AMA: ClickUp Vice President Product Marketing, Mike Berger on Messaging

First thing I do is determine how much a buyer cares about individual features. There is a saying that we go to Home Depot to buy a hole (benefit), not a shovel (feature). But sometimes people go to Home Depot already knowing they need a shovel, so they want to know which shovel is best (features). The other thing to consider is that as you move upmarket, the separation between user and buyer is often vast, while downmarket the user and buyer is often one in the same. It's likely that users are naturally going to skew toward features, while buyers are going to skew toward benefits. So downmarket, you might decide to lean more heavily on features, while upmarket more on benefits. That all said, my preference is to always ladder features up to an overarching benefit. And in fact, we're in the process of revamping our homepage to do just that. This is always an effective approach because it clearly conveys the benefit, or the "what" a buyer will enjoy, along with the "how" that will happen through the product's capabilities.

The ultimate goal of marketing is to influence a purchase decision, or decisions. Most purchases are emotional in nature, and many people think about B2C when they think about emotional purchases. And this can certainly be true, but in fact B2B purchases are even more emotional, because they are usually associated with greater risk. So regardless whether it's a B2B or B2C purchase, you are dealing with people, who are making decisions that are often emotional in nature. Think buying a car or a CRM solution, not so much buying a pack of gum. So the messaging needs to tap into those emotions in order to influence their behaviors, regardless of whether you're talking about B2B or B2C. How B2B and B2C messaging differs is rooted in the number of people involved, and the role they play in the purchase decision. Treat each stakeholder in a B2B purchase as an individual consumer, with different needs and concerns, and the rest will take care of itself.

You can create a category either way, but either way it isn't easy! Gainsight is a great example of a company that created a category by building a platform for, and championing, a new role that had emerged - the Customer Success leader. This was fueled by a shift to subscription-based billing, where retention became a primary growth lever for SaaS companies, and the Customer Success leader the person responsible for driving it. But you can also look at the creation of the Marketing Automation category, sold to marketers, a role that has essentially existed for hundreds of years. What's interesting here is that the Marketing Ops role (and team) grew in stature from this, as traditional marketers weren't equipped to deal with the advancing technology. More important than whether it's a new or existing role you're creating a category for is finding a new and unique way to solve a really big problem that exists for either. Obviously, if you have a new role you are selling into, there will likely be fewer solutions to compete against. So there's that. My last thought on the topic is that there are way too many early stage companies out there trying to create categories out of niche solutions trying to solve a narrow problem. That seems really hard if not impossible.

I would say there are 5 tips I'd have for getting buy-in from cross-functional partners on messaging and positioning: 1. Before presenting the messaging, be clear with the cross-functional partner as to who the intended audience is. 2. Explain the goal of the messaging. Is it to raise awareness, convince them to see a demo, etc. 3. Tell a story, as a story is more memorable, and is more likely to be well received. 4. If you use a slide deck, which I recommend, don't let design distract from the story. Few words and simple graphic elements that are purposely "rough" work great. In other words, you want feedback on the messaging and positioning, not design, so don't overly design it to invite such feedback. 5. Whenever possible, bring in elements of the customer voice to reinforce the messaging and positioning. For instance, before presenting, show 4 or 5 customer quotes, or some customer research that is relevant. Hard to argue with messaging and positioning built directly based on the wants or needs of prospects.

Experimentation is a key driver of messaging improvement. It's relatively inexpensive to test messaging through ads, which can get you a quick read on which messages resonate most strongly with the audiences you're targeting. This is a fairly scientific method, but you can also experiment with messaging through a sales team, assuming there is one. More qualitative than quantitative, you can test different messages through different flavors of pitch decks that reps deliver. With tools like Gong and Chorus, you can then listen in to determine how prospects receive the messages, and what type of response reps receive. I think that experimentation results translate across channels, as long as the audience is the same. 

The short answer here is that surveys are probably the most efficient way to validate messaging with customers. It's quick and inexpensive, and can get you a quick read on how well your messaging resonates. I've even run simple polls on LinkedIn to validate messaging, and it was very fast and effective. That said, I would recommend combining the survey-based validation with some interviews where you can peel back the onion a bit and get deeper insights. Ideally, run the interviews first, then further validate using a scaled approach.

Someone once said that the best messaging joins the conversations already happening in your prospects' heads. Or something to that effect. With that in mind, I always start formulating messaging by talking to prospects and customers. Then I validate it with internal teams, including sales, customer success and product.