AMA: Demandbase Director Product Marketing, Ruth Juni on Messaging

When it comes to creating aligned messaging, I typically like to start with a framework for creating what I call the foundational messaging. I start with understanding the pain points and how we solve those pain points. Based on that, I then think about what the core messages are that I want to get across. What are the key reasons to believe and proof points? I actually spend a good chunk of time on the core message and benefits since it's important to get that correct. Once those areas are nailed, I review the messaging with different stakeholders across the organization to ensure there's alignment and to get their feedback. It's an iterative process to ensure that everyone is aligned on the core messages. I then start to adjust for different personas or segments of the market, keeping in mind choice of vocabulary. For example, if you're writing a core message for an Enterprise vs. a Mid-market company, do all of the same pain points apply or are there other ones to call out? By going through this process it ensures that the whole organization is aligned and the message is clear. Different stakeholders in the organization can then leverage the messaging brief to feed into their campaign briefs, advertising messages etc.

One of the more challenging areas when it comes to writing messaging is consolidating the research and trying to make sense of all the information you have. I find it useful to collect my data in a working document to make it easier to reference as I start to write my messaging. The first step I'll take is to review all of the data and information I have to see what common threads I can pull. Are there specific pain points I want to address? I'll often start by thinking about the pain and the associated behavior that's taking place to better understand how my product might solve for that pain. Understanding that underlying pain and associated behavior makes it easier to translate the key benefits of your product's features to a message that will resonate. I'll then review the other research I have, like market data, interviews or customer stories to find the proof points needed to support my messaging. Having it all in one document makes it easier to go back and reference different data to see if I'm sufficiently providing adequate support for my messages. 

Having worked for a consumer packaged goods company at the start of my career to now working for a tech company, I have seen my share of B2C and B2B messages. In terms of common themes I've seen, I'd say time savings, productivity and convenience are common ones that can easily apply to either segment. It's often easier to write messaging for the B2C segment since you are a consumer at heart so it's easier to understand what benefits and messages will resonate for you. Additionally, B2C messaging also evokes emotion vs. B2B messages. Another difference for B2B companies is related to messaging around scale. While that could ultimately tie to time savings, B2B messages often include more language tied to the size of the company or revenue teams. For example, you might message about how your product can help a company scale and grow or you might create messaging that speaks to the scale of your services for companies that care about that. B2B messages also tend to be revenue or profit related since many B2B companies are interested in products or services that help them grow their business. Additionally, B2B messages are often tied to product features to help buyers understand the key technology and functionality of a product whereas B2C companies will focus more on the benefits. Even if a B2C product is centered around technology - for example, the iPhone 14 Pro - you'll see that their features are anchored by benefits a consumer would care about. For example, when messaging about their video feature they use language like 'film like a pro' or when talking about functionality like 4K HDR at 24 fps they anchor it with 'the film industry standard' to help consumers link the functionality to the benefit, which is having the best video quality to capture your moments.

I think the key to writing messaging for complex technology products boils down to understanding, in layman's terms, what pain point your product is solving and translating how the feature delivers the key benefit. This definitely requires peeling the onion in terms of the underlying pain point you're solving. For example, we have a predictive analytics feature that leverages various inputs to produce a score that helps users understand the likelihood an account will turn into an opportunity. Having this score helps sales and marketing prioritize the accounts they care about because a higher scoring account is more likely to buy. In our messaging, we focus less on describing all the inputs needed or algorithms to calculate the score, and instead focus on the benefits of using that score like better prioritization, time savings and less wasted spend. The other key factor is understanding who the audience is. Simple messages work for the majority of people but if you have a buyer who is more technical, adding the more technical details they care about may make the most sense. To balance this, you could start with a simple message that speaks to the key benefits and add supporting proof points that are more specific and technical. 

Choosing the right channels to activate your audience when launching a new product depends on 1) your target audience 2) your budget 3) your goals. If you are launching a new product that you want to drive awareness on with new business, advertising is often used because it has broader reach. With Demandbase we use our own advertising because our B2B bidder can optimize for accounts. If you want to also market to your existing base, email is a great way to reach your target especially if they are opted in to your marketing emails. A product webinar is also a great tool because it allows your audience to see a demo of your product and ask questions. To make the biggest splash with your new product, you should also consider a fully integrated campaign that might involve multiple channels like ads, email, direct mail, webinars and chat, to surround your audience with the key messages. It goes without saying but working closely with your demand gen counterpart will ensure your are aligned on the key messages and channels to drive the most impact.

There are multiple ways to test messaging before launching a new product. One way is to do qualitative message testing with focus groups or in one-on-one interviews. You would create the various messages you want to test and then use the focus groups or interviews to get feedback on the messages. This is great to use if you have multiple messages you want to test. By using focus groups or interviews, you get message feedback quickly which allows you to narrow down to maybe the top 2-3 that you can test in-market. Another method is using quantitative surveys online. You would basically set up an online survey to reveal your messages along with follow-up questions to help understand what is resonating with the user. After getting all survey results, you would need to analyze how the messages resonated with the different groups of participants. Other forms of online testing include UX testing where you mock up your messages as if they are on your website and do interviews with users that way. You could also do a combo of qualitative and quantitative message testing where one informs the other. For example, if you have multiple messages, perhaps start with qualitative tests to narrow down your messaging options. Then use quantitative tests to test your top 2 messages with a larger pool of participants. This will help give you a bigger sample size. You could even do message testing on your website by splitting your traffic or taking a small portion of traffic (e.g. 10% of traffic) to test your messages.

