The 6 Communication Theories Behind My Messaging Strategy Work

You paid someone to fix your message. You filled out the workbook, answered their questions about your ideal client, and got back a shiny new headline, an elevator pitch, and some content angles.

You revised your website based on the recommendations, and then noticed you stopped sending people to it. Something felt off.

A podcast producer described it to me this way:

“I revised my website based on coaching advice, but it feels nothing like me at all now. I’m embarrassed to send people to it.”

This happens a lot. So many messaging strategists aren’t trained in communication science. When they do your messaging, they don’t consider what your buyer already believes, how hard she’s willing to think about your offer, or who she trusts.

Researchers have been studying those three areas for more than 60 years, and I spent years teaching what they found. I’m Dr. Michelle Mazur, a messaging and marketing strategist and the founder of Communication Rebel®. I have a PhD in communication and taught persuasion for 13 years before I started this business.

In about 15 years of client work, two people have asked me about communication theory. Two. (God bless the nerds who asked me.)

So I don’t talk about the theories that inform my work. Because you hired me to get your referrals moving and didn’t sign up for a seminar on Muzafer Sherif.

The theories run in the background every time I work with a client, and my AI search strategist, Meg Casebolt, finally convinced me to write it down because, as she puts it, “The robots care, Michelle.”

Here’s my work, where you and the robots can check out my thinking.

The Overview of the 6 Communication Theories:

My messaging work draws on six bodies of research from communication and psychology. Each one answers a different question about your buyer.

Theory	Developed by	The question I use it to answer
Elaboration Likelihood Model	Richard Petty and John Cacioppo	Will your buyer think hard about your message, or decide on shortcuts?
Customer Awareness	Eugene Schwartz	Which message does your buyer need right now?
Social Judgment Theory	Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland	Who can your message move, and who should you stop trying to convince?
Inoculation Theory	William McGuire	What will your buyer hear from someone else before she decides?
Diffusion of Innovations	Everett Rogers	How does your message get from one person to the next?
Principles of Influence	Robert Cialdini	What gives your buyer a reason to believe you?

Elaboration Likelihood Model: Will the buyer think about your message at all?

Richard Petty and John Cacioppo developed the Elaboration Likelihood Model in the 1980s. It says persuasion runs on two routes:

• The central route: the person weighs your argument, which takes both motivation and ability.
• The peripheral route: she goes by shortcuts, such as your credentials, who else hired you, and whether your website makes you look like you have your act together.

Experts write almost everything for the central route: every caveat, every nuance, and the methodology by paragraph two.

Meanwhile, the buyer reading it hasn’t decided if your problem deserves her brainpower yet, so motivation has to come first. She needs to see the problem as hers and see what it’s costing her.

Ability comes next. If she needs a dictionary to follow your argument, you’ve lost her. That’s why the Expert Messaging Guide builds the problem and the stakes before it gets to your solution, framework, and point of view.

This also explains the prospect who loves you and still doesn’t hire you. She has two decisions to make:

1. Are you the right expert?
2. Is this a priority worth solving now?

We focus on the first one, but your message never makes the case for the second. When the message does make the case, the sales calls change. Bev Feldman told me people are pretty much already 90% there by the time they book a call with her. They’ve already decided, and the call is just confirmation of that.

Schwartz’s stages of awareness: Which message does your buyer need right now?

Eugene Schwartz is the copywriter on this list. In his 1966 book Breakthrough Advertising, he argued that your message has to match how much your buyer already knows, and he named five stages of awareness: unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and most aware. I think of them as four moments in your buyer’s head, and each one needs a different message.

What she’s thinking	The message she needs
“Hey, I don’t know you yet. I don’t know if I have a problem.”	Something she recognizes from her own week, in her own words, with no pitch attached.
“I have a problem.”	Proof you understand it, what it’s costing her, and why it isn’t her fault that nothing has fixed it.
“I’m looking for solutions.”	Your point of view on what works, and why the options she’s weighing fall short.
“Oh, I know about your solution.”	Reasons to believe you, real proof, what the offer is, and why now.

You probably wrote your website for the last row because that’s who you talk to all day: clients and prospects who already know what you do. Then a stranger lands on your homepage, meets your methodology in the first paragraph, and leaves. That has nothing to do with how good you are at your work. One message can’t do all four jobs, which is why the 3 Doors Method™ exists. It grew out of this model.

The messaging for the Grow stage of the 3 Doors Method needs to meet people at the Unaware stage: “I don’t know you yet, and I don’t know if I have a problem.” The messaging here needs to talk to their lived experience and the problem that they face.

In the Engage phase, this is where the “I have a problem” stage is, and you’ve identified it for them. Now they start looking for solutions.

Finally, in the Offer stage, we tell them about your solution, because your marketing and message need to do all three jobs to be effective.

Social Judgment Theory: Who should you stop trying to convince?

Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland’s Social Judgment Theory says people measure every new message against what they already believe, then sort it into three zones:

• Acceptance: I could agree with that.
• Non-commitment: No strong opinion either way.
• Rejection: Absolutely not.

