Did you know your messaging alone can increase your business’s bottom line, leading to increased profit margins? Every year, businesses lose a ton of money because of poor communication. This Lucidpress report indicates that companies with consistent messaging across all customer or client touchpoints reported a 23 percent increase in revenue.

Good communication generates cash –lots of it. This is why you should implement the messaging triangle framework in your business today.

If you want to create an ultra-powerful communication engine comparable to world-class businesses, feel free to book a discovery call with me.

What is the Messaging Triangle?

The messaging triangle is a communication technique used by CEOs and successful business persons across the globe to communicate succinctly and effectively.

As a communication framework, the message triangle is designed to help you adequately communicate a core or vital message to the right audience.

It has three key elements:

• Identifying the problem
• Ensuring the message is valuable to its audience
• Providing a clear plan of action or desired takeaway

If you’ve ever read Jeff Bezos’ or Warren Buffet’s letters to shareholders, you’ve likely seen the messaging triangle in action. Mastering the messaging triangle will put you in the top one percent of all communicators, improve client relationships, increase your bottom line, and turn your business into a profit machine.

Importance of Communicating with Purpose

As a business owner, you want to ensure that your communication and solutions are definitively understood.

Yet, we have seen companies miss out on the opportunity to drive sales, generate more revenue, or manage a crisis by using poor messaging and putting out vague directives.

You cannot afford to bungle your communication at any level. It’s too important. Good communication can provide your business with the following benefits:

• Improves marketing outcomes — A consistent marketing “voice” can attract more customers, increase conversion rates, compel customers to take action, and minimize negative experiences with your business.

• Reduces negative brand perception — Companies with confusing messaging are often considered unserious and unreliable. With honest and transparent communication, customers perceive your business as credible and trustworthy.

• Eliminates negative client and customer experience — Empathetic and clear communication can help resolve customer issues and problems. This will leave the customer satisfied and renew their trust in your business.

• Increases client retention — Good communication fosters trust-building between your business and clients. Customers who feel understood, cared for, and catered to, tend to spend more money with a business. Whereas, bad customer experiences arising from miscommunication or inadequate communication can lead to a loss of customer loyalty.

Components of the Key Message Triangle

The triangle of communication has three key components. Let’s explore each of them:

1. Identifying the Problem

Identifying an existing problem is the first step in creating a messaging triangle. So, whether it’s a sales problem, a culture crisis, an inventory issue, or something else, find out what it is.

For instance, if your company’s revenues are down this quarter, you must find out why that happened. Check your messaging to see if your marketing copy is mundane. Or see if your target prospects are already used to your copy. If they are, switch things up.

For example, you could write new copy, carry out some A/B testing, and test your marketing materials to see if you’ll generate more sales.

2. Ensuring the Message is Valuable to its Audience

A message triangle requires a captive or interested audience. Your copy should resonate with them. A good rule of thumb is to think of ways to tie your ideas or thoughts to the target prospect’s wants or needs.

A receptive prospect might engage with and pay apt attention to your message if it aims to eliminate their pain or increase their pleasure.

For example, if you run a sales team training company and want to help your customers hit their sales target in the next quarter, you could share tips that will help increase show-up rates for sales calls or productivity tips to help them sell more product units.

3. Providing a Clear Plan of Action or Desired Takeaway

A key part of effective communication is what happens after the presentation, speech, letter, or content.

Outline the specific actions you want your audience to take after listening to you or reading your content. Think of the feelings you want your audience to have. Think of the preferred behaviors you would want to see. Think of your desired outcome.

Phrase your communication or message so clearly that each client can execute and take action immediately.

Whatever your approach, try to keep your message simple, effective, clear, and actionable.

How to Develop Your Messaging Strategy

A messaging strategy helps your organization plan how to communicate harmoniously with your target audience so that you can get your preferred results.

The right strategy will differentiate your brand from others, communicate your mission, and put your business in a better position with the average customer. If you need help developing an effective messaging strategy, I offer dedicated coaching services to help you improve your communication.

To develop an effective messaging strategy, you have to do the following:

Understand Your Audience

Figure out your ideal customer profile or buyer persona. Find out who they are, their age range, motivations, personal challenges, and other essential details. The more specific you can get, the better your outcome.

For instance, a 30-year-old first-time mom is likelier to buy baby products from a company run by women with experience in childbirth.

Why? Because business owners are likely to craft their messaging based on their understanding of the 30-year-old woman’s pain points. This unique insight can help them communicate effectively in the language the first-time mom can relate to.

Craft a Powerful Story That Connects with Your Audience

To craft a story that resonates with your audience, you must first Identify shared suffering, joys, pains, dreams, thrills, or goals. What’s your story?

How can you use that story to connect with your audience and get them to think that you’re the business for them? A good story can help you find common ground with prospects. This can translate into increased business and revenue for you.

People generally like doing business with brands they know, like, trust, and can relate to. If you tell a good story, your audience will respond better to your message.

Have a Specific Objective

This is the action or reaction you want to elicit from your audience. For this to work, it has to be specific and clear-cut. You cannot leave room for any confusion. Communication objectives help businesses influence their target audience to take specific actions.

Some messaging objectives include audience motivation, interest generation, narrative strengthening, transaction completion, demand generation, and business growth.

