At the heart of every communications tool that is intended to inform or educate brochure, letter, TV advertisement, or radio spot is a message. A message is the main idea or point that you want to convey through your communication tool. You’ll probably develop multiple messages for your brochures or letters.
Paying particular attention to designing your messages is important because they should build on everything you’ve done so far in the materials development process. The right message should be designed for a particular intended audience.
Create a Rough Draft of Your Messages What is your overall purpose in developing the information material? Increasing knowledge, Changing attitudes or adoption of technology ? Design your information based on the purpose.
Refine Your Messages Once you have a rough idea of the messages you want to convey, you can then refine them in light of your more specific communications objectives and your audience segments. Also consider how health behavior theory might help you to refine your message. As you refine your messages, you’ll want to think about targeting and tailoring. Targeting refers to directing a message to a predefined segment of the population. Targeting is usually done with brochures because they contain general information that groups of people will find useful and interesting. When targeting messages, focus on the specific needs of the audience segment you have selected. Tailoring a message refers to using information to make a message specific to an individual.
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