Six Simple Steps to Startup Messaging

This week, I focused on rewriting our messaging for CRMchat. In my view, messaging is the most challenging part of marketing. It forms the foundation of the sales funnel and sets the tone for the entire sales process. Effective messaging captures attention and builds trust, ensuring your website, ad creatives, or sales deck converts prospects into leads. However, if done poorly, your sales funnel will collapse at the very first stage.

In this newsletter, I’ll share my messaging framework. Then, I’ll show how I’m applying it to our website and explain why our current one sucks.

Step 0. What is your target market?

While I won’t dive into this in detail here, having a clearly defined target market is crucial. Without one, tailoring your message becomes nearly impossible. You need to understand your audience: who they are, how they spend their time, the problems they face, and the tools they rely on.

Step 1. Understanding your unique value proposition (UVP)

Without a narrow market focus, you can’t create a clear UVP. Your UVP answers two essential questions:

• Why should they buy?

• Why should they buy from you?

Our previous product didn’t take off because we lacked a clear UVP. We tried to build a self-organized CRM for everyone, but everyone’s needs are different. And we’re not Salesforce. Now, we’ve narrowed our focus to Web3 startups. These startups use Telegram as their primary communication platform, which becomes chaotic when managing deals across hundreds of chats and groups. That’s why we built the first CRM app on Telegram’s marketplace. It organizes chats and groups into a pipeline directly within Telegram. Finally, we have a clear UVP.

Step 2. Stop talking about you. Focus on them.

This is the hardest part. As founders, we love talking about our products and features. But here’s the truth: nobody cares.

Remember a friend who somehow pivots every conversation back to themselves and never asks questions about you or your life. Don’t be that friend.

People want solutions to their problems and ways to improve their lives. For example, nobody needs a CRM; our clients need control over their pipeline and clarity on their next steps. Simply put, they want to sell more and stress less.

Few people wanted a better camera; they wanted to take great pictures. That’s why Kodak lost, and smartphones won. Don’t be just another commodity vendor; solve the problem.

But don’t ask prospects what they want. You’ve probably heard the old Henry Ford story: if he had asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses. What they really wanted was a way to get from A to B faster—so he built the automobile.

Step 3. Be simple.

When I explain CRMchat to friends, I can do it in one minute, and they get it. Yet, it becomes complicated when I put together a website or a deck. I’m not alone in this. Sometimes, I visit friends’ websites and can’t figure out what they do. Over coffee, they explain it clearly in five sentences. Why? Because we often try to sound “professional” to clients or investors.

“Seamless bidirectional integration” sounds professional, but “We connect these tools so data stays synced” sounds simple and clear. When you confuse your prospects, you lose them.

Step 4. Be yourself.

People buy emotionally and then justify their purchases with logic. Show your passion and personality. Don’t be boring. Don’t be another vendor.

Confession: Despite knowing all this, I still catch myself trying to sound overly professional in my newsletters or social media posts. It takes a real effort to stay authentic. After a week of Christmas holidays, I reread my newsletters, and OMG... some parts were so not me. I felt like Théoden under Saruman’s spell (nerd alert).

Looking back at those newsletters, I wonder why I couldn’t just be myself and tell the story as it was in my head. By the way, I feel the same way about our current website, and I’ll show you later how we can make it more authentic.

Step 5. Start a mental conversation with your prospects.

Imagine your prospects' questions when they visit your website or read your deck. Talk to them through it. Answer their questions, address their concerns, and explain why you're better than competitors. Think about what they want to improve and promise that improvement.

Step 6. Unite against shared “enemy”

Avoid guilt-tripping your prospects by suggesting they’re lazy or doing something wrong—nobody likes that. Instead, find a shared “enemy” to unite against. For us, it’s Telegram: an excellent messenger that is terrible for managing deal pipelines. Our clients rely on Telegram because it’s the market standard for Web3, but its chaos creates challenges. They’re neither lazy nor careless—they just need a simple solution to make pipeline management work within Telegram.

In the paid section of my newsletter, I apply this framework to rebuild our website. I’ll show the before-and-after and explain each change I made. I’ll also highlight the key difference between a website that sells and just another generic one.

Speak soon,

George Levin

December 29, 2024

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