Advanced Messaging Strategy: Making Your Product a Must Have

Are you struggling to position your product as essential rather than optional? Wondering why your marketing tactics aren’t converting like they used to?

In this article, you'll learn how to craft a sustainable messaging strategy that makes your product irresistible by addressing real customer needs. You'll explore how to apply frameworks like Jobs to Be Done, identify high-urgency buyers, analyze hidden competitors, and use the Triple-P Pitch formula to refine your message. Whether you're launching a new product or trying to revive sales, this guide will show you how to win with clarity, not gimmicks.

Why Messaging Strategy Matters More Than Marketing Tactics

Marketing professionals often focus heavily on tactics like scarcity, social proof, and conversion optimization techniques. While these elements certainly have their place, they're built on a foundation far more fundamental to success.

According to buyer psychology expert Katelyn Bourgoin, founder of Why We Buy, these tactics are ineffective if your underlying messaging strategy is broken.

People purchase a product to solve a problem in their lives. For example, a busy mom of three might want to feel more confident in her appearance for family pictures. She begins researching teeth whitening products to accomplish that job. If your messaging communicates that you understand that job with context specific to her experience, she’ll buy your product.

When you get your messaging strategy right, several transformative things happen. You stop selling the wrong solutions to the wrong people. Your product launches are more successful because you know exactly what value proposition resonates with your target market. Writing copy becomes significantly easier because you have extreme clarity about what you want to communicate. 

Purchasing decisions feel like obvious choices for your customers because they understand exactly how the product solves their specific problems. Most importantly, your messaging strategy creates sustainable competitive advantages that are difficult for competitors to replicate because they're based on deep customer understanding rather than surface-level tactics or temporary market conditions.

Your underlying message about what you are and why people should care shouldn't change, even as you adapt your specific words for different contexts and audiences.

How to Create a Sustainable Messaging Strategy: The Painkiller Method

#1: Research Your Customers' Experiences

Understanding your customers doesn't require formal research protocols or significant budgets. What it does require is systematic investigation into how your customers actually experience their problems and make their purchasing decisions.

You need to identify the specific jobs customers are trying to accomplish and the pain points they encounter in that process. Understanding their desired outcomes helps you see what success looks like from their perspective. Equally important is discovering what objections they have to various solutions since these objections often reveal the criteria they use to evaluate options.

Bourgoin advocates for leveraging online communities and platforms where your ideal customers gather to discuss their challenges. Reddit represents one of the most valuable resources for this type of customer insight because people there engage in authentic conversations about their real experiences, frustrations, and solutions.

Pro Tip: Instead of manually copying and pasting conversations from various forums, marketers can now instruct ChatGPT to analyze specific online communities and extract insights about particular problem sets. This technology allows you to gather substantial customer intelligence in hours rather than weeks.

The Jobs to Be Done framework, developed by innovation theorist Clayton Christensen and refined by practitioners like Bob Moesta, helps you understand customer behavior beyond traditional demographic analysis. This framework recognizes that people don't buy products because of who they are; they buy products because they have specific jobs they need to accomplish.

Understanding this distinction fundamentally changes how you approach customer analysis. Instead of focusing primarily on customer attributes like age, gender, income, or job title, you examine the circumstances that trigger someone to seek a solution.

Bob Moesta's timeline methodology provides a structured approach to understanding how customers move through their buying journey. Every purchase decision begins with a trigger event that makes someone realize they have a problem that needs solving. This moment of recognition moves them from being unaware of their need to actively noticing potential solutions that they would have previously ignored.

Following this initial awareness, customers typically enter what Moesta calls passive looking, where they begin noticing solutions but aren't yet actively searching for a product to purchase. Something eventually pushes them to feel an urgency about solving their problem, which transitions them into an active-looking mode, where they begin researching specific options.

After active research, customers move into consideration mode, creating a shortlist of solutions they want to try. They make a purchase, test the solution, and ultimately determine whether it successfully completed their job. If not, they fire that solution and begin looking for something new.

