AMA: Outreach Platform & Solutions Marketing Director, Jeremy Moskowitz on Messaging

If your executives and cross-functional stakeholders can see their fingerprints on the narrative and messaging as it develops, they will be more likely to endorse and adopt your final product. The knock on Marketing, PMM or otherwise, is that they are in a silo and disconnected from the realities of the rest of the business. Product feels you don’t understand “product truth,” Sales feels the messaging is unrealistic to use with customers, and the C-Suite feels it’s not in touch with what they hear from Investors and Analysts. They feel like PMM writes what they think sounds good and are frustrated when the org doesn't use their messaging. I'm sure every PMM’s eyes just rolled into the back of their heads as they read this! That's because every PMM knows their messaging is typically based on extensive discussion with users, the spec that the Product themselves wrote, and exhaustive market research. PMMs get a lot of feedback about "messaging" because it's a foundational aspect of marketing and feels approachable to a non-marketer. Everyone has written a term paper and seen a commercial, so they feel like they know what is/isn't effective messaging, no matter what job function or training they have or don't have. I don't have to convince this audience that messaging is a technical skill or that "messaging" is a catch-all term used by laypeople who actually have issues with other written words, like positioning, copy, or sales enablement. But as the saying goes, "Everyone's a marketer. " If you are a PMM who wants to land messaging, you'll have to navigate this kind of feedback from executives, your product team, and cross-functional partners like sales and CS. So, how do you overcome the feedback? You don't overcome it; you incorporate it! Your executive team, product team, and go-to-market teams have feedback that's just as valuable as customer interviews and market research. Talking with them is a necessary step of the process, and it will yield insights that improve your messaging. This doesn't mean you should accept every suggestion they make; that's a recipe for lousy messaging, full stop. What it does mean is that you should include them in the process, get their feedback on drafts, and give them credit for ideas that inform the final product (even if they were something you came up with or uncovered through your research). Feature their quote in your messaging guide, shout them out in the enablement kick-off, or tag them in a comment to show them you used their idea. These things are small, but they will go a long way. At the end of the day, executives, product managers, and salespeople are humans with human egos. They like to be included and feel like they are contributing to the company's success. Once they feel like they are a part of your messaging, they'll stop detracting and start advocating.

Work closely with the Sales team, particularly Moneyball Reps, Turnaround reps and Sales Managers, getting these stakeholders on board makes it easy to drive adoption across the wider organization. As PMMs, we (hopefully) have spent hours researching our target persona, how they would use the product, and our competitive differentiators before launching new messaging. We are convinced our iteration solves every weakness of the old messaging, but then we are shocked...SHOCKED, I TELL YOU, SHOCKED, when the sales team doesn't immediately adopt our new messaging house and just uses their familiar talk track. This isn't an accident. Take it from a former Account Executive; your sales team doesn't adopt your new messaging because when 50-70% of your compensation is variable, you stick to what you know. Anything new, including messaging, is scary because it threatens your livelihood. That said, salespeople also love to emulate what works, so as a product marketer, if reps aren’t adopting your messaging, the best thing is to provide hands-on coaching to 1-2 reps and even help them navigate deals yourself to show them it works. The ideal state is working with a “Moneyball Rep” - a top performer with an early adopter mentality that other reps will want to emulate. More often than not, reps happily volunteer when PMMs offer to help them with a sales pitch. But if you can’t get Moneyball Reps to adopt your product enablement, the next move is to go to the “Turnaround Rep =” The Turnaround Rep is someone struggling to make quota; they are usually looking for any help they can get. If the Turnaround Rep increases quota using your new messaging, the rest of the sales team will sit up and notice. That said, in larger organizations, sometimes not everyone responds to incentives, and there needs to be accountability, and that's where front-line managers come into play. I've launched products, messaging, and sales plays; some have succeeded, and others have not. But every failed launch has one thing in common: some stakeholders - senior executives, sales leadership, myself - expected PMM to "play traffic cop," - driving messaging adoption and holding sellers accountable when it’s not used. This is a recipe for disaster. It's just not in the job description and creates an adversarial relationship between sales and marketing that is the stuff of Corporate Bro videos. That's why manager enablement is essential. PMMs should preview messaging with sales leadership and align with them on a mechanism for holding front-line managers accountable for certification or adoption. At Outreach, we recently made executive deal support contingent on certification. PMMs should then meet with Management regularly to understand why sellers aren't adopting to provide necessary coaching. All this being said - don't be afraid to adjust your messaging if it's not being adopted! Yes, there is a change curve to manage, but systemic non-adoption of messaging means there's something wrong with the messaging, not the team. Don't be so focused on ensuring the messaging is adopted that you don't listen to feedback from the team. The team may have given the messaging their best effort, but it didn't resonate with customers. When it comes to negative feedback, everyone has an opinion. One opinion is a data point, but multiple data points are a trend, and if you start to hear consistent reasons why the team is not adopting your messaging, it might be time for a change.

