AMA: Instawork Head of Marketing, Frances Liu on Messaging

It can be hard to keep messaging simple and poignant. It takes time, revs, and validation. There's pressure to get it perfect right off the bat. Or people sit and forget. Let it evolve over time. Something I've learned is how valuable it can be to tap the emotional benefit. It's still important to have rational data points so they can justify the decision, but a great story compels. 

I find it helpful to test along the way and continue testing once it's released broadly. Unsurprisingly, we work closely with customer-facing teams, advisors, and internal teams as a starting point and work with them to roadtest. I'd love to say there's always a deliberate process, but sometimes you don't have the time to do so. For instance, last year with the pandemic, we had to very quickly expand into a new vertical and operating in an unknown environment. So we relied more on customer validation as a way to test messaging. As I'm sure with many of you, we've been obsessed with watching Gong calls as a way to learn from customers (and sales reps!). It's helped us build a more quantitative testing approach and track how it differentiates by segment and over time. Another validation tactic I've found helpful is testing messaging in ads, content, nurture emails, etc. For instance, one of our highest converting LinkedIn ads is a product-focused article centered on one value prop. By arming our SDR with add'l questions, we're able to dig deeper without disrupting the buying process.

As others have mentioned, practice. It's hard to find the extra time, so here are some ideas: * Try different frameworks to refresh on basics * Find reasons to tag-team a refresh. I've used it as part of onboarding new marketing folks * Compare with PMMs at other companies. I'm grateful to have coworkers and friends to talk shop (plus kudos to Sharebird!) * Read fiction. Sounds corny, but it non-work related way to tap that empathy muscle

To build consistency, it's critical that everyone in the company believes and uses the brand positioning and mission. For example, at Instawork, our CEO walks through it at every all-hands and uses a recent customer example to highlight how we've delivered (or failed to deliver) on our value prop. It also informs our plans, so what we build aligns with the overall company promise. Where we can differentiate is how we message to a particular audience. Being a labor marketplace, we work with both businesses and workers. Our business segments span two very distinct industries and range from SMB-to-Enterprise. We've also segmented our worker base into several personas. It's a lot! And while having many audiences is why I find product marketing here so fun, it can easily get diluted. So to simplify, we group audiences based on the primary benefit and focus on that. More tactically, we pull out how our customers talk about the problem space, so we can reflect that in our copy. For instance, we've noticed a difference in how different industries use labor vs. staff. I also proudly "borrow" from our sales reps, especially when they have an interesting way of telling the story.

It depends on the person's prior experience, but the core skills are around: research/insights, building personas, building the messaging framework. And a general coaching rule is: tell, show (via examples from other companies or here), and do (often). We're at a growth stage where there's so much work to be done, so new marketing team members have to learn as they do. But to set them up properly, we'll create a more structured plan and build in more time.

I borrow from the typical ones mentioned on Sharebird (the box one? mind's failing me here) and modify them based on what I'm messaging. Re: competitive positioning, I break it down by 3 segments at a high level and against key value props how we stack up. * Who are incumbents * Top direct competitors * Adjacents in the space I try not to get too much in the weeds on features so we focus on benefits. Detailed comparisons are more used as sales enablement.

Messaging is articulating why and how your product/service matters. It's a unifying tool for teams so we continually show value to our customers. I've learned to appreciate a simple tool like a messaging doc. Without one, it takes longer to onboard new employees, harder to wrangle the cats. Business turns wonky.