If you’ve played the game telephone, you know how a message can get mixed up before it reaches its target. One person whispers a message to the next person, and so on, until it reaches the last person. Most often, that message is nowhere near the starting message.

Marketing can be kind of like that, if you’re not careful. The single most important aspect of marketing is to make sure that the message you want to convey is the same message that your audience receives. That means your business needs to develop a clear, concise message that is easily relatable with your marketing efforts. Here’s how to make sure you’re coming in loud and clear.

Craft the Message
Figuring out what you want to say could be the hardest part. Sometimes, marketing messages go out with little thought at all other than the end goal. Determine what you want the end goal to be and then discuss how you can make that happen.

Brainstorming is the first step. Maybe your business determines that you need to get more new customers, and you think you can do that with a special offer. The returning business from these new customers would far outweigh the money spent on that marketing campaign. This is just one example of an outcome from a brainstorming session. You’ll be able to be much more detailed with a specific case.

Eliminate Jargon
Messy words and muddled messages happen when you overthink the message or assume your audience knows more than they do. Take a look at your message and act as if it were the first time you were hearing of your company or the special offer.

Would you understand it? Does it get the point across? Would you be likely to follow through with whatever you were asking for? You could even ask somebody who isn’t familiar with the marketing campaign if they understand what you’re aiming for.

Use the Right Channel
Sometimes it’s not about the message you’re creating and it’s more about how you’re delivering it. You could have the best copy and it might completely flop because you didn’t get it to your audience in the right way.

For example, if you’re trying to reach an audience of mainly baby boomers, your first choice to reach them probably wouldn’t be snapchat. However, if you were trying to reach a group of teens with your message, snapchat might be the way to go. Figure out what makes the most sense. Also, don’t forget that you can tie in different parts of your marketing campaign to different channels.