The Magic Message

You have less than a minute to lose, but so much more to gain. 

How you tell your agency’s story matters.

It has to be quick. It has to be relevant. And for goodness sake, it has to be different. 

We get a few seconds to capture a potential client’s attention before they move onto the next thing. 

If you’re going to make the most of it, you need to simplify your message.

Most Agencies Have the Same Problem 

Agency positioning isn’t clear and it isn’t repeatable. Founders, new business people, and project teams tell different versions of the same story - leaving it up to the client to try and parse out what the agency does and why they’re different. 

But there is a solution. 

It starts with creating the building blocks of a story, and works when there’s a willingness to commit to the results. 

Here are the building blocks: 

Goals + Blockers + Solution

Start With a Specific Person and a Specific Goal 

Everybody wants something. But what you and your agency want isn’t interesting. What’s interesting is what your clients want.

Ask yourself, “who are my clients and what are their goals?” 

The more specific you get with your target clients, the more specific you can get with their goals. Specific is good. 

As you’re thinking about goals, acknowledge that the ultimate goal of many clients will be to “make more money” or “grow the business”.  Use that awareness to stop just short of that financial goal and focus on the preceding element or activity. 

How Logline Did It:

We work with agency leaders who want to create a more reliable sales pipeline and improve their external positioning. 

Identify the Blockers

Now that you know who you’re talking about and what they want. You need to explain the problem. 

What’s stopping your client from reaching their goals? 

Illustrating the blockers your clients face not only introduces a compelling conflict to the story, it also gives you the opportunity to establish some expertise in the space. If you know (and can name) the exact problems or feelings your prospect is dealing with, you’ll gain instant credibility and start to differentiate your firm.

How Logline Did It:

We work with agency leaders who want to create a more reliable sales pipeline and improve their external positioning. Today, those leaders are forced to sacrifice billable hours or add expensive full-time overhead to make any progress. 

Explain How You Help

We now have the main character of our story (the client), we’ve established their goals, and we’ve identified the challenges standing in the way. 

Get excited, it’s time to talk about your agency and how you save the day for that main character. 

What do you do and how does it work? 

The solution that you lay out should match the blockers you’ve already outlined. Joshua Gott (who has articulated a lot of similar thinking here) calls this symmetry and calls out this key rule: 

Never set up a problem you’re not going to solve, and never solve a problem you haven’t set up.

The solution you offer, should directly and (hopefully) uniquely overcome the blockers you’ve already illustrated. 

A word of caution though - keep it simple. If you do this part well, you’ll have plenty of time to go in-depth on your work and process with qualified prospects. 

How Logline Did It:

We work with agency leaders who want to create a more reliable sales pipeline and improve their external positioning. Today, those leaders are forced to sacrifice billable hours or add expensive full-time overhead to make any progress. Logline is a consultancy that helps agencies grow and maintain profitability by managing marketing strategy and processes without the burden of full-time overhead or utilization challenges. 

Get Started

This type of messaging framework - Goal + Blocker + Solution - is magic.

But you have to commit to it.

You can - and should - go deeper on all three of these building blocks and create an extended perspective for each. Creating this core messaging guide will make writing marketing copy and creating external assets a breeze (with the added benefit of consistency). 

Sometimes an external perspective helps. If you want to work with us to create your messaging guide - let us know.