AMA: Podium VP, Product Marketing, Hally Pinaud on Messaging

With early career product marketers, I find that messaging struggles are often tied to one or more of the following things:  Not knowing where to start Issues editing / punching up the language  Developing messaging in a vacuum  Not the messaging itself, but getting stakeholder buy-in on it The most important thing you can do to grow your skill is get some at-bats. But here are some actionable tips for improving your work if any of the challenges above feel like growth opportunities for you. "I ...Read More

I call this the "seagull phenomenon." It's kind of incredible how many folks can swoop in to make a mess on a messaging project. As a product marketer, your challenge is to find ways to make key stakeholders heard, but also curate their input on your path to messaging that works. Four hard-won tips here: