>The Secrets of Stickiness: Stop wasting money on your message.

>How tough is it for people to remember your message? Part of the secret of breaking through all the marketing clutter is to have a memorable, or “sticky” message. The more sticky your message, the fewer times you have to repeat it. The less money you need to spend on marketing.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, co-authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die talk about their ideas on The Today Show

The Heath’s first lesson for businesses seeking a sticky message: Forget your knowledge.

Yep, the villain of stickiness is the curse of knowledge. When you become an expert at what you do, it becomes difficult for you to imagine what it’s like to not have your expertise.

Experts think of the world in terms of complexity and nuance. But effective messages are simple. Experts think of problems in abstract ways. But everyone else needs a concrete tangible example. Your expertise then, stands in the way when you are trying to communicate to others.

Your strength is your weakness in creating a sticky message. Your business is great because of the expertise you have in your industry. But your message sucks because of the expertise you have in your industry.

• Decide what is the most important single thing you want to say and put that first.
• If you say 10 things, you say nothing. Don’t get feature-itis with you message.
• To get your message across and energize people, find your high concept. What’s the one idea that’s going to get people on the right track thinking in the right direction as quickly as possible?

2. Unexpectedness – To get attention, break a pattern. Surprise makes us pay attention and think.

• Find the pattern in your industry and break it.
• Seize the power of big surprises.
• Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages.
• Discover what is counter-intuitive about your message and then communicate that message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machine.

3. Concreteness – You cannot misunderstand what success would look like. We tend to traffic in abstractions. By saying nothing, you connect with no one.

• Conjure up an image by getting down to the concrete sensory images.
• There is a large marketplace out there and you don’t need all that marketplace.
• Be brave enough to be concrete and put a stake in the ground.
• You have remarkable ideas and products. Don’t talk in abstract ways.
• By not taking the chance of upsetting someone, you insure that you are connecting with no one.

I suggest you read Made to Stick to improve your messaging and marketing. The final three qualities are:

4. Credibility – Is your idea believable?

5. Emotion – Create an emotional link to the message.

6. Story in miniature – Stories make your message stronger.

Forget For Stickiness
Once you start forgetting your knowledge you are free to use the above checklist and create a sticky message. You don’t need all six, but the more you use, the more glue your message will hold.

So here’s your challenge. Write down your current marketing message and compare it to the Stickiness Checklist. How many sticky points do you have? How can you change your message to be more adhesive?

This little exercise can save you lots of lost dollars simply because you will no longer try to shout messages that can’t be remembered.

How sticky is your message?

Related posts on stickiness:
Small Business Advertising: Sexy USP’s They’ll Love
Websites: Un-Sexiness Works
spotlight…ON MARKETING: Writing Customer Stories