How The Market, Message, & Media Work Together In Marketing

You've probably heard the phrase "The 3Ms of Marketing" before, but do you know what it means?

The 3Ms of marketing are Market, Message, and Media. These three things work together to make a successful marketing campaign. Let's break them down one by one.

Market

You've likely seen the term "target market" before, and you might think it just means "customers." But actually, a target market is a group of consumers who have characteristics and the psychographics that makes them likely to be interested in your product. 

For example, if you're selling a part for a motorbike, then motorbike owners are part of your target market; they're likely to be interested in buying your product. But that is still quite generic, we can go even further. 

Let's say this product can be made for specific motorbikes, we can now target the owners of the particular makes and models. You may be thinking, well the first example would catch everyone, but is catching everyone as powerful as being as personalised and as targeted as you can get? NO! 

Personalisation is king in marketing!. The closer you are to your potential customer the better you'll be able build the trust, and it makes moving them through the customer value journey a little easier. 

Which brings us onto Message.

Message

Message is all about the advertising copy itself—the text, audio, and visual elements of your ad that will be used to convey any information about your product or service, as well as inform or persuade audiences to take action. You can think of the message as the "meat" of a campaign, since it's what will ultimately get people interested in buying from you!

The message can be broken down into two components: content and style.

Content includes all the details about your product or service. This is where you want to get creative. It's also where your MARKET comes into play, the research you’ve done on your market enables you to write creative copy that resonates with them and makes sense for their needs! This component of message has a lot more to do with WHAT than HOW.

Style covers everything else that goes into writing good ads. When it comes to style, we talk less about what should be conveyed in an ad (content), but instead how it should look or sound (style).

Now we have the Message, what Media are we going to use.

Media

When it comes to marketing, your choice of media for delivering content—whether it be a website, an advertisement, or a press release—will determine how your audience perceives what you're saying. That's why the selection of your medium and distribution channels is so vital to your message.

The vehicle for your message has to match up with the market you're trying to reach. Why would someone want to read a well-crafted press release when they never consume news through that channel? Or why would you spend money on an advertisement in print when all of your customers are online?

You need to make sure that you're speaking to the right people in a way they'll understand; otherwise, you're wasting everyone's time and money.