The best way to effectively market a BI program to your user community is to consistently execute the same message over and over in all your marketing communications. But it’s hard to be consistent unless you create a message strategy, and ideally one that makes you stand out from the crowd.

A message strategy consists of a positioning statement and three support points. A positioning statement addresses the key target user problem by stating a benefit; i.e. why the target user should care about your products, programs or services. Support points reinforce the importance, uniqueness and believability of the positioning statement. Each positioning statement has three to four support points.

Positioning Statements

A positioning statement becomes the central idea and theme underlying all your marketing activities. A positioning statement is a short, compelling, declarative sentence that states just one benefit, and addresses your target user's No. 1 problem. It must be unique, believable and important, or your target audience will ignore your message. Here are examples of good positioning statements:

• “Tableau helps you see and understand your data.”
• “Pentaho is architected to ensure that you can easily translate data into value.
• “OptimizePM provides consulting and staffing services that turn your projects into strategic wins.”
• “Messages that Matter teaches a positioning process that sets you apart from the competition.”

A good positioning statement easily adapts to all your marketing communications. It should be simply stated and works in every aspect of your marketing effort. A positioning statement should be:

• Short - fewer than 12 words (not counting product name)
• Simple, non-jargon language
• Adaptable to various media
• A compelling statement of the one big benefit
• A conceptual statement…not necessarily copy
• Supported by three additional claims
• Unique, believable, important and useable

Support points

Once you've developed a positioning statement, you need to bolster it with three supporting claims. These statements reinforce the importance, uniqueness and believability of the positioning statement. They provide the reason to believe the central positioning statement. Most importantly, support points must support, not compete with the positioning statement.

Use support points to unfold your story in more detail. They help explain your positioning statement, and answer questions like "how do you do deliver the promised benefit?"

Here’s an example of support points for a positioning statement for a hypothetical BI program:

Positioning statement: The business analytics services group helps you create applications that make it easier to see and understand the data you need to do your job more effectively.

Support points:

• Our services group helps you identify and capture the data you need on a regular basis to improve the decision making process.
• We create an application that makes it easy for you to access the data you need to support your decision making process.
• The application we develop for you provides the timely, reliable information you need to understand your options and make an informed decision.

Supporting points also provide a structure for product, solution or technology demonstrations. While the positioning statement articulates a high-level benefit, the claims made in the supporting statements should be readily demonstrable. That is, in just a few steps, you should be able to show how your offering delivers concrete benefits.

Once you have developed supporting statements, you can drill down into as much detail as needed to provide a platform for your marketing communications. A standard outline format makes it easy for writers and other communicators to see the message strategy's benefit hierarchy, and to take full advantage of your work.

A solid message strategy makes it easier to deliver the same message across all marketing efforts. Think of it as your recipe for all marketing communication. Follow the recipe, stirring the ingredients and taste testing as you go, and voilà, you've got a dish that's hard to resist.