Move over, “product-market fit.” There’s a new fancy term in town:
“Messaging-audience fit.”
What is messaging-audience fit?
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “product-market fit” refers to when companies get lots of traction because their product fits the needs of a particular market.
But “messaging-audience fit” might be more practical for your day-to-day marketing work.
Here’s why: All customer-facing writing—copy, content, UX writing—is only as good as the reception it gets from its audience.
A lot of people miss this, though, partly because copywriting “swipe file” websites and Twitter gurus will swear a piece of copy is good… without providing any context for who the audience is.
Message-audience fit example
There’s a water brand called Liquid Death. Two prominent lines of their copy are “murder your thirst” and “sell your soul.”
Now, this works well for the people who buy their water.
But if Liquid Death originally had plans to sell to 85-year-old women, it’s unlikely this copy would have resonated quite the same.
At this point you might be saying, “Duh, write to your audience.”
Absolutely. And please do.
Just remember to write customer-facing messages that fit them, rather than writing things that you, personally, find engaging or funny.
Because in most cases, your audience is not you—which means you might not like what they do.
One final note
Another mistake people make is only applying this to copywriting.
But it’s important to have messaging-audience fit in every single written word a customer ever sees from you, including things like customer support emails.
