Message Map

Before you create or record your
elevator pitch, it is worth spending time composing a message map. A message map summarizes your value
proposition and helps you to prepare to make your elevator pitch which will be
15 seconds to (not more than) 2 minutes long.

Forbes
Contributor Carmine Gallo’s video on the subject of message maps is
concise and useful.

Essentially, Mr. Gallo is
recommending that you create a visual display of your story onone page
starting with a twitter-friendly (140 characters or less) message summarizing
the one over-arching purpose underpinning your mission, organization,
enterprise or value proposition.

Under
your main message, add three or at most four supporting points that add depth
and understanding for your audience of what it is you do and can do for
customers, suppliers, channel partners, employees and community—your
stakeholder ecosystem.

Extend
the conversation to a 30 second pitch (or longer but not more than 2 minutes)
by expanding on each of your three or four main points by adding two or three
or at most four bullet sub-points. Your sub-points need to be very
specific—data, examples, statistics or stories.

Here
is a message map prepared by legalbrandmarketingblog.wordpress.com for a law
firm that specializes in helping persons charged with driving while under the
influence of alcohol. It clearly shows the concept of what a message map will
look like.

Message
maps, according to Gallo, work each and every time with complex concepts,
products and services. He says that the more complex it is, the more you need a
message map. They allow for clear, concise communication not only by leaders of
an organization but also everyone in them from frontline, customer-facing
employees to developers, product managers, sales people, marketing agencies and
board of directors as well as enterprises upstream and downstream in their
business model and elsewhere in their ecosystem.

If
you can’t explain what it is that you actually do or want to do to a client,
supplier, marketing partner, boss, employee, peer, board of directors or
journalist in two minutes or less, don’t be surprised when your new product or
service fails.

@ProfBruce