to reach your audience. Consider using multiple tactics to get the farthest reach, but ensure that your chosen tactics are appropriate for your audience.

C) Use your core messaging and calls to action to develop the content. Be creative and include images, graphics, charts, or videos to add diversity to your promotions!

D) With your team, decide who is responsible for sharing the message using what tactics, when to share the promotions, how long you are going to share the promotions (i.e. a specific date and/or when a goal is reached).

Developing a Promotional Plan

Continue exploring the steps to help guide you through developing your own promotional plan!

Step 4: Develop Your Message

Step 5: Review & Adapt

Continue Exploring Promotions

Tips & Tricks

National Recreation and Parks Association. Communications Toolkit: Attracting Families to Your Youth Sports Programs [report on internet]. The Association; 2021 [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www.nrpa.org/siteassets/youth_sports_communications_toolkit.pdf
Community Tool Box [Internet]. Section 1. Developing a Plan for Communication; 2022c [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main
Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center. Developing Key Messages for Effective Communication [report on internet]. N.d. [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://msktc.org/sites/default/files/Key_Message_Development_508.pdf
Community Tool Box [Internet]. Section 2. Using Principles of Persuasion; 2022c [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/principles-of-persuasion/main
Community Tool Box [Internet]. 8. Increasing Participation and Membership; 2022c [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/increasing-participation-and-membership
Canadian Public Health Association [Internet]. Plain Language Service; n.d. [cited 2022 January 14]. Available from: https://www.cpha.ca/plain-language-service
Government of B.C. Plain Language Checklist and Resources. [report on internet]. The Government; October 2020 [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/services-policies-for-government/policies-procedures-standards/web-content-development-guides/plain-language-course/plain_language_checklist.pdf
Grammarly Blog. [Internet]. Active vs. Passive Voice; 2022 [cited 2023 Fabruary 18]. Available from: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/active-vs-passive-voice/#:~:text=In%20the%20active%20voice%2C%20the,example%20of%20the%20active%20voice.
Hemmingway App [Internet]. Available from: https://hemingwayapp.com/
Plain Lanuage.gov [Internet]. Use simple words and phrases; n.d. [cited 2023 January 14]. Available from: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/words/use-simple-words-phrases/
Canva Magic Write. [Internet]. Available from: https://www.canva.com/magic-write/

Develop Your Message