I focus on use cases, the jobs that buyers/users of my platform execute daily, and highlight the product feature that removes barriers preventing them from achieving their goals. Use case messaging is the art of storytelling in words that your personas use every day to demonstrate you understand their problems, just like telling a child who had a bad day at school a bedtime story where they are the hero overcoming dragons that represent the mean teacher or school bully. Every marketer knows “The Hero's Journey," which is why structuring it as a use case and using persona-specific language are crucial ways to differentiate your messaging. Your tone must be conversational, with just the right amount of jargon sprinkled throughout your messaging to make it sound specific and tailored to your target persona. Here's a framework and completed example: 1. When: [Persona] 2. Are: [Job to be Done} 3. But: [Problem] 4. [Your product name]: [Capabilitiy Statement] 5. So: [Positive outcome your product creates, in the persona’s language]* When Revenue Operations Leaders are forecasting but can't identify or explain why the forecasted pipeline has decreased, they use visual indicators in Outreach to identify changes to pipeline value at the segment, team, and rep level. This allows them to spot gaps in pipeline coverage and quickly act to pull new deals in and hit their quarterly forecast.

Generally, I agree with Anthony that if SAAS companies are looking to differentiate, a specific, clear value proposition is the way to go - but there are some caveats to consider. About a year ago, our then-CEO asked my team to refresh our messaging because all of our competitors were claiming their products drove the same outcomes that as us - things a sales leader would care about like revenue, deal velocity and and win rate. We were tasked with finding a way to differentiate. Anthony has posted an infographic on Linkedin that speaks to the root cause of this problem. Take any software product - a CRM, billing software, project management software - and extrapolate any of the benefits out multiple degrees and you will find a way to connect it to revenue. However, that initial delivery of value - what Anthony calls a “first-order benefit” - is the most precise articulation of your value proposition, and it’s likely your most unique value proposition that will differentiate you from the competition. To identify our differentiated value, we talked to anyone we could who was our target persona for buying and using Outreach—customers, prospects, and friends. We wanted to reset our expectations around their awareness of Outreach, usage of Outreach, and the value they gleaned from it. We also spoke with our Product, Sales, CS, and Executive teams to get their perspective. We developed a messaging framework that breaks our platform into use cases and value statements specific to each persona. This messaging has consistently converted qualified leads on our homepage compared to legacy generic messaging emphasizing high-level outcomes like Revenue or product functionality like AI. So yes, being clear and specific is better than being high-level, but that doesn’t mean PMMs can completely ignore metrics like revenue and ROI. Above-the-line buyers care about these metrics during an evaluation, so there’s an expectation they show up in your company’s marketing. Product Marketers just have to know when and where to deploy them effectively. The critical piece to remember is that your home page is the top of your funnel - it’s where you need to stand out from the crowd and answer the question, “What does your product do, and how does it help me do something better/faster/cheaper?” You need to make that case to someone likely starting an evaluation but not the final decision maker. They may or may not use the product themselves, but they have outcomes they care about that are broader than an individual user (Usability, Individual Features) but not as macro as the C-suite’s. That said, if you are selling SAAS, especially to the enterprise, your sales team will have to make a business case to win a competitive sale, secure a contentious renewal, or cross-sell into different departments. That means that PMMs need to be able to connect your product's value to metrics that matter to your above-the-line decision makers, which are likely revenue or cost-savings. PMMs should be prepared to work with the sales team on bottom-funnel assets like business value calculators, buyer's guides, and proposal decks that speak the decision maker’s language and help the sales team talk to these metrics when appropriate and necessary to win the deal.

