Sean Lauer

AMA: Instruqt VP of Marketing and Product, Sean Lauer on Messaging

January 16 @ 9:00AM PT
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👋 Sean Lauer
👋 Sean Lauer (Charlotte, NC)

💼 VP Marketing at Instruqt. Previously Senior Director of Product Marketing at Mural and Global Product Marketing at Twitter.

🧪 Currently deep in a messaging refresh and loving the mix of strategy, customer insight, and wordsmithing

🤝 Always happy to chat: marketing, product marketing, positioning and messaging, GTM strategy, technical marketing, sales enablement, customer education, and product strategy

🍦 Favorite ice cream: One Sweet Whirled (RIP, Ben & Jerry’s… bring it back)
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
This is an excellent question because the answer seems easier than the reality. It's easy for PMM to think, "We're PMM, so we get to decide our messaging, and we don't re...
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607 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
The contents of your messaging library will vary from company to company and product to product. However, you'll want to create some tentpole documents no matter where yo...
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547 Views
3 requests
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
It's important to create a single source of truth so that stakeholders know where to look for the latest and greatest. If your company has a wiki (Notion, etc.), create a...
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2438 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
Once you see messaging that was created with AI, you start to see it everywhere. There are also tools that allow you to scan messaging to determine if it was written with...
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847 Views
1 request
In your opinion, how much time and effort does messaging & positioning for a product take?
Assume you're starting from scratch, as a new hire or launching a new product
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
Simple answer—it takes as long as you want it to take. That's not necessarily what anyone wants to hear, of course. But the reality is that positioning and messaging can ...
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854 Views
1 request
How do you approach messaging for things that might not excite the customer?
For example, when needing to communicate a price increase or end-of-life message?
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
Honesty is the best policy, as they say. Be direct, don't get creative, and don't sugarcoat the message. The key is to show empathy for the customer's perspective. Explai...
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938 Views
2 requests
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
The value proposition of a feature is part of a messaging framework. I would go so far as to say that clearly articulating the value prop is potentially the most importan...
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535 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
The answer is in the question itself—using jargon will prevent you from creating anything differentiated. Jargon is the norm, so the more you use it, the more you'll soun...
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629 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
Whether you're marketing a B2B or a B2C product, you're always marketing to people. The key to PMM, and the key to marketing in general, is developing a deep understandin...
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676 Views
1 request
Sean Lauer
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev1y
I'm a big fan of "Make It Punchy" by Emma Stratton. What Emma's able to do is boil down messaging to its simplest elements and make it approachable. It's so easy to make ...
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827 Views
1 request