Using Core Messaging
Core Messaging is just what it sounds like: the core, the foundation, of everything you want to and have to say. If you get these right, your communications become easier throughout the year, and you have a better chance of following the old “they need to hear it 7+ times to pay attention” rule. Without core messages, your funding plan falls flat because your donors will lack the clarity of the message. And without that funding plan, your core messages would never see the light of day. It’s a hand-in-hand thing. Let’s build some strong messages out of all your hard planning work.
It’s pretty rare that your core message document will ever meet the public eye.
Excuse me? What? Why did I do all that work?
There’s a good reason.
Core Messages are meant to be the backbone that gives all of your communications consistency of language and tone. You likely won’t use the document word-for-word, but key phrases will be used across all of your channels and mediums.
You’ll use them in three areas - the key is repetition, the same words, and phrases encased in different contexts:
Written Communications: Use your Core Messages to illuminate key aspects of your work that you want people to pay attention to! Perhaps the core messages help you determine the main menu on your website (because they follow that who, what, and WHY structure) or maybe they give language to a president’s annual letter in an annual report. They can also inform mainstay web copy or donor proposal content, or be the basis for a quick Giving Tuesday campaign.
Verbal Communications: It’s easy to ramble when someone asks what you do in an elevator, and even when you’ve planned out a keynote speech. Your core messages are an outline for the 30-second elevator pitch to an entire stump speech. This may take changing the phrasing slightly so it works for verbal words, but you can always find the right and consistent spirit to the words that are just a bit different from what’s on paper. What should happen is that, when someone reads your website, they can make a connection with what you said in your speech, and vice versa.
Internal Communications - Which are Just As Important: What you say internally matters. Make sure that what’s communicated outside using core messages isn’t a foreign language to your staff. Tell your staff first. Let them see the materials and explain how you arrived there. You can do this with a few meetings or conference calls. It fosters buy-in, brings even more consistency and can even make your colleagues’ lives easier when they now have some language to use in their materials!
How do you know your core messages are working? You hear people repeat phrases back to you. “Oh,” they will say, “you guys are the ones who do INSERT YOUR CORE MESSAGE HERE.” It takes time and discipline to get there, but with focus, you will!