Example of the Job-Based Urgency Messaging

A teeth whitening product illustrates how job-based thinking reveals marketing opportunities that demographic analysis might miss. Instead of simply targeting “young women who care about appearance,” understanding the job shows that people want to “brighten my smile before an important event this week.”

This job-based insight opens up entirely different marketing possibilities. People going on dates, giving presentations, attending graduations, or getting married all share a desire to fill the same job, even though they might have completely different demographic profiles. A twenty-five-year-old woman preparing for an interview and a sixty-two-year-old man going on a date both need confidence for upcoming social interactions.

Understanding the job allows you to identify many trigger events that create urgency around your solution. Graduation season, wedding season, Valentine's Day for newly single people, and back-to-school periods for students all represent times when this particular job becomes more pressing for different segments of your market.

This approach enables you to create marketing campaigns that speak to shared circumstances rather than shared demographics. One advertisement about gaining confidence for important social interactions could effectively reach multiple demographic groups who are all trying to accomplish the same job, making your marketing more efficient and your message more resonant.

#2: Map Your Obvious and Disruptive Competitive Landscape

Understanding your competitive landscape from the customer's perspective requires examining what people are doing today to accomplish the job your product is designed to perform.  

This broader perspective often reveals competitive threats and opportunities that traditional competitive analysis completely misses.

By mapping out all these alternatives, you can better understand what criteria customers use to evaluate solutions and what specific advantages your product needs to emphasize. You might discover that time savings matter more than cost for certain customer segments or that reliability and consistency outweigh convenience for others.

This comprehensive view of competition also helps you identify partnership opportunities. If customers often combine multiple solutions to accomplish their job, you might find ways to integrate with complementary services rather than viewing them as competitors.

3 Examples of Competitive Disruption

The fitness industry's disruption by weight loss medications demonstrates how competitive landscapes can shift when you think in terms of jobs rather than product categories. Gyms traditionally viewed their competition as other fitness facilities, personal trainers, or home workout equipment. However, when Ozempic and similar medications entered the market, they immediately became significant competitors to gyms, even though they operate in different industries.

These medications compete with gyms because they help accomplish the same overarching job that many gym-goers try to complete: losing weight. The medications address a core challenge that makes gym-based weight loss difficult by reducing appetite and cravings. When people don't struggle with overeating, they often find they can achieve their weight loss goals without the time commitment and physical discomfort associated with regular exercise.

This shift forced gyms to reconsider their value proposition. Those that adapted began emphasizing jobs that medications couldn't address: building muscle, creating social connections, improving mental health through endorphins, and providing structured routines. Smart gym owners began positioning their facilities around community building and comprehensive wellness rather than just weight loss.

The online education industry faces a similar competitive disruption from artificial intelligence tools. Course creators who built businesses around teaching specific skills like copywriting, social media marketing, or basic design work now find themselves competing with ChatGPT and other AI platforms. Students can often get immediate answers to their questions rather than watching hours of video content.

This doesn't mean that AI replaces all educational content, but it does significantly change the competitive landscape. Course creators who understand this shift are adapting by focusing on jobs that AI cannot perform: providing accountability, creating community connections, offering personalized feedback, and helping students navigate complex strategic decisions that require human judgment.

A robotic vacuum cleaner doesn't just compete with other robotic vacuums; it competes with traditional vacuuming, hiring housekeeping services, tolerating messy floors, or asking family members to help with cleaning.

Each alternative has different cost structures, time requirements, and quality outcomes. Some customers might choose the robotic vacuum because it saves time, while others might prefer a housekeeper because it provides better results and includes additional services. Still, others might stick with traditional vacuuming because they want to exercise or enjoy the immediate satisfaction of seeing visible progress.

#3: Identify Your Best-Fit Buyers

Best-fit buyer identification requires understanding people's problems and the specific circumstances that make those problems particularly acute or urgent. 

