Yesterday I said your message needs to make the customer feel like their problem could actually end.

Today I want to show you what that looks like in practice.

Let's say you sell a supplement for people who crash hard every afternoon. Foggy, irritable, drained ... and they still have three hours of work left.

A soft message sounds like this:

"Supports daily energy and balance."

A clear message sounds like this:

"Stop the 2 p.m. crash without feeling wired later."

Same product. Completely different effect.

The first one describes a category. The second one describes a person's actual day. Their actual frustration. And the specific future they actually want.

That's the difference between soft and clear.

Clear doesn't mean loud. It doesn't mean hype. It doesn't mean making promises you can't keep.

It just means saying the thing plainly.

Name the pain they recognize. Show them the future they want. Remove the fear that's keeping them from believing it.

That's it.

Here's a quick gut check for your own message...

If a stranger read your headline and couldn't tell who it was for or what problem it ends, it's too soft.

If the wrong person could read it and think "that sounds like me," it's too broad.

If your customer has to do mental work to connect your words to their life, you've already lost them.

The goal is instant recognition. The right person reads it and thinks, "that's exactly me."

When that happens, you don't have to sell as hard. The message does the work.

Tomorrow I want to talk about why so many good brands end up with soft messaging in the first place. Because it's not laziness. It's actually pretty understandable. And knowing why it happens is the first step to stopping it.

See you tomorrow,

Jeremiah

P.S. "Clear beats careful when it's true." Write that somewhere you'll see it.

100% Typo Guarantee … This message was hand-crafted by a human being … me.

There was no review queue, no editorial process, no post-facto revisions. I just wrote it and sent it … so I can pretty much guarantee some typo or grammatical error that would make all my past English teachers cringe.

Anonymous Data Disclaimer … Most of my clients prefer that I not share the inner workings of their businesses or the exact details of the marketing strategies we develop. To share my proprietary intellectual property without compromising the sensitive nature of my relationship with them, I often anonymize what I share with you. This may include changing the specifics of their industry, what actually happened, or what we developed together. When I make these changes, I work to preserve the success principle I want to convey to you while obscuring sensitive data. This is necessary.

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