What Is a Product Message? (And How You Can Make One)

Updated June 24, 2022

When getting your product ready for the market, your customer's first impression matters. The message you send to your customers through your product can help improve the profitability of everything you sell, depending on what you say. Learning more about your product message and how it can affect customers can help you do more with your marketing tactics. In this article, we review what a product message is, review steps for how you can create this type of message and provide examples for you to refer to when crafting your own.

What is a product message?

A product message is a company's communication of the value, purpose and relevance of its service or product. It's an explanation of why a customer should choose to become the owner of the product or service. The elements of a product message involve many attributes that all contribute to what makes a product unique and valuable to a particular demographic. The elements of a product message include the product's:

Purpose: A product message states the product's purpose to the customer. A product's purpose is what that product or service does or makes easier for that person.
Demographic: The demographic of a product is what kind of audience that product attracts. A marketer directs a product message at a product's demographic to attract its primary audience.
Differentiation: A product's differentiation is the factor or factors that make it different from other products. A product message may define a differentiation within a product to attract more attention.
Relevance: Product relevance is how your product aligns with your company's goals. Part of the purpose of a product message is to align the product and all of its benefits with your company so that customers associate a product they like with the company it came from.

How to create a product message

If you want to learn how to create your own product message for your marketing needs, consider these steps below:

1. Study your customer demographic

To create your product message, learn who your product is for. Your product demographic can help you determine many other things about your product message, such as its most effective medium, language and format. For example, if your product design is for book-lovers over 60 years old, it may be more effective to place your product message in a magazine advertisement instead of online. If you're writing for a younger audience, it may be more effective to use a casual, humorous tone than if you're marketing to an older audience who's expecting straightforward information.

2. Gauge your customer's challenges

It's important to determine what issues may prevent your customer from buying the product. You can construct your product message so that it helps minimize these anticipated challenges. For example, if a company that's selling a phone knows that a major pain point in portions of its demographic is the high list price of the phone, then a workaround for that obstacle would be the marketing of a flexible payment plan for customers.

3. Consider your medium

Next, evaluate types of medium to decide how your message can be best communicated. The medium that you choose for your product message can drastically affect how the message is received by consumers. For example, your opportunity to relate information is different on a billboard than on a webpage. A billboard may provide extensive exposure, but each customer has a limited time to read a message quickly and conveniently while driving. Meanwhile, a website may have a defined readership, but each reader can take their time and read a longer, more detailed message.

4. Create your draft and revise

Finally, begin writing your product message. To help your product message attract attention, consider what makes your product different. The differentiation of your product is what can attract strangers to your message and keep them reading. Once you have the first draft, consider revising your product message by evaluating your product's purpose. Adding elements of the purpose can give reasons a casual reader should become a customer. With a combination of differentiation and purpose, continue to revise your draft until you have an attention-grabbing product message.

Product message examples

When creating your own product message, consider referring to the examples below:

Example 1

Harvey Hills Barbershop decides to advertise on the billboard that's located at the approach to the town where their store is located. The demographic for Harvey Hills is the local clientele of all ages. The barbershop welcomes all customers with outstanding, friendly service. They decide on product messaging for the billboard that states:

No matter what hill you're from, Harvey Hills Barbershop is here for you.

Example 2

UniSmiles Dye Shop is a barbershop that specializes in rainbow-colored dyes. Their webpage, their shop's interior design and the store exterior are all very colorful. The shop owner wants to place an advertisement on the internet before customers enter the main page of their website. Because they want it to be in webpage search results, they're limited to a single line of text. For a short product message, they decide to use:

Experience the rainbow at UniSmiles Dye Shop.

Example 3

Swift-Donnel's Bookstore is planning on making a splash page that visitors see before they enter the homepage of the website. Donnel designed the splash page for desktop devices, giving him space for more detailed text and the bookstore's logo in the center. The bookstore's logo is four books, two leaning on each side of the word Swift in the center. He decides to use the following phrasing as the product message, with the first sentence above the logo, and the second section below the logo:

Whether you're leaning or learning, come visit Swift-Donnel's Bookstore and Library.

Read, study, or just relax at Swift-Donnel's with coffee, a quiet ambiance, and an ever-growing selection of books to choose from. Like a book you're reading? You can buy it at a discounted price with our Members' Pass.