How do we choose messages for our buyers?

Identify the concerns your message must address by researching buyers' business challenges, information sources and practical circumstances. The Frameworks starts with questions about what keeps buyers awake, where they get information and which business problems they need to solve, rather than assuming a job title explains someone's needs.

Speak to sellers and others who have interacted with the intended audience to challenge product-led assumptions. In work for a software vendor promoting a niche capability, The Frameworks spoke to people familiar with the audience and found that some prospective buyers were not technically minded. It replaced a demanding white-paper experience with a more graphical presentation organised around practical challenges, with different layers of detail for different expertise and available time. Use audience understanding to decide both what a message addresses and how much explanation buyers need.

Connect your capabilities to buyer needs by selecting what your business can do about the concerns buyers actually have. The Frameworks compares a client's capabilities with audience needs and competing offers, then considers market opportunities, threats and the wider context. The aim is a proposition that connects business goals with audience challenges, not a catalogue of features.

Use that comparison to establish which claims are relevant and defensible. The Frameworks uses social listening alongside qualitative insight to check whether internal views are reflected outside the organisation, and grounds content strategy in questions audiences are actually asking. Gartner's 2026 guidance on buyer-facing information calls for clarity about how a solution improves outcomes in the buyer's particular role and business context. Choose a message that explains that connection rather than simply distributing existing collateral.

Check candidate messages against audience insight by examining the support for each proposed message and proposition. The Frameworks argues for an interactive, updatable representation of an audience rather than a static persona document. An interrogable body of insight lets marketers explore the drivers behind a challenge, examine support for an interpretation and identify content gaps.

The Frameworks is exploring that approach through Brand Proximity, an AI-powered platform designed for ongoing customer understanding. Use model-assisted exploration to question a proposed message and consider where a brand can make a meaningful connection, not as proof that real buyers will respond. The Frameworks also argues that bold marketing requires rigorous audience understanding and honesty about the intended audience, the objective and what the organisation can actually deliver. Keep those checks central to message selection.