The teeth whitening example from earlier demonstrates this principle: many people would like whiter teeth, but those most likely to purchase a forty-eight-hour whitening solution face important social interactions within the next few days.

This urgency-based segmentation often proves more valuable than demographic segmentation because it identifies customers who are actively motivated to make a purchase decision. Someone who generally wishes they had whiter teeth might browse whitening products occasionally, but someone who has a job interview next week is ready to buy a solution immediately.

Understanding your best-fit buyers also requires recognizing what unique value you can provide to specific customer segments. People with common jobs and problems often share common traits, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

Example of Best-Fit Buyer Identification

Amanda Goetz, founder of House of Wise, a CBD gummy company, exemplifies this job-focused approach to customer selection. 

Most CBD companies position their products as solutions for everything from arthritis to anxiety to sleep problems, which dilutes their message and makes it difficult for customers to understand why they should choose that particular brand.

Rather than trying to serve everyone who might potentially use CBD products, she focused specifically on busy career mothers who struggled with three particular jobs: managing stress, improving sleep quality, and feeling more confident in intimate relationships.

This focus allowed Amanda to create distinct products for each job rather than promoting one generic CBD product with dozens of potential benefits.

By concentrating on three specific jobs for one particular customer segment, Amanda could craft messaging that spoke directly to the experiences of her target market. She understood the particular contexts in which these problems showed up for busy mothers: the stress of juggling career and family responsibilities, the difficulty of falling asleep while mentally planning the next day's activities, and the challenge of maintaining intimacy while exhausted from daily responsibilities.

This specificity enabled House of Wise to stand out in a crowded market because their customers immediately recognized their own experiences in the brand's messaging. Instead of wondering whether a generic CBD product might help with their stress, customers could see products specifically designed for their type of stress in their particular life circumstances.

#4: Write Your Messaging With the Triple-P Pitch Framework

Even the most well-researched messaging strategy requires real-world testing to ensure it resonates with your target market.

Bourgoin's Triple-P Pitch framework provides a structure for creating messages that consistently convert prospects into customers. This framework recognizes that effective pitches must accomplish three essential tasks: clarify the problem, present a persuasive promise, and provide compelling proof.

The Problem: The problem component taps into the pain points and challenges prospects already recognize and care about solving. This isn't about manufacturing new problems or urgency. It's about articulating the existing frustrations and obstacles that motivate people to seek solutions. The problem statement should make prospects think, “Yes, that's exactly what I'm struggling with.”

Understanding and articulating the right problem requires recognizing that effective solutions are inherently opinionated. The best products and services don't try to be everything to everyone. Instead, they take a clear stance on what problems matter most and why their particular approach to solving those problems is superior.

The dating app Hinge provides an excellent example of problem-focused messaging. Instead of promoting the typical “find your soulmate” promise every dating platform uses, Hinge differentiates itself with the tagline “the dating app meant to be deleted.”

This messaging taps into the real problem that dating app users experience: they don't want to be stuck endlessly swiping through profiles. They want to find a meaningful connection that allows them to leave the dating app ecosystem entirely.

Hinge understands the underlying frustration that drives their market. Dating app users often feel trapped in a cycle of superficial interactions and time-wasting conversations. By acknowledging this pain point directly, Hinge positions itself as the solution that helps people escape the problem rather than just promising another shot at romance.

Snickers demonstrates another masterful example of problem-focused messaging with its “You're not you when you're hungry” campaign.

Through extensive customer research, Snickers discovered buyers weren't primarily choosing candy bars for taste or indulgence. Instead, they were people caught between commitments who needed something substantial enough to prevent them from making poor hunger-induced decisions.

The insight came from understanding that hunger doesn't just cause physical discomfort; it leads to behavioral changes that can embarrass people in social and professional situations. Whether someone is heading into an important meeting, going on a date, or trying to maintain their composure during a stressful day, hunger-induced irritability or poor judgment could damage their reputation and relationships.