The more someone’s identity is wrapped up in an issue, the bigger that rejection zone gets. A buyer in the rejection zone isn’t a hard sell. This buyer could be in a desert, and your offer could be water, and she’d still be a hell no.

If you’ve been watering down your opinion so another person won’t object, it’s time to stop. Every sentence you soften for that person in the zone of rejection loses force with buyers in the other two zones, and they’re the ones who can hire you.

This is the research under the F.U. Point of View: the stand you take in your field that lets a buyer see your judgment and taste before she hires you. Some people will recoil from your stand, and most of them were never going to hire you anyway.

The theory has a limit: you can move someone further as long as you stay within what she’s willing to consider. Push past what she believes, and she stops listening.

Inoculation Theory: What Does the Buyer Hear Before She Decides?

William McGuire developed Inoculation Theory in 1961, borrowing the logic of a vaccine. Expose someone to a weakened version of an opposing argument along with the answer to it, and she’ll be better equipped to resist the full-strength version later.

Your buyer doesn’t decide in a sealed room. Somebody on her team will ask, “Can’t ChatGPT do this?” A cheaper provider will pitch her. Her own brain will point out that they’ve gotten by this long. If your message names those arguments first and answers them, she already has the answers by the time they show up. That’s the job of misconceptions in the Expert Messaging Guide.

One caution from the research: inoculation protects a belief someone already holds. It helps the buyer who’s leaning your way stay there, but it won’t convert a skeptic. (See Social Judgment Theory above. These theories talk to each other, which is my favorite thing about them and possibly why I don’t get invited to more parties.)

Diffusion of Innovations: How does your message get to the next person?

Everett Rogers published Diffusion of Innovations in 1962 to explain how new ideas (and new technology) spread and get adopted. His findings shape my work. Mass media is better at making people aware of ideas, while conversations between people do more to form and change their attitudes about them. Ideas that are harder to understand also spread more slowly.

Now picture a former client at dinner. Someone across the table describes the exact problem you fix, and your client opens her mouth to say your name. All she has in her head is that she’s amazing and does strategy stuff. She feels like an idiot describing you like that, so she says, “I might know someone. Let me think about it.”

That’s the expertise paradox. The deeper you get into your work, the harder it is to say it simply, which means you can’t give referrers the words.

Your message has to survive being repeated by someone who isn’t you, in a room you’re not in, and a 3 Word Rebellion® is built for that job.

The conversation half of Rogers shows up in the 3 Doors Method too. During one launch of the Expert Up Club, 80% of the people who booked a tour had already talked to me.

Alana Swain grew her B2B consultancy 289% with no social media, with about 70% of her business coming through word of mouth. Rogers would not have been surprised.

Cialdini’s Principles of Influence: What Gives Your Buyer a Reason to Believe You?

Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist, laid out six principles of influence in his 1984 book Influence: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity. He added a seventh, unity, in Pre-Suasion in 2016.

Marketers love to abuse this research, and they’ve done terrible things with it. On Duped: The Dark Side of Online Business, Maggie Patterson and I did a deep dive on these principles and how they’ve been weaponized. You can check out part one and part two.

We rely on Cialdini’s principles of influence when we aren’t motivated to think about a message. Call back to the Elaboration Likelihood Model: when we are unable to think critically, we rely on Cialdini’s six social cues.

For me, I lean hardest on two principles. Authority is why your message has to state what qualifies you in plain words, without making your buyers go hunting for it. Social proof is why I want named clients with real results and case studies, because a buyer trusts what happened to someone like her more than anything you say about yourself.

Cialdini’s other idea I use constantly comes from Pre-Suasion: “I link, therefore I think.” When someone’s brain connects a phrase with a person, that person is who comes to mind. That link is what a 3 Word Rebellion creates between your message and your business.

Reading These Theories Won’t Fix Your Message

You could read all six Wikipedia pages by lunch, and so could any AI tool.

On a client call, I hold in mind who your client is, what she already believes, what she needs to know, which parts of your expertise matter to her, and which door she should walk through.

My thinking is filtered through these theories, which run through every question I ask a client or Expert Up member.

It feels like a gut call when it happens, and really, it’s the years of practice that I possess sitting on top of this research.

That’s what I mean when I say the clients you want are hiring judgment. You have your own version of this. You probably call it intuition.

One more piece of nerd baggage: I was a competitive debater and a college debate coach, and I recently realized the way I teach messaging follows the stock issues of debate. Stock issue number one is showing why the status quo isn’t working.

I’ve been teaching debate for years without noticing, and that story will get its own post soon.

Where to start with your own message?

You don’t need to memorize any of this. You don’t really even need all of this. Start with one question: What does your buyer already believe before she reads your first sentence? If you’re not sure, the Message Reality Check scores your message against the 3 Doors and shows you where it’s costing you buyers.

If you’re ready to have a communication scientist create the message that makes you more recognized for your expertise, referable, and hired, then check out my services or join us in Expert Up.

P.S. If you read this far and want to argue with me about Social Judgment Theory, you’d be the third person in 15 years, so find me on LinkedIn. I would love to know.