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 _________________________________________________ (product category/genre) • That ________________________________________________ (statement of key benefit - that is, compelling reason to buy) • Unlike ________________________________________________ (primary competitive alternative) • My/Our product _______________________________________ (statement of primary differentiation) In order to gather all the inputs to get there, here are some questions to ask (also borrowed and modified from both Crossing the Chasm as well as Pragmatic Institute): * Describe the problem this person wants to solve specifically. * What are the major motivations – economic, technical, other? – for this person to switch from their current methods to solve this problem? * What are the specific customer pain points that are causing them to seek a new solution? * What/whom are we competing against and what are the primary benefits that other solutions (or the status quo) offer? Then, I like to use a 5-Box positioning framework that I learned 10+ years ago in B-school (see also the attached image laid out on a slide): Currently Believe 1-2 sentences about what they currently believe relative to this problem or issue. Currently Do 1-2 sentences about what they currently do relative to this problem or issue. Your Message: In 20-40 words, describe the 3 most compelling reasons to buy our solution. Future Belief 1-2 sentences about what we want them to believe in the future after hearing our pitch. Future Do 1-2 sentences about what we want them to do in the future after hearing our pitch. Hope these help!

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, clients and competitors have shifted over time and ensure that your messaging is reflective of all those inputs. In smaller companies, you most likely already sit on the executive committee or at least have easier access to this group, in which case, I would recommend making sure you have time on whatever weekly agenda is available. I'm a data-driven person, so I would always recommend focusing any executive updates in the context - action - results format (regardless of the size of the company, this is the approach I take). If you're developing new messaging, what were your inputs, with whom did you speak, how did you test it, what learnings resulted and what actions are you going to take moving forward. The level of detail provided here should align to the levels of stakeholders you need to address - e.g. your immediate team, the next level up, then exec staff - and the frequency that's appropriate for the project or program.

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 you in what you're putting forth. Nike did this very well during the recent US Women's Soccer tournament. I believe that from a B2B perspective, Salesforce does this very well in how they leverage client stories in many of their marketing programs.

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 solutions for their entire enterprise, but we also need to ensure that we have more technical messaging for the IT and/or technology teams who may be integrating what we offer into their existing tech stack. This gets a little more tricky if you're marketing APIs for developers or others who could be more skeptical of marketing messaging without much detail. My recommendation would be to develop a messaging map that starts with your overall value proposition and then write variants on that for each of the different audiences who will be evaluating your products/solutions and then go test that messaging. As I mentioned before, I'm not much for jargon, but there may be certain aspects that you need to cover with a more technical audience - SOAP APIs? REST APIs? - and once you've convinced those audiences and they can report back to their exec teams that you know what you're talking about, that's a win. I see this need also showing up quite frequently in responding to RFPs. My recommendation here would be to gather up your last 10-20 RFPs, determine the similarities and develop your own sample RFPs to ensure you're covering off on the more technical messaging needs at scale (if indeed your audience's buying processes and needs are consistent). 

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 have both qualitative and quantitative feedback on our messaging to use as an input for the next round of messaging. We generally give out small dollar gift cards in exchange for 15 min of their time.

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 then refine your messaging over time. I always try to err on the side of having data / validation with at least 5 customers before launching vs. going out with hollow messaging, however.

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 competitor, COVID, etc - it's time to take a look at your storylines again. At the very least, I would say you need to revisit your messaging in accordance with the seasonality of your business - if your business changes in a quarterly cadence as much of my experience in the B2B space, then that will probably be your minimum revision timeline.

* 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 are saying and then backing into how you're different vs. starting from your own market research, determining how your company/portfolio/product are unique in a way that you can validate with data and being BOLD about your differences and why they matter for a specific audience.