AMA: Iterable Director, Platform Product Marketing, Holly Clare on Messaging

Think like an owner, stay relentlessly curious, and build real cross-functional empathy. Those habits compound fast and will accelerate your growth tremendously.Adopt an Owner Mentality: You can't just focus on doing your job well. You have to look for what's missing, gaps, risks, raise those, and then propose a path forward. As a product marketer, we have visibility across so many different facets of the business. We need to understand what success looks like for the business as a whole and for ...Read More

My biggest tip: don’t just mash two value props together and call it “better together.” That falls flat every time. Great 'better together' messaging comes from finding what makes 1+1 = 3 - the thing neither product can deliver alone. A few ways to get there: Identify the “new unlock.” What becomes possible now that wasn’t possible before? Lead with outcomes, not features. “Integrated workflows” is fine, but “faster time-to-value” or “higher conversion rates” is what lands. Decide if this is a p ...Read More

If you have the budget, platforms like Wynter and others make it incredibly easy to pressure test positioning with your target audience and get feedback in 24 hours or less. This speed is huge compared to traditional research cycles, which most businesses don't have the budget or time for.While platforms like that are nice-to-haves, I always recommend getting scrappy. Look inside your own company. Do you have employees who previously held roles in your ICP? They’re often an underrated sounding b ...Read More

Consensus on messaging doesn’t happen in one meeting. It’s designed into the process. First, assume there will be multiple rounds of feedback. Messaging touches a lot of teams, so trying to “one-shot” it usually backfires. My approach is to build alignment in layers: Start with key functional leaders.I’ll align early with product marketing and/or the CMO on the strategic direction and core narrative. That ensures the foundation is solid before it gets broader exposure. Pressure test with the fie ...Read More

A strong messaging framework should create clarity, force prioritization, and make execution easier across teams. The key elements I always include are:1. Problem statementStart with the core customer problem. Not a feature gap - a real business challenge. This anchors everything in customer reality. 2. Clear product descriptionA short, external-facing description that explains what the product is and who it’s for. This should be simple enough that Sales, Marketing, and execs can understand it/ ...Read More

I always start big. I zoom out and ask: what’s happening in the market right now, and what is the customer actually struggling with today? What pressures are they under? What's changed recently that's making their job harder, riskier, or more complex? This big picture context is what creates a strong frame of reference and makes the messaging feel relevant and timely, instead of generic.One of the biggest mistakes I find product marketers make is jumping straight into product value, because once ...Read More

This is such an important question right now. The biggest mistake I see: companies positioning AI as the benefit/ value of a new feature release. It’s not. AI is the mechanism. Customers don’t wake up wanting “more AI”. They want faster workflows, better decisions, higher performance, lower cost, and less manual work. Six months ago, we were in an AI arms race. “We have 10 agents.” “We have 20 agents.” That kind of feature-count marketing worked for a minute. It doesn’t anymore. If you want to u ...Read More