Communication and Message Structure

I asked my team to carefully consider three things before designing any marketing copy:

1. Types of Communication

From a marketing perspective, communication can be one-to-many which is helpful for general announcements, or one-to-one which is the most interactive one such as direct mail, personal email, messenger chat, etc. Many-to-one, like customer feedback or many-to-many like online chat rooms and blogging websites where participants freely exchange their ideas, are popular forms of communication in the Internet era. Each type of communication requires a certain channel and certain message structure — so please think twice before rushing to push the send button.

2. Elements of Communication

In 1984 Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver first published a mathematical model of communication in Bell System Technical Journal. The model was primary designed to improve technical communication but was later widely applied in different fields of communication. According to the Shannon-Weaver model, communication has the following elements: sender, encoder, channel, decoder, receiver, feedback.

Later, being influenced by the Shannon-Weaver model an American communications theorist David Berlo came up with the SMCR model which includes the four basic components: sender, message, channel, receiver.

Since I give huge importance to the feedback, I always advise my team to see it as a five-element loop with feedback included as a final element. The most tricky thing here is to understand what element to start from. My recommendation is always to start from the receiver, then design your message and only then choose the optimal medium to reach your target segment. Last but not least, always leave the door open for feedbacks.

3. AIDA model

When it comes to constructing your message you should know what comes first, next and last. In general, I suggest putting your message/copy in the following format: headline, body, call-to-action.

Kind reminder: by saying “message” I’m talking about any kind of information that you want to convey to receivers. It can be a text message, press release, description of social media post or digital ad, the script of a short promo video, blog post, and whatnot.

Personally, for me, the most convenient form of allocating information across the aforementioned structure is the AIDA model. The acronyms of AIDA stand for attention, interest, desire, and action. The model was developed by the American businessman Elmo Lewis in 1898 and used in marketing to describe the steps that a customer goes through in the process of purchasing a product.

Super brief summary of the model is this: first, you need to grab the attention of customers, then interest them, then make them desire it and finally encourage them to take action.

Why did I ask my team to consider AIDA prior to designing the actual message? And why I gave a structure sample? Well, here you go:

Easy. Your headline has only one purpose: grab attention. Once the receiver delved into the message body you should sustain interest with valuable and interesting information. In the second part of your message body make them desire it. It must be so desirable so the customers themselves seek the call to action. Here is my spontaneous example:

Enjoy the read and thank you for sharing!