AMA: Freshworks Former Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Vivek Asija on Messaging

I mentioned in another post that I have come up with a structured process for messaging development. with my team of product managers and product marketers, I work through a series of questions that force us to define and articulate our differentiation. This results in a number of messaging framework and source messaging documents that we hand off to the Marketing and Sales teams. We see these types of documents as foundational - the North Star for how we tell our story. Other marketing teams extend that messaging into demand gen campaigns, and our Sales teams pick up our pitch decks and marketing collateral to present to prospects. Ensuring commercial team alignment is tricky because it's fundamentally about dissemination (Confluence, newsletters, G-Drive, etc), training (both live and on-demand), and repetition (going on sales calls and using it over and over again). Messaging guides are a critical product marketing deliverable - they are foundational -- but a series of hands-on training and reinforcement on a per-deal-level are required to get a larger organization on-board.

I try to teach new product marketers how to think critically about positioning and messaging. It's very tempting to rest on more obvious product and feature descriptions that give the audience lots of detail about how things work. But what's more challenging to answer is, "what are we building and why?". What business opportunity do we see in the marketplace that we are trying to exploit? I encourage my product marketing teams to think about developing their expertise in four towers: product, market, customer, and competition. In order to develop differentiated messaging, product marketers need a command of the detailed in's and out's of the product. It all starts there. Knowing the product well is the starting point. But equally as important is to be grounded in market trends, empathy for the customer (voice of customer), and to know the product and messaging of your top 2-3 competitors. It takes time to develop expertise, but as new product marketers join and grow, we bring them through assignments that develop their power in each of the four towers, and the structured messaging framework we build pulls a cogent POV together on how we position and compete in the marketplace. We do competitor reviews, trands analysis, SWOT, and focus in on the key messages that align with our brand and product identity as part of a product launch content pack. Then we share those content packs with the broader GTM org and ask our partners in growth marketing to help us amplify those messages.

Over the years I have collected and adapted a number of messaging tools. I have come up with a structured process for messaging development, and one of the deliverables is a source messaging document. Source messaging documents contain 50-, 100-, and 200-word descriptions, and usable snippets of text or approved slogans and tag lines. One of the core pieces is a matrix where we draw an oppositioin between "how we think" vs "how they think". This is useful for really internalizing what is different about us. Sales people get a lot of content thrown at them, but they really don't need that much content. What they really benefit from is messaging strategy, sales plays, and objection handling. All of that rests on how we think, act, do, build, or otherwise create product differently in comparison to the competition. So one suggestion might be to do a "think differently" brief to teach your differentiation at more of a DNA level. If its crisp and digestible, salespeople will internalize it and pivot better duriing sales conversations.

Writing, writing, and more writing. Be willing to throw away some copy -- even if you love it -- until you have the write story come to life. This is an organic process. Test it on customers and go on sales calls to see what resonates. Also make sure that you and your peers are reviewing one another's writing. Being an editor also helps improve your writing skills over time.

One of the biggest mistakes I see product marketers make is they forget that their buyer is human. They have appealed to business case, logic, industry research, and demonstrate ROI, but sometimes they fail to simply tell a human story. B2B software buyers are people too. And like any buyer of really any product, they want to be pulled in by brands that "get" them. They are looking for themselves in the pages of your datasheets, web pages, and slide decks. So I always think that product marketers need to start with an appreciation of the pain felt by their target buyer persona. They need to empathize with that. When starting from a place of empathy it's easier to find the language to connect and show buyers a better way, through whatever solution you're selling.

Competition plays a central role in messaging development and you must get extremely familar with how your competitors tell their story. After all, there's a reason we call it "positioning and messaging", because ultimately the best messaging positions you against something else. It draws contrast between you and your competitor and creates a real choice in the mind of the buyer. It's not enough to merely stand FOR something. You also have to stand AGAINST something in order for messaging to be effective. You must attack your competitor and have messaging that creates an opposition between you and the alternative. If you don't, then you end blending into a sea of choices, indistinguishable in the mind of the buyer.