AMA: Okta Former Senior Director of Product Marketing, Customer Identity, Jiong Liu on Messaging

I am constantly testing messaging. Any customer meeting, event or executive briefing I attend, I'm testing messaging in some way, even if it's not messaging that I'm actively working on. The most critical part of this process is to ensure you're leaving space for feedback and reactions or explicitly asking for it. One mistake I used to make when I first started as a PMM was to go into presentation mode and just barrel through a deck/pitch instead of adding pauses and deliberate questions throughout. As a result, when I build narratives, I think about questions I should be asking about and will bake those into speaker notes. I've also added random dots in presentations that only I can see as a visual cue to take those pauses. We oftentimes find silence is uncomfortable, but it's actually a friend of PMM because it encourages customers to fill that silence. In addition, I also recommend testing messaging directly with your field and customers and looking for methods to test outside of your organization's typical customers/prospects. We will oftentimes do the latter using user research or advertising.

There is a process to messaging and I think many folks are overly focused on the last step which is the final translation to words. I actually think this piece is the simplest of all the steps so I don't spend a lot of time looking at documented work when I interview product marketers. What's really important to me is understanding how a candidate thinks about and navigates the process itself. How does someone internalize the needs of the customer and market dynamics. In many ways, this is more about understanding how someone synthesizes data (both qualitative and quantitative) and builds empathy for their customer. I also look for candidates that can tell a cohesive narrative about their own career choices to date. After all, if you can't tell me a compelling message about yourself, you're going to struggle when it comes to B2B. For success metrics, I primarily look at usage in the field. How many downloads and views is your messaging getting? If you have landing pages or blogs with the message, how do those metrics compare to others on your website? Lastly, I take a lot of qualitative feedback from customers and our field on messaging. This is more difficult to show leadership but is the best internal measure for if it's working or not.

Competition is critical and should always be a factor in your positioning and messaging for B2B. At Okta, it is a core part of our brand identity and position to be best-of-breed, vendor-neutral. This is how we plan to win the market and is also a core competitive message. When we look at all of our messages by importance to the customer, on average, this is likely the #2 or 3 most critical. However, we elevate it to #1 and reinforce this everywhere because we want our marketing and field teams to be seeding this competitive differentiator from the outset.

One method for doing this is to understand buying patterns, natural bundling that may be occurring and determining what initiatives/projects your customers are undertaking when they purchase your products. For example, customers that are purchasing Okta's Customer Identity products are generally looking to solve 3 main initiatives: building better customer experiences faster, modernizing their infrastructure or securing their customers. Once we understand what they are trying to accomplish, we can recommend a set of products to them instead of showing them the kitchen sink. This model works when you're able to reach c-level execs early. Another method that works when the sales cycle is more tactical is to understand the maturity curve of your customers. Many Okta customers have an authentication problem that they need to solve first. Our core product offering which addresses that problem is how we land new customers. Customers can then have a number of other problems (security, API access, etc) that then become our upsell offerings. Mapping our the journey you expect customers to have and aligning those to sales plays can then allow you to map your relevant products to the time horizon your customers' will have the corresponding challenges.

The 3 most critical components of messaging IMO are target audience, hard-hitting & differentiated value props and customer/field validation. 1. Target audience - I can't understate the importance of understanding your target audience. This includes getting deep into who is your economic buyer, your champion and key stakeholders across the organization. For the product area I oversee (Customer Identity), we actually see 2 major buying centers (IT/Security and Digital/product development) and a number of other key stakeholders in other functional units (marketing, compliance). As a result, we need to ensure any messaging we create is tailored for initiatives and projects that the buying center has but still speaks to the broader set of requirements driven by the remaining stakeholders. 2. Hard-hitting and differentiated value props - At the end of the day, no other company should be able to credibly state your value props. Therefore, always incorporate competitive positioning into your messaging, even though you may not be stating a competitor's name outright. Ensure that you're speaking to business outcomes as well. It is much more powerful to enforce that your product improves customer conversion rates than to say it provides a seamless customer experience. 3. Customer/field validation - Messaging is not frozen. We should always be testing it and iterating it as your product evolves, as your audience's challenges shift and as the market changes. These are subtle shifts over time so it's good to set aside time to revisit your messaging with fresh eyes to determine if a larger revamp is needed.

Sales is definitely the biggest critic of messaging. Getting them involved early and often and treating them as a true partner in the process is fundamental. There are 3 things that I always do when it comes to messaging: 1. Partner with the best sellers of your product area. They are experts in reaching your target audience and executing your pitch. If you know they are happy with the message and actively using it, then you've gone a long way in ensuring the message resonates with the right audience. 2. Partner with the technical specialists in your product area. These folks have a very finely tuned bullshit meter and are oftentimes in the room when the AE is delivering your message. Make sure you get their specific feedback on that your hard-hitting points are landing and not coming across as fluffy. They will also provide great feedback on where AEs need enablement. 3. Check with sales leaders. Is the message landing at different points in the sales cycle? Where do their reps need more help? How should the message be tailored for different segments, geographies, industries? I usually choose ~3-5 leaders each quarter to sit down with and have a detailed conversation about my product area.

I find most messaging frameworks will get the job done here. It's more important to have consistency in using whatever template/framework you ultimately select. This allows your internal stakeholders to really focus on the meat instead of template. This is also very important for our marketing teams whose job is to amplify our message and are building repeatable processes off those templates.