Get your message across with the three Bs
“When you try to tell your audience 10 things, you lose the opportunity to tell them one.” - unknown
A previous boss had a saying when we were collaborating on a slide deck or other important document together.
“Keep it short. Use the three Bs... bullets, brevity, and I forget the third one. But it doesn’t matter. Keep it short”
Every time. “I forget the third one. But it doesn’t matter. Keep it short.” After working together for a few years, I could hear her in my head as I made the slides.
Reflecting on these two quotes sent me on a search for some best practices on the topic of crafting a message that lands with your intended audience. Below are a few of the highlights.
#1 - Craft a simple and inspiring message that is easy to relate to and understand.
As a former college athlete, a lot of the great examples of leadership in my life came in the form of Football coaches. Often coaches have a theme for the season or week. Often portrayed in the form of a single word.
They don’t do this for their health but rather to connect and inspire with their players with a simple, straight forward message. This principle fully explored in “One Word That will change your life” by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page.
Clutter and complexity lead to procrastination and paralysis while simplicity and focus lead to success and clarity.
Success and clarity... sound perfect for communicating with college athletes, really ANY target audience.
#2 - Strategy-specific messages linked to your purpose become tools to help employees connect their day-to-day efforts with the longer term goal.
For one stretch of offseason workouts, we had our one word emblazoned on the back of the shirts we work every time we trained as a team.
“Finish”
Their was a whole explanation of why this one word which is not important for the point of this article but our coaches made it clear that they wanted all of our effort from start to the end.
That offseason EVERYTHING was about finishing. Through the line, through the defined amount of time for the drill, a set in the weight room, anything and everything. FINISH.
As athletes, our coach had tied one word to the accomplishment of all of broader goals as a team.
#3 - Most people don’t want to hear from most companies most of the time.
Unrelated to the college football examples above, this one is just a word of caution. You have to find the moments where you fit into your customers world, not the other way around.
As marketers and business owners, we like to think that our product or solution is THE solution but in reality we play only a part. Communicate like it.
#4 - Targeted messages but not too targeted
Data to personalize and target your message is abound but be careful not to turn off your audience with aggressive uses of data you haven’t collect directly. Using this data improperly could have the opposite of the intended outcome.
In summary, communicate how you would like to be communicated to. With a little practice, you too can communicate with the Three Bs.
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