Crafting Social Media Messages Your Customers Can’t Ignore

The average person encounters over 5,000 advertisements daily. How can your business capture attention on social media despite advertisements? The answer lies in a powerful yet simple formula: problem-solution-success. This approach grabs your audience’s interest and communicates in a way that resonates, influencing them to engage.

At the heart of this formula lies the powerful concept of a “one-liner”—a concise yet impactful statement that explains three things to your customers:

• The problem you solve for your customers.
• The solution you sell, which solves your ideal customer’s problem.
• The success your customers will experience because they purchased your product or service to solve their problem; they experience a transformation.

Unlike traditional taglines or mission statements, a one-liner zeroes in on your customer’s pain point and your unique solution. Think of it this way: your customer has a problem—a pain point—and you sell a solution—the medicine—for their problem. By clearly articulating the problem you solve and the value you provide, a well-crafted one-liner becomes your most potent tool for answering the age-old question, “What does your business do?” in a way that resonates and sticks. The most essential part of a one-liner is stating the problem you solve for your customers. If you do that, your customers will listen, especially on social media.

This publication will use the problem-solution-success formula to demonstrate the three steps to creating a one-liner for an online company. The formula can be used repeatedly to create attention-grabbing content that gets your business noticed online.

Step One: State the Problem

The first step is to state the problem you solve for your customers. We’ll use Indeed.com as our example company. Here is what Indeed could write as the first part of its one-liner or the first sentence of a social media post:

When you can’t find a job, life is a struggle.

The problem is finding a job. And if you don’t have a job, life is a struggle. That’s the core message. More could be added to this to amplify the problem. You could write, “When you can’t find a job, you could lose your home.” There are many ways to word the message, but the main point is to start with the problem, which serves as the “hook” in your message, grabbing readers’ attention and making them relate to the content.

Step Two: State the Solution

The next step is to state the solution to the problem. Indeed could write something like:

That’s why we created an easy-to-use online platform …

We will add more to this partial sentence, but the point for now is positioning the solution to solve the customer’s problem. Indeed’s solution is to use its easy-to-use online platform to find jobs.

Step Three: State the Success

The last part states the success customers will experience when they use Indeed’s platform. The idea is to paint a picture of success that people will aspire to—in this case, Indeed would like to show how they’ve helped people get jobs. As such, they could write something that demonstrates this in a powerful, authoritative way. They could write this to follow the previous solution statement and bring together the problem and solution statements into this type of post:

That’s why we created an easy-to-use online platform that has helped 14 million people find their dream job.

Notice the “14 million” adds authority to this success statement, as well.

Bring It Together

Let’s combine all three statements and add one empathetic statement to end the post. We can also add a call to action for people to use Indeed’s service. The one-liner as a social media post is:

When you can’t find a job, life is a struggle. That’s why we created an easy-to-use online platform that has helped 14 million people find their dream job.

We can help you at Indeed.com.

This simple problem-solution-success formula can work for your brand. Follow the three steps outlined here to start writing content to get your customers to listen to your brand.

Write Your One-Liner

Here are the questions you’ll need to answer to create your one-liner:

• What is the problem you solve for your customers?
• How do your customers feel about having the problem?
• What is the solution you sell to solve the problem?
• What does success look like for your customers if they buy from you?
• What authority can you add to your solution statement that demonstrates you know how to help customers solve their problems?

Other Marketing Resources to Help You

Creating a one-liner and using it on social media to get your brand noticed is one strategy to grow your business with social media. Here are some others.

• The Master Your Marketing workshop will teach you how to grow your business with a digital marketing plan. In this live marketing workshop, you’ll learn the following:
  • How to talk about what you offer so that your ideal customers pay attention.
  • Why your website isn’t working—and how to fix it.
  • How to establish yourself as the go-to expert in your industry.
  • The secret to turning prospects into paying customers.

• The self-guided Website Mini-Masterclass teaches you how to make tangible changes to your website to boost your revenue.
• In the book Five Social Media Mistakes Your Business Should Avoid, you’ll learn about these mistakes that most businesses make that destroy engagement and sales. You’ll learn actionable steps to give your social media a makeover and increase social engagement and sales.
• Sign up for the newsletter Traction to get easy-to-implement, actionable marketing tips delivered to your inbox.
• In the Bricks-to-Clicks Marketing Podcast, you’ll learn practical marketing tips to bring in more customers and revenue. In 15 minutes or less, episodes cover the top five social media mistakes, five principles for building a thriving community, the blueprint for social media success, and the one thing to do to grow your business, nonprofit, or personal brand.
• Bricks-to-Clicks also offers One-on-One Coaching to improve your marketing.

Visit brickstoclicks.extension.msstate.edu to access these resources, or email james.barnes@msstate.edu.

Reference

University of Southern California. (2023, November 17). Thinking vs feeling: The psychology of advertising. USC MAPP Online.

Scan the QR Codes for Additional Information and Access

5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes Book

Bricks-to-Clicks Marketing Program

Master Your Marketing Workshop

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The information given here is for educational purposes only. References to commercial products, trade names, or suppliers are made with the understanding that no endorsement is implied and that no discrimination against other products or suppliers is intended.

Publication 4075 (POD-01-25)

By James Barnes, PhD, Extension Professor, Agricultural Economics.