AMA: Braze Vice President Product Marketing, Kelsey Nelson on Storytelling

This is where the fun begins! I've used messaging in a few tactical ways: Marketing Collateral: We use this as the foundation for launches and on-going marketing collateral development. If you're at a smaller organization, you may be directly responsible for translating the messaging doc into various blogs, slides, datasheets, social copy, etc; at larger companies, you may have partner organizations that help scale the development of those resources. Nailing the core messaging doc ensures alignm ...Read More

At a prior company, we had a major established vendor as a competitor, and our historic competitive approach still resonated but wasn't as strong as the market matured. We ended up quickly needing to move from that top level story into point competitive comparisons, which drove lengthier deal cycles and shifted out of the executive level conversation, where decisions ultimately were made on budget. Our PMM team had been iterating on a new narrative around a major cybersecurity trend/strategy tha ...Read More

Since my PR days, I've actually used a traditional "story plot" framework, a lá a children's book -- complete with a setting, main character, conflict, climax, resolution as the basis for a high level narrative: Setting: What's happening in the world right now related to your space and customer? Don't limit yourself just to the acute context that your product solves; give yourself broader context for the world in which your main character lives Main character/conflict: This is your customer! Wha ...Read More

This is where I think you can tap into the human emotional side of your messaging/positioning. Your tech is solving a problem for a person: what lights them up/motivates them? What hinders them to get excited? In my current company, we spend a lot of time thinking about not only the technology that enables marketers, but also the creative side that fuels those campaigns built with our product. (We love being creative as marketers!) That means we spend time on both the technology, but also the cr ...Read More

When I feel stuck getting started, I usually turn to non-traditional sources to try to spark a new idea or way to get started. Look outside of your core space: My biggest piece of advice is to get outside of your core community. You might be in b2b SaaS, but what tops the Cannes Lions marketing campaign of the year awards? Is there something you can pull from how they're telling that story? Is it based around a specific, highly relatable customer experience? Is it asking someone to think differe ...Read More

I love the data that we can surface from competitive intelligence; however, too often I think we focus heavily on the data itself, versus what the insights are for leadership and how we're going to take action on those insights. Put yourself in the shoes of your leadership team: what info is going to be most impactful on their strategy or for achieving company-level goals? What I've found most effective here is using more of a news-style approach to storytelling: Nail the lede: What's the top 1- ...Read More

In order for your message/story to resonate, you need to deeply understand your customers' behaviors and preferences, which can include narrative styles. I've rarely run into a customer that responds well to hyperbolic language, but having worked across persona from IT, to security, to engineers, to marketers; practitioner to executive persona; industry, geography, etc!, I've found a lot of success in adjusting certain elements of your storytelling. I would not advocate for completely changing y ...Read More

The more descriptive you are, the less likely you are to come across as hyperbolic. Take for example writing a mission or perspective on where the market is going with AI: you could talk about how AI is going to radically change everything we do in xyz space or industry. Alternatively, you could describe what new opportunities will be available through AI, and lead the reader to that aspirational takeaway. Word choice is also key here: avoid terminology that drives toward extremes (best/most/etc ...Read More

Since my PR days, I've actually used a traditional "story plot" framework, a lá a children's book -- complete with a setting, main character, conflict, climax, resolution as the basis for a high level narrative: Setting: What's happening in the world right now related to your space and customer? Don't limit yourself just to the acute context that your product solves; give yourself broader context for the world in which your main character lives Main character/conflict: This is your customer! Wha ...Read More