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AMA: Hubspot Former Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, Jeffrey Vocell on Messaging
December 10 @ 10:00AM PST
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Hubspot Former Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, Jeffrey Vocell on Messaging
Top Questions
What is the difference between "value proposition," "messaging," "pitch," and "story?"
Do you see these as separate, complementary, the same thing, or else?
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
This is a great question. As product marketers, I think we often confuse this terminology, and due to the common use of these terms it amplifies the perception they are different. From my point of view, there are differences between positioning and messaging which I’ll cover here, but everything ......Read More
1717 Views
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Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
Measuring the success of messaging overall generally ties back to product launch goals — whether that’s a sales or revenue number, or more user/signup focused. That being said, if you’re working on positioning and messaging outside of a launch then I’d look at metrics like length of sales cycle, ......Read More
1346 Views
1 request
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
I’m not sure there really are exercises. Once we have research, then we can plug it into our positioning template and answer a bunch of questions within that template (i.e. “what is the shift in the market/world that the buyer is experiencing?). Once all of those questions are answered, then it’s......Read More
1402 Views
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Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
This starts far before the content is shared across various platforms or to different audiences. To begin, if the product you are selling has multiple decision-makers or potential buyers you should create a priority matrix. In other words, which persona is the most important and which channels do......Read More
902 Views
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Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
Great question. There are a few primary mechanisms we've used to test messaging: * Research Reports / Messaging Surveys - These work pretty well, especially when you're entering a brand-new market and need to test messaging for and audience that isn't in your database already. * In-App ......Read More
1374 Views
1 request
How do you approach getting approval for messaging from internal stakeholders like Product, Sales, and Customer Success?
What format do you present the messaging for review by internal stakeholders?
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
Oftentimes once we have a draft of positioning or messaging we’ll share it with a key group of folks (for example, sales & services enablement) for feedback. Usually this will go through a few rounds of revision, and once that is finalized we’ll present it to leadership to gain buy-in. One more t......Read More
986 Views
1 request
How do you showcase or describe to interviewers your work in messaging and positioning, without actually showing documented work?
Also, how to actually show its success, as this is something that may take awhile before seeing a growth trend and can you directly actually attribute a particular success metric on messaging?
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
I think it’s hard to showcase messaging in an interview unless you’re specifically bringing up documented work. At HubSpot, we like to give candidates an exercise before an interview that typically ties into positioning and messaging. Oftentimes this exercise will tie back to a recently released ......Read More
2141 Views
1 request
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
I love this question because I’ve seen many product marketers create positioning and messaging solely based on gut instinct. To truly answer this question though, I think you need to back-up before positioning and messaging is even written. Before writing anything you should ask yourself what dat......Read More
1436 Views
1 request
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
Great question. Ultimately I think this depends on your target audience, product, and buying cycle. If you sell enterprise software that has a long sales cycle then you can apply copy tweaks to incentivize behavior but it may not be realistic to convince a prospect to buy now for a large informed......Read More
1042 Views
1 request
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
At HubSpot we have a “master” positioning guide that exists for every core product and is shared on a central wiki that everyone can access. This positioning guide helps inform the work of marketers, sales enablement, and many other customer-facing teams. To ensure alignment we work closely with ......Read More
1765 Views
3 requests
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
Great question. This gets at the heart of managing others, while also is central to our role as product marketers. As a manager, it's your responsibility to ensure that the right milestones are being hit which means that was the right process followed for creating messaging? Did that product ma......Read More
1321 Views
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Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing • December 10
The best way I've found is to start small, and grow over-time. To explain that further, when a brand-new product marketer starts I will typically walk through step-by-step the messaging process with them at a granular feature level just to get them some repetition practicing. After doing that a n......Read More
2355 Views
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