How to create a messaging framework

A messaging framework is the short document that lets everyone in a company describe it the same way. It sits underneath the website, the deck, the sales call and the recruitment ad, and all of those come out of it rather than being written separately.

Companies usually discover they need one when they notice that three people have described the business three different ways in the same week.

The proposition. One paragraph, the source everything else comes from.

The audience. Who this is aimed at, specifically enough to exclude people.

The pillars. The small number of things you want understood and repeated. Fewer than teams expect, because a market can hold two or three ideas about you and no more.

The proof. Evidence behind each pillar, checkable rather than asserted.

The objections. What people say when they hesitate, and the honest answer to each.

The language. The words you use and the ones you have decided to stop using, including the internal vocabulary that has leaked into customer conversations.

The one liner. The version somebody repeats at a conference when you are not there.

Start from customer evidence rather than a workshop with the marketing team. Write the proposition first, because everything below it is downstream. Draft the pillars from what buyers already say about you rather than what you would like them to say. Then write the objections honestly, since the ones you avoid putting in writing are the ones costing you deals.

Ask somebody who was not involved in writing it to explain the company. If what comes back resembles the framework, it is working. If they reach for their own words, the framework is a document rather than a shared understanding.

The other test is the sales team. A framework that people find useful gets used without being mandated.