AMA: Morningstar Head of Direct Software (US), Elizabeth Brigham on Messaging

Hi all - great to be with you here today live from my home office and spinning vinyl on my turn table as I answer your questions! In terms of sweet messaging templates, I generally go back to the Crossing the Chasm standard mad libs version: For _________________________________________________ (target customer/audience member)• Who ________________________________________________ (statement of need or opportunity)• The _________________________________________________ (product name) • is a ____ ...Read More

Not leading with empathy – shouting about what your product is/does without putting it in the context of the users’/buyers’ actual problems and stating what business value/impact your product/solution will have for them. Using jargon or hollow words/phrases like: integrates/integrations, seamless, easy to use, innovative, etc. Or using hyperbole – best, only, greatest, etc – without backing it up with data or some other qualitative validation Copying competitors or starting from what competitors ...Read More

This is all dependent on the personas you're trying to target. In my opinion, your positioning should not change, but you should have messaging specific to your buyer and/or user personas, or those who will be influencing the purchase in a B2B context. For example, when we're talking about the breadth of offerings we have in Morningstar Direct for financial professionals, we need to ensure that we're addressing the overall business value to those execs who are making the decision to purchase our ...Read More

Stakeholder communications and management can vary widely in my experience working at start ups to some of the largest enterprises in the world (Disney). When you're working with a founder CEO who has a very specific vision for positioning and messaging, you want to make sure that you know all the history in the development of the company/product so you have empathy for her "why." However, I like to say that history is informative, but not prescriptive. You need to be aware of how your market, c ...Read More

I'm a fan of the highlighter test method. We generally will take advantage of being present at an event (know this is challenging in today's environment) and take about 20 copies of two versions of our messaging, then sit down with clients/non-clients and ask them to highlight words that resonate with them, words they don't understand and words that don't resonate with them. Once they go through that exercise, we go back and ask them why they highlighted words in the ways that they did. We then ...Read More

Urgency is relative. You have to deeply understand your target audience(s) and the market conditions under which they're operating. Urgency isn't manufactured, it's reflected in what you understand to be the current condition of your target audience and their environment; it shouldn't be a reflection of your company's urgency for more revenue. Let your audiences see themselves in the stories that you're telling and engender interest based on the fact that they see more of themselves and less of ...Read More

What has been challenging for me in the past is not having a ton of reference customers and/or data to back up messaging for a new product launch. This is a delicate balance between making sure that you have product-market fit before a major launch, having those reference customers with some data and wanting to wait before you have "enough." Depending on the market conditions, you may just need to ship and launch and then work to really target early adopters, get some good data validation and th ...Read More

I don't think you ever stop iterating on messaging as long as you're developing new aspects of your product. For a product launch, again, I would make sure that you've tested your messaging with somewhere between 5-20 clients and non-clients and then ship what comes out of those tests. Product marketers and product managers need to be in lock step with the roadmap and what rises to the level of changing messaging. Similarly, if there's a significant market event - m&a activity, new competito ...Read More