Sometimes technical jargon is hard to boil down and can actually serve as proof points in your message. If that's the case, you can keep some of the technical jargon but make sure to add language around the benefit so readers can understand why it matters. For example, we speak a lot about intent at Demandbase. We say, "Get up-to-date in-market signals from over 375,000 intent keywords — reliable signals show product and competitive interests." The technical aspects are what differentiate your product and often help readers understand how you might differ from another solution. Therefore, keeping some of the technical aspects will support your benefits and serve as proof points, but it's important to include the benefits in there using copy that's easier to understand so readers understand why those technical aspects matter.

I recently ran into this issue when creating messaging for a new product page for our website. We had multiple stakeholders that weighed in on messaging and it definitely made the process take longer. I think there are a couple of ways to address this: * Identify the driver and ultimate approver. If everyone is aligned to their roles, then as the driver, you can take their feedback into account and accept or reject it as you see fit. In my example, I was the driver and knew the product best so while I did take some feedback into account, I did reject some feedback based on my knowledge. * If you do reject certain feedback, make sure they understand the reason for the rejection. * If you accept the feedback, you can still tweak the message to get the point across in your style. * Make sure everyone understands the key points you want to get across. This helps prevent too many 'ideas' from making their way in that waters the message down. * Have a timeline for finalizing feedback. It's too easy to go back and forth and analyze messaging to death. Know when to make a final call.

I always try to lead with customer benefit messaging and use feature messaging as support points. I've seen negative feedback from prospects who feel that companies always sell their solutions before they understand a customer's pain point. That's because prospects often come to your website with a pain they are trying to solve and starting with feature messaging doesn't necessarily help them understand how that feature would help. By starting with benefit messaging, and then supporting those messages with the key features, you can better connect the dots for them between the pain and the solution. When a prospect is further down the funnel and really evaluating your solution vs another, that's when you can really lead with features. At that point, they already have a better understanding of how your product solves their pain and now it's a matter of understanding how your product is functionally better than your competitor's.

For product messaging, I tend to prioritize and focus on the benefit promise that the product delivers and the key benefits and features that support that benefit promise. If I try to also account for the brand message, it makes the product message less specific and less impactful. You may lose out on communicating the exact pain the product solves for as well. Where I do take into account the company and brand promise is in the communication of the 'why' (e.g. why now) as well as in actual messaging that is used in creative. For example, the intro paragraph of my product page could be tied to the company message or brand message but then leads the reader into how the product ultimately addresses their problems. Therefore when creating the product messaging brief, I usually focus primarily on the product benefits and features.

For competitive intelligence, I use several sources: * Competitor's website * YouTube * Past customers * Review sites * Analyst reports I look at how they position their products and portfolio and compare that to our products and positioning. I try to see where our product features may differ and where we differentiate. I also try to build out feature comparison charts so we can see exactly where there are gaps between our offerings. Typically I will build out a competitive deck which includes objection handling and points of differentiation. I find this to be the most helpful for sales reps to use in their talk tracks.

To build greater trust in AI/ML features of a product, I would focus on a couple of different aspects. The first is the quality and quantity of data being used to train your AI/ML models. People like to know that the data is ethically sourced and accurate. Usually quantity of data also helps to validate how well your AI/ML models work and how well it scales. Second, I would focus on expertise - this could be in terms of years developing and training the AI/ML or in terms of data scientists who are working on your AI/ML features. Messaging on expertise gives users more confidence in the data output. Finally, any customer case studies or testimonials that support the feature also reinforces trust in the solution working.

When you're crafting new messaging, it's always good to start from a framework that includes your benefit and positioning but also answers the question of why now. Substantiating the new messaging with statistics and key proof points also reinforces the strategy behind the change since there are external facts that support it. I also find it's important to walk through the framework with your brand and/or PR teams vs. just throwing it over so you can have a meaningful discussion about the messaging changes and even get their feedback. This helps them understand the why behind the change and the importance of it but more importantly, bringing them along the journey helps with buy-in and also ensures the messaging is on brand.

I think the key to keeping at pace with the needs of the company while maintaining consistency is to have brand messaging that is aligned to your unique value propositions (UVPs). Then you can run integrated campaigns throughout the year that support each of those UVPs. This ensures you stay consistent with the agreed-to brand messages while still creating new campaigns that refresh every few months. You can see which campaigns resonate the best and continue to refresh your campaigns with those UVPs as the foundation. According to a recent presentation at our SMART event, the best ads drive sales over long periods of time. So it's important to stay consistent with your main message while refreshing the campaign that supports it.

I find it's easiest to start with a messaging framework because that helps you organize your thoughts around the target, benefit promise and key reasons to believe. From there it's an iterative process to create, get feedback, and refine your messaging. It's also best to keep the customer in mind so that you write more about the benefits with features as the key support points. It's far too easy to write using the product features as the message and this is often the mistake of B2B companies. People care whether or not your product solves their problem so it's important to start with the benefit.