I am a massive fan of what the team at Sprig is doing; they articulate a specific point of view and use clear, simple language to position technical features as the solution to their audience's specific problems. Sprig is a comprehensive platform consolidating multiple tools used by Product Managers and UX Designers: session replays, heat maps, surveys, and feedback. They could have just slapped "AI-Powered" or "All-in-one" on their website and called it a day. While those concepts show up in their messaging (that's the reality of this market, after all), their marketing stands out because they've made the case that their multi-product platform with AI solves specific problems their persona cares about in clear, succinct language. A few things stand out: 1. The headline: This is a fantastic example of aspirational marketing combined with a clear contextual positioning that answers the question, "When would I use your product?" 2. The product carousel: Each product has a clear use case that doesn't just say what the feature is, it explains what a PM or designer would want to do with it. The language is specific enough that it appeals to the core persona, but simple enough that a non-technical user that's also part of the purchase process would understand it as well. 3. Solution pages: Sprig doesn't try to tell the entire story on the home page. Different teams will use their modular product in various ways. They have built out specific pages for each use case and team that allow them to tell the story a particular persona is looking for but might not glean from the home page. The slick navigation makes it easy for a user to discover these pages. In this market, everything is "All-in-one" and "AI-powered." Sprig does a great job of telling its audience how they would use its all-in-one, AI-powered platform, and that makes all the difference.

I am so glad you asked! I have a few rules I live by when it comes to messaging reviews: Read it out loud: This trick is essential for PMMs of all levels, regardless of your proficiency with writing. Whether PMM is just your nine-to-five until Netflix buys your screenplay or you are a PMM with a technical background that dreaded creative writing class, this trick is a great way to filter for cliches, technical jargon, and writerly language that sounds better in your head than it does coming out of your mouth. The best messaging is conversational, which you would say to a friend at a casual hang-out; as Emma Stratton says, "Say it like you would at the BBQ." This trick helps you do just that. The Coco Chanel Rule: When speaking about fashion accessories, legendary designer Coco Chanel once said, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off." What's true about necklaces is also true about messaging: when you think you're done, take one more pass and see what you can remove to make things clearer. Let's face it: PMMs love to geek out about their products. Don't be embarrassed—it's a good thing! The enthusiasm for innovation and finding new ways to solve problems is something to be proud of, but we must learn to temper the excitement and deploy it effectively. Over-enthusiastic PMMs, myself included, tend to try to tell the entire product story at all times. Every capability, every persona, every benefit. This also happens during feedback sessions; reviewers who are untrained in messaging but feel the need to provide SOME feedback just to check the box will point out what they don’t see in the messaging. This is natural human behavior but also a recipe for ineffective messaging. In addition to checking for spelling and grammar, PMMs should do a pass for clarity and extraneous concepts in their messaging that obfuscate their main takeaway. This tip is good advice for everyone but will be especially helpful for PMMs working on complex, "All-in-one" products. Enlarge the text and change the font: This is an old-school proofreading tip courtesy of my talented sister, Gabi Moskowitz! As a child, I was diagnosed with Dysgraphia, a neurological condition that impacts my ability to turn my thoughts into written language. I randomly capitalize letters mid-sentence, write unintended words, and am more prone to typos than the average writer. Spell Check and Grammarly Pro are table stakes for me, but they aren't perfect, so I have to do another pass to ensure they didn't miss something grammatically correct but not what I intended to say. Unfortunately, when you re-read a piece of familiar text, you begin to predict what it will say based on a handful of familiar letters due to a phenomenon called "typoglyciema". That's why it's important to shock your system. When I think I'm done with a piece of messaging, I'll take a break, and when I come back to it, I enlarge the text and change the font to Comic Sans (yes, Comic Sans) as a pattern interrupt. My brain can't predict what I write as quickly, and I usually find typos that I missed in my last pass.