Deploy a Clear Differentiating Element 

Determine what makes you different and what unique edge you have over your competition and aggressively promote it. Are your rates cheaper? Do you source your material from better providers? Are your processes more effective than those of your competitors? Do you have a superior product?

What precisely separates your business from the hordes of similar businesses? Determine what it is and use it to your advantage. This will set your business apart from others in the sea of sameness.

Do you want to craft more persuasive messaging for your products and services? My proven messaging strategies can help you design the perfect messaging guidelines for your business.

How to Implement the Message Triangle in Various Scenarios

The following scenarios can help you see how a communication triangle, when correctly implemented, can transform your business.

Selling Products or Services Online

Let’s say you want to sell your products or services online but have no idea how to craft the appropriate messaging. You could learn from Gumroad’s copy.

Gumroad is a digital platform that allows content creators to sell their services or products and get paid quickly. The company first identified a problem: creators who were either underpaid or unpaid for their “creativity.”

Then, they crafted their messaging specifically for content creators with that problem. The phrase “Go from Zero to $1. Start Selling” on the homepage resonated with many content creators struggling to sell their work or knowledge.

Then, they proposed a solution in the form of a seamless platform that allows users to try anything they want and “see what sticks.” When you click the “Start Selling” button, you’ll be redirected to this page:

Any creator struggling with inadequate or lacking compensation will likely sign up and start selling immediately after landing on the Gumroad website.

Identifying a Gap in Your Market

Another scenario is where the communication triangle model can help identify a market gap and position your messaging to capture that market. A good example of a company that did this well is Warby Parker.

Warby Parker saw a gap in the online glass frame retail space: people needed to test the frames without walking into a physical store before buying. So, Warby Parker set out to remedy that.

The copy on their homepage shows that they understood the problem:

They offered to send buyers FIVE different frames to try from the comfort of their homes. Imagine needing glass frames and never going to a store to try on some.

You merely needed to sign up on their website and have the frames shipped to you, along with free return shipping options. Cool, eh?! No wonder Warby Parker grossed almost $670 million in 2023.

Crisis Management

A wise person once said, “Every day is someone’s day on Twitter. The goal is not to be that person”. While this was mostly about Twitter (now X), the same applies to the real world.

No one wants to deal with a crisis of epic proportions. But it’s better to be prepared for when it happens. This way, you’ll have the appropriate communication framework to handle the PR firestorm.

A company that used the messaging triangle well is Southwest Airlines. When a passenger was killed due to a blown engine on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, the CEO, Gary Kelly, personally contacted the family of the victim and sincerely apologized for the accident.

Then, the airline took down all advertising, while Gary called every passenger on the plane at the time of the accident. He apologized to each passenger and offered counseling and support services to anyone who needed it.

The company was hailed for handling the crisis, which won them a lot of goodwill.

These are just a few examples of how using the messaging triangle puts businesses on the path to profitability and averting bankruptcy. However, I understand that your situation may be different.

My message strategy expert services were designed for your specific situation. Book a discovery call, and let me design your flagship marketing strategy.

Best Practices for Enhancing Your Messaging Skills

If you want to become very good at effective communication, here’s what you need to do:

• Adopt the 5 Cs of communication. Ensure your messaging is always concrete, clear, concise, cohesive, and complete.

• Pay attention to the 5 Fs of messaging. These are facts, folklore, feeling, fiction, and fantasy.

• Ask the important questions first. Questions like what the goal of this messaging is, who it is meant for, why they need it, and whether they are familiar with this topic.

• Tie your messaging to your business’s core values and mission.

• Make your messaging memorable. In the vast “sea” of content and information, compelling communication can help you outsell your competition.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are the top FAQs on the topic:

How Does the Messaging Triangle Enhance Marketing Strategies?

It helps you craft a cohesive marketing message and streamline your sales processes for the target audience.

This means your sales copy, landing pages, website content, flyers, banners, TV and radio ads, billboards, and other marketing materials will be optimized for consistency across all channels.

How Can the Messaging Triangle Help in Managing Crisis Communications?

It’s easier to frame your communication to match the gravity of the situation when you have a communication framework in place. You’ll be able to identify the real issues, develop key talking points, understand your audience and their overarching needs, and craft a compelling message that produces a satisfactory outcome for everyone involved.

What Are Some Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using the Messaging Triangle?

Some common mistakes include:

• Not understanding your audience

• Making assumptions about the problem

• Not having a clear objective

• Lacking a clear unique selling proposition (USP)

• Poor alignment between messaging, strategies, and outcomes.

How Does the Messaging Triangle Differ From Other Communication Models?

The messaging triangle is designed to help ensure your messaging is memorable and effective.

The messaging should paint a clear picture in the target audience’s minds and be compelling enough to get the audience to accept or do the communicator’s bidding. It is universal in its approach and can serve as a guideline for all forms of communication.

Conclusion

Don’t make the same mistake as other businesses or individuals. You need to stand out in the vast sea of individuals and businesses.

As an eloquent communicator, the proven messaging triangle framework can help you craft irresistible messages that will turn your prospects into buyers.

You do not run a cookie-cutter business (no offense if you do), so your messaging shouldn’t be mundane and dull. It should be unique, compelling, eloquent, and effective.

Need some help with that? Set up a discovery call with me today, and I’ll help you craft the potent messaging your business deserves.