AMA: Mutiny Head of Product Marketing, Andy Schumeister on Messaging

Every PMM I’ve ever talked to has experienced this: you spend a ton of time researching and crafting the perfect messaging framework only for other teams to forget it exists. It’s definitely happened to me. While I’d love to create a concise messaging framework that the entire company uses, the reality is messaging frameworks are most helpful for marketers. Sales doesn’t want a messaging framework, they want a pitch deck and talk tracks. Demand Gen doesn’t want a messaging framework, they want guidance around key themes to inform their campaigns. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create messaging frameworks—as PMMs we need them. But I’ve found there is more value in the act of creating the messaging framework than the actual framework itself. Creating the framework requires research. It requires getting very clear about what your company/product stands for. But our work shouldn’t stop at creating the framework. Instead, you need to think of the framework as the first step in driving company-wide alignment around the same narrative. Here are some tips for ensuring company wide adoption: 1. Bring the company along for the journey. If the first time your stakeholders see the doc is when you’re rolling out the final draft, it’s unlikely they’ll use it. As you’re researching and developing new messaging, share insights along the way. Ask for feedback or quick reactions. Not only will this help you refine your message, but it will also get key stakeholders bought in. 2. Understand how the company will use the framework before you start creating it. Knowing what various teams need out of your messaging will help you create a format that’s actually useful. 3. Make the rollout more than just sharing on Slack or at one company meeting. Implementing new messaging doesn’t stop at sharing a doc. Instead, think about the specific enablement required for each team at your company. 

At the end of the day, you’re marketing to and selling to people, not personas. People have emotions. People don’t want to be more productive for the sake of being more productive, they want to be more productive to be better at their job so they can get promoted. Emotional benefits are just as important as functional benefits. At Mutiny, one of the messages we’re experimenting with is “marketing that sales will love.” This is both functional (we’re enabling marketers to create something of value for sales) and emotional (as people, we all want others to like and appreciate our work). Instead of thinking of this as functional vs emotional benefits, try to think about how you can complement functional benefits with emotional benefits—and in some cases, the two may actually be the same.

I don’t think of this as an either-or situation. Instead, I’d think about the hierarchy of your message where both use case messaging and persona-based messaging are important. While everyone approaches messaging differently, I like to lead with personas and have found it helpful to understand the following questions: * Who are we targeting? * What do they care about? * What are their challenges? * What do we want our audience to believe? * What action do we want them to take? From there, you can develop use case messaging that will resonate with your key personas.

Ideally, you’re developing messaging based on customer and market research. This allows you to test and refine along the way instead of going heads down and creating messaging in a vacuum. Instead of sharing a messaging doc with a non-customer, the best way to test messaging with your target market is to put it in action by partnering with sales. Here is what this looks like: 1. Create a few slides and ask a few AEs to use the new narrative on upcoming calls. You could consider creating a few different versions to see what resonates most. 2. Collaborate with your SDR team to test new outbound messaging. See how it performs against your baseline. Outside of collaborating with sales, are are a few additional ways to test and refine your message: 1. Analyst Inquiries: If you're working with an analyst firm, schedule an inquiry call with relevant analysts. Share your messaging ahead of time, and come to the meeting with specific questions you'd like them to answer. 2. Run surveys with Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, etc: While a full-blown research panel may be expensive, you can pretty reasonably get feedback on 1-2 specific aspects of your messaging from your target audience. At Sourcegraph, we paid a few hundred dollars to get feedback from developers on the name for a new product we were launching. In about 24 hours, we had what we needed to move forward. 3. Recruit on LinkedIn: If you don't have the budget to pay for survey respondents, ask your network for introductions to relevant companies and personas. Be sure to make it clear the conversation will not be a sales pitch. Messaging is more of an art than a science. The only way you'll really know if it works is if you put it into the market.

Product marketing can function and have discrete successes without a clear “core” business narrative. However, for product marketing to be successful long term, I think you need a clear and consistent narrative to serve as North Star and connector across each discrete moment. Here are the benefits of having a core narrative: 1. Every launch and campaign will contribute to and amplify a cohesive story. 2. You won’t have to start from scratch each time you’re launching a new product or feature. 3. It’ll be easier for prospects, customers, and the market to understand the value of your company. This doesn’t mean you need to pause all work until you have the perfect narrative, but rather that it’s worth investing time in developing a POV on how your product/company fits in.