Reality Check: Does Your Message Match Your Market?
Ensuring the right message reaches the right audience is marketing done right.
Let’s say you’re a psychologist, and you check your Instagram DMs today and find that somebody reached out to you with help on their investments because of a financial post you recently made.
Or let’s say you’re a financial planner, and you get an email from somebody asking you for a massage, because you recently sent an email to your list about how massage reduces financial stress.
Or let’s say you’re a massage therapist, and somebody calls you to schedule a mental health diagnostic session due to your recent Substack post on the mental health benefits of massage.
These are all examples of miscommunication in your marketing.
As marketing legend Dan Kennedy often discusses, market to message match is critical in all your communications with clients and prospects.
This isn’t to say that a psychologist shouldn’t talk about the mental health strain around finances. In fact, financial therapists are a thing. But what you say, how you say it, and being clear about what you provide is very important, especially in your offers and calls to action.
The above examples may seem ridiculous, but minor variations on this definitely do occur. You may have experienced this yourself. For example, when I represented people that owed money to the IRS, many assumed that I also prepared tax returns, but I did not offer that service — this was a failure in my own marketing communications.
Misconceptions about the transformation you deliver usually stem from blurring the lines between what you’re passionate about and what you actually deliver. It’s relatively easy to share broadly helpful information in your marketing, especially online — stress relief, emotional regulation, and financial empowerment are topics that can really be discussed from many angles, by many different types of practitioners.
This misalignment can not only confuse potential clients, but it can also create a drag on your own time and energy. We all have a certain capacity for what we can do in a day, and fielding off-topic inquiries or correcting assumptions can be avoided with clarity around positioning.
This is why market-to-message match isn’t just a marketing principle, it’s also an energy management tool for you as the service provider.
Message-to-Market Alignment Checklist
To make sure the content you deliver as marketing communications resonates properly, run it through the following quick checks:
Clarity of Service: Are you explicitly naming the service people can hire you for—without jargon, caveats, or cute metaphors?
Audience Alignment: Is your message written for your actual clients, not your peers, mentors, or aspirational audience?
Call-to-Action Consistency: Does the action you’re asking people to take (schedule, subscribe, download) clearly relate to the service you’re offering?
Emotional Congruence: Does your tone match what your clients are seeking—calm, confident, empathetic, firm?
Content-Service Connection: Is the educational, inspirational, or entertaining content you’re sharing directly tied to your paid offer?
Top-of-Funnel Filters: Does your message naturally attract your best-fit clients and subtly deter those who aren’t a match?
Role Accuracy: Are you staying in your lane and using language appropriate to your credentials, licenses, or scope of practice?
Offer Visibility: Is your core offer findable within two clicks or scrolls from any marketing channel you’re active on?
Platform Fit: Are you using the right platform for the right message—for instance, personal storytelling on Instagram, detailed breakdowns in email or blog posts?
Visual Reinforcement: Do your images and branding visuals reinforce what you actually do—or do they create mixed signals?
Clarity compounds results. Misalignment multiplies confusion.
If you’d like assistance in refining your messaging, I’m hosting a live online workshop on Monday, January 5, 2026 for Bizorca Pod members on exactly this topic. By the end of this 90-minute workshop, you’ll have:
A clearer sense of whom you are building for.
A short list of what you are not doing anymore.
A one-sentence core concept message that you can use in your marketing communications.
Bizorca Pod members can RSVP for this workshop from the Events tab inside the Bizorca Pod community. Not a member yet? Join today!