AMA: Adobe Sr Director of Product Marketing, Creative Cloud, Katharine Gregorio on Messaging

Just because an audience is technical doesn't mean the messaging needs to be boring. The core way to approach messaging is to understand as much as you can about your target - where they spend their time, what resonates with them, etc. Once you have these insights and also have the positioning for your company or product you can then test your way into the messaging that will resonate the most by creating several iterations of the messaging and testing it with current or target users. You may (and likely will) find that what you think is different than what resonates so I'd encourage you to be open to whatever you find resonates. Good luck!

This is one of the most important (and most common) questions so thanks for asking it! At the simplest - positioning is an articulation of what your company or product offers a target audience that differentiates it in the market it plays and is internal language while messaging brings this positioning to life in a compelling way that will (hopefully) make your target take a specific action. So they're both important. Here's a bit more detail on how positioning and messaging differ/build on one another: Positioning * Addresses what your company/product can do for someone relative to a context that differentiates you from other choices * Is internally facing so the language isn't customer facing * Should involve a broad cross functional group to form it as it impacts everything a company does. * Usually doesn't change for 12-18 months, depends on how active the category/market in which a company plays * Typically you don't really test this but you use insights to inform it and push your team that the positioning isn't differentiated by seeing if any other company could claim what you have written Messaging * Describes the positioning in a way that resonates with the audience you're trying to reach * Is therefore externally facing. * Created by marketing * Can be iterated frequently * Can and should be tested - I usually find doing this in context of a landing page is easiest - by talking to current users, utilizing a customer advisory board or user research tools like User Testing and Maze Both positioning and messaging should be grounded in deep customer insights but while you can (and in my opinion should test messaging with users) this isn't true for positioning.

This is a really interesting question and one that I anticipate will change quickly as AI tools evolve in their capabilities and become more mainstream. I have not used any LLMs specifically to create messaging from scratch, but I have used LLMs to help me explore different tones of a certain message or to help me come up with a couple of options of ways to turn a phrase that I then go test with users. I also have some ideas of how to use genAI creative tools to help me put messaging easily into creative mediums that I then can go test with users. I already test with landing pages, but am excited to show mock videos for example too.

This is a really interesting question. The way to think about this is somewhat as part of building blocks. The company's positioning is at the foundation. The value positioning is often core to this. Then often different features are proof points of this value positioning for the product or company. The messaging for the company, product and feature should build upon this foundation.

Let's zoom out a little first. I'd encourage you to first answer two questions before writing anything, especially sales enablement: 1. Who is it for? 2. What is the goal of the asset you are creating? Once you answer these two questions then you want to write to support the action you are trying to get the target audience to take. So for example in this instance, without knowing your specific answers I'd think about 1. Audience - is this for prospects or current users 2. Goal - is this to drive new business, close business, expand business, retain business? Depending on the answers you would then craft the story to deliver on your objective. So for closing new business you might talk about the ROI someone had before and after using your company/product and lead with that. If someone is considering switching to a competitor then you might lead with why the customer you had chose you all over someone else. I'd encourage you to be crisp and focused on the asset otherwise you risk it being super vanilla and not achieving any objective because it's too general.

Perhaps implicit in this question is one of my philosophies that a PMM should be customer obsessed and competitor aware. What I mean by this is that we as PMM should really understand our target user and deliver on what they want. We obviously do this in a competitive landscape but if you take your focal point off the target user and spend too much time on competition it will just simply not be as productive. To ensure your messaging is differentiation starts with your positioning - getting this right is critical. Then from this you know what you want to highlight and then can work to iterate on your messaging to make sure the language resonates and drives the CTA you are looking to deliver.

The answer here is going to have to be it depends for your unique situation and company what will work best. Here are a couple of things that I have set up at various companies I have worked at that have helped ensure consistency, alignment and ROI on messaging in market: 1. PMM gives examples * PMM creates a positioning and messaging doc with the written language and shares a GTM strategy BUT also gives examples of how this messaging can/should come to life on a landing page, in ads and tests this with users and shares these learnings with partner teams Process requires partner teams to get approval from PMM on assets * Marketing leadership establishes a process that PMM briefs in partner teams and shares the positioning and messaging asset to creative and execution teams but then asks for a plan back from these teams that PMM is able to weigh in on wrt suggested edits * This process can be combined with #1 If it isn't possible to do either of these approaches at first, sometimes a poor performing campaign and/or other data can help drive alignment and process discussions to achieve closed loop processes. At the end of the day everyone in the company benefits to reaching the right customer at the right time with the right message!

The tried and true umbrella message with 3 pillars and proof points (sometimes 4 but only occasionally!) is what I use to drive buy in with executives. When I do this I also use it to drive messaging hierarchy. However when I need to work with partner teams to bring this messaging to life I turn this framework into a longer written form messaging doc that uses language that could show up in a blog or press release as the framework often has to be quite pithy. If needed I also will turn the copy into example heroes for a landing page and/or sample ad and email copy. I have personally found the old school PMM does the framework and other teams take this and turn into copy often falls a bit flat and I haven't always had clear feedback loops of final product and messaging resonance so I err on the side of bringing messaging to life in more real world contexts more and more. Side note - I have often found showing how the messaging is brought to life (and having testing stats and quotes from customers on their reaction to it) can also dispel disagreement among executives on the messaging umbrella framework too.