“Focus on what you do for them. Show how you solve their problem. Benefits, benefits, benefits.” We—and pretty much every other marketing communications consultant—say that all the time. Perhaps too often, and without enough caveats, recent conversations with a client lead me to believe.

If your audience doesn’t believe they have a problem, for example, they’re unlikely to be moved by your solution.  And if you’re trying to create a sense of urgency, you’re unlikely to succeed with a single-minded focus on benefits. Ample research in behavioral economics shows that fear of loss is a much stronger motivator than desire for gain.

What this means: sometimes you have to go negative. Selling water conservation technologies in a rainy region? Your first task is to convince people that wasting water is a problem. Want people to act now? Talk about what they’ll lose if they don’t—in the strongest terms you can support.

It may not be true that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten, but the old fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears does contain three key (and often violated) rules for well-targeted communications.

Test, Test, Test Like Goldilocks, we’re all striving for “just right” communications: not too complex and not too simple, not too much and not too little. But while most of us only assume (or hope) we’ve gotten it just right, the fussy home invader knew what was just right because she tested.

Real-world testing is ideal. Is your twice-yearly magazine optimal, or would a smaller quarterly publication serve you better? Test by sending one option to half your list and the other to the rest for a year, then tallying responses or donations for each group. (There are subtleties involved in this kind of testing; this is just a broad outline.)

Wonder if you’re communicating too frequently, or too little? Ask. One client worried that they sent too many e-mail bulletins and mailings. Good thing they surveyed their audience, because they found that if anything, they could be communicating more.

Audience testing isn’t practical for everything, of course. When it isn’t—or if you just don’t have the resources for it—you can set up a battery of internal test questions to find well-grounded answers to common dilemmas.

For instance: Is long or short copy better? (The format will guide you: people will read less on a Web page than on a print page.) What do we need to get across? (To convey a clear, high-level message, don’t clutter it with detail. If you need to make a nuanced case, don’t short your credibility by leaving out supporting facts.) What does our audience want to know? (Don’t tell them more than that. And don’t tell them less—vague, hyped copy designed to “pique interest” rarely does.)

‘Just Right’ Depends on Who’s Judging Answers to your internal test questions will always depend on who your audience is. If you’re selling an expensive, advanced-technology product to businesses, for example, you’ll usually have at least two audiences: nontechnical decision makers with budget authority, and technical staff with advisory authority. Don’t think you can communicate with both in the same way: Goldilocks rejected Papa Bear’s hot porridge; he would have snarled at her tepid choice.

Don’t Fall Asleep Often the biggest mistake communications teams make is failing to regularly evaluate their messages and materials. Alas, we can’t afford to relax—what’s just right now may miss the mark as situations change. When you start to think “I could do this in my sleep,” you are asleep. You could be in for a rude awakening if someone decides to measure your communications effectiveness. Or even worse, you’ll slumber on while your audience takes their business elsewhere.

Next up: What The Three Little Pigs has to teach us about clean tech and green building. (Just kidding.)

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it … I can resist everything but temptation.” —Oscar Wilde

It’s tempting to cram everything that can be said about your product, program, or service into every communication about it. That way, you can satisfy all the internal agendas and answer any question that might occur to anyone.

But yielding to temptation ultimately didn’t work out well for Oscar Wilde, and it probably won’t for you either. Asking your audience to wade through a river of detail to find the bit they want (not to mention the bit you want them to get) is making them work, and people generally expect to get paid for that.

Make it easy for people to understand what you’re offering and how it will benefit them: address them directly and clearly, and don’t let extraneous bits obscure your message. That means resisting the engineer or other detail-obsessed insider who insists that everything is important, and leaders who can’t see that, frankly, your target audience doesn’t give a damn about their hobbyhorses.

It doesn’t mean paring your pitch down to lofty generalities (a sure way to raise greenwashing suspicions). The trick is to isolate essential and powerful details and let them shine. How do you do that? Find out what your target audience cares about and speak directly to that, with verifiable claims. Anything more will tempt them to tune out.