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You know that fog, that grey bit, the annoying stuff that you always feel is getting in the way of you reaching, engaging and selling to more people?
It's called your messy middle. And it's time to do some hardcore housekeeping.
What is the messy middle?
Put simply, the messy middle is the bit in your brand strategy between what you do and what your customers actually want.
It has this annoying ability to take your carefully crafted messages, tactical marketing and campaigns and jumble them all up.
And what happens is, either your customers don't notice anything you do, or they notice bits of it but it doesn't stick.
This is because you've been a bit naughty and not done any regular decluttering or dusting.
And what's happened is, you've just layered and layered on new stuff - new messages, ways of talking to people, creative, images and well, noise.
The messy middle of your brand proposition
These are the typical parts of your brand proposition that get lost in the messy middle:
- Your vision, mission and values
- Key messages
- Tone of voice and personality
- USPs - which should be more useful than unique
- Benefits you provide and problems you solve
- Customer personas
- Relevance to people, situations or seasons
- The channels you primarily share from
- The overall customer journey
That's a lot of stuff.
The key to untangling it is to separate it all back out and look at actually how it should fit together.
I always find loads of opportunities buried in the messy middle.
Some of those might be
- Out of date messages
- Conflicting messages
- Confusing calls to action
- Internal speak and jargon
- Neglected social channels
- Trying to reach everyone
- Marketing to struggles not triggers
- Bandwagon content
And a whole lot more besides that.
There are things you can do yourself right now to start untangling your messy middle.
Things like asking someone to follow an existing customer journey from a Google search or social profile.
Or stripping your customer personas back from 11 to 3.
If you need help with properly untangling the chaos, let me know, I'm here to help.
And, you'll be amazed at just how much great stuff is buried in there, just waiting to be seen properly.
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