By focusing on this problem, Snickers positioned its product as more than just a candy bar. It became the solution for maintaining one's best self in challenging situations. This messaging was so effective that Snickers saw sixteen percent market share growth within one year of launching the campaign, and seventeen years later, it continues using variations of this message.

The Promise: The promise component presents the outcome or transformation that your solution provides. However, this promise must be potent and persuasive rather than generic or exaggerated. Potent promises are specific enough for prospects to visualize the outcome and evaluate whether your product would solve their situation. Persuasive promises are believable and aligned with what prospects have seen others achieve.

The Proof: The proof component has become increasingly critical as markets have become saturated with bold promises and exaggerated claims. Prospects have learned to be skeptical of marketing messages, so providing evidence of your ability to deliver becomes essential for conversion. This proof can take many forms: case studies, testimonials, data, demonstrations, or track records.

Craft Your Messaging The Trojan Horse Technique

One of the most sophisticated aspects of an effective messaging strategy involves understanding the difference between what customers want and what they actually need. The Trojan Horse technique involves selling people what they want while delivering what they need, creating customer satisfaction that goes beyond their initial expectations.

This approach requires recognizing that customers often don't fully understand the root cause of their problems or the most effective solutions. They know what symptoms they're experiencing and what outcomes they desire, but they may not recognize the underlying issues that need to be addressed to achieve lasting success.

The key to implementing this technique successfully is ensuring that you deliver both what customers want and what they need. If you only deliver what they want without addressing their underlying needs, you'll likely struggle with customer retention and referrals. If you only address their needs without delivering the outcomes they want, they won't purchase from you in the first place.

This approach requires deep customer understanding and often involves some education during the message delivery process. Customers need to recognize the value of what you're providing beyond their initial expectations, which means you need to help them understand why the additional elements are important for their success.

Bourgoin uses this technique in the messaging for her own Painkiller system. She recognized that many teams struggled with messaging and positioning because they didn't understand their customers well enough, usually due to insufficient research. However, she discovered that selling customer research directly wasn't effective because business owners often viewed research as time-consuming and unnecessary.

Painkiller positions itself as a messaging tool that helps businesses create more effective marketing copy. It appeals to what business owners want: better conversion rates, clearer communication, and more compelling marketing materials. However, the system actually delivers what they need: a structured research process that helps them understand their customers' real problems and motivations.

Social Media Marketing World demonstrates another application of this technique. Michael Stelzner understands that attendees want professional development and training that will make them more valuable in their careers. However, what many attendees actually need is connection with like-minded professionals and a sense of community in their field.

The conference's messaging primarily focuses on its training and education components, which motivates people to purchase tickets. However, the networking opportunities, community connections, and relationship building often provide the most lasting value for attendees. Many people return year after year not just for the content but for the relationships they've built and the community they've found.

#5: Test Your Marketing Messaging

Once written, you expose your pitch messaging to real prospects in various contexts. You might test your pitch as the hero section of your website, in cold outreach emails, during sales conversations, or in social media content. The key is gathering feedback about how well your message resonates with your intended audience.

Social media marketing environments provide particularly fast feedback loops for message testing. You can launch small advertising campaigns, track engagement rates, monitor click-through rates, and measure conversion rates to understand how effectively your message captures attention and motivates action.

However, quantitative metrics only tell part of the story. Qualitative feedback from prospects and customers provides crucial insights into how people interpret your message, what questions it raises, and what objections it fails to address. This feedback often reveals gaps between what you think you're communicating and what people truly understand.

Effective testing requires systematic iteration rather than random experimentation. When you test a message that doesn't perform well, you need to diagnose which component of the Triple-P framework needs adjustment. Perhaps prospects don't recognize the problem as significant, your promise seems too good to be true, or your proof isn't compelling enough for your target market.

The goal isn't to find the perfect message immediately but to continuously refine your messaging based on real market feedback. This iterative approach helps you develop messages that sound good in theory and motivate prospects to take action in practice.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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