AMA: Momentive Director of Product Marketing, Mike Greenberg on Competitive Messaging

This is probably one of the toughest problems we face as marketers. A lot of times, teams will look at a combination of leading quantitative indicators (clicks, conversions, time spent, etc.) and qualitative signals (from buyer interviews, listening to sales calls, etc.), to take a best guess at what’s working and what’s not. There are lots of problems with this. It’s tough to isolate messaging as the primary driver of these results, and assign quantifiable measures that will clearly indicate im ...Read More

I'd describe positioning as how we want to be perceived in the market, and messaging as the customer-facing language that proves it. But in practice, I've rarely (if ever) had this specific conversation at Momentive outside of PMM: it tends to be pretty marketing-centric. What I've learned from internal stakeholders is that what's most important to them is to be able to look at a messaging document and know what's internal framework vs. something they can use in external-facing materials, so we ...Read More

My best advice here is not to skimp on establishing credibility: lead with something compelling that tells your pitch audience why they should listen to what you’re about to say, and why they should believe you above other companies they may be hearing from. All other things being equal, brand reputation and domain expertise go a long way. A great way to do this is with some signature research. You’ve probably seen a lot of organizations making this a big part of their GTM strategy: “State of [D ...Read More

There's always a cost!  You can interview existing customers to validate whether proposed messaging resonates, but it's difficult to get validation at scale this way (certainly nothing quantifiable), and super time-consuming. You can A/B test proposed messaging in-market — on your homepage, for example — but there's opportunity cost for every visitor who encounters messaging that isn't a winner. Worse if you're testing with paid placements. Survey-based message testing solutions are pretty affor ...Read More

I won’t sugar coat it: localization is hard. While I’d love to give you some magic advice that will ensure your messaging resonates globally, the reality is that geographic segmentation and market insights are as important as any other work you may be doing to personalize your messaging and GTM strategy if you want to be successful. We’re actually working on refreshing our global GTM strategy now at Momentive. That being said, it’s unlikely you’ll need to stand your messaging completely on its h ...Read More

Short answer: we use our own (Momentive) message testing solution since this is the market we're in and we have a market-leading product. Not to toot our own horn too much, but here's what I like about our offering that I would look for in any solution you're considering: The respondent panel is built into the product, so you can target virtually any global audience you like without having to purchase and integrate a panel separately You don't need to be a research scientist to use it: research ...Read More

Great question (and there are a few others around messaging development process that I’ll use this response to cover). We have a few processes and frameworks in place that really help with XF alignment. First of all, if you don’t have one, I recommend developing a messaging framework or template that the entire PMM team will adopt consistently, and that you’ve socialized with partners in advance. That way, your cross-functional team knows what to expect from PMM whenever they receive a new messa ...Read More

I'm a big fan of A/B testing, but it can take a lot of time, and you need to be careful not to change things up-funnel if you want a clean result, which can be paralyzing. The best approach is to get an initial signal on your messaging through other means (like a Message Testing solution), then move on to in-market A/B testing if the study indicates multiple possible winning messages (as a validation exercise). You're also likely to get better segmentation data this way, possibly resulting in un ...Read More

The short answer is that you'll need to develop messaging with both audiences in mind, and apply the correct messaging (or combination of messages) based on the target audience and funnel stage for each part of your GTM strategy. Our SurveyMonkey product spans self-serve and enterprise (sales assisted) businesses, with a lot of existing end users we can target for upsell and cross-sell, departmental buyers and administrators who may not be users of our product but key to the buying process, and ...Read More

As far as your approach to messaging, there’s probably more in common than there are differences in engaging B2C and B2B buyers (there are more differences in GTM strategy than messaging). I’ve spent a lot of my career in the gray area in-between these buyers, as PMM for consumer productivity apps at Apple which also targeted SMB and EDU buyers, and in my current role working with SurveyMonkey, which scales from a free offering all the way up to enterprise solutions. Some observations… The B2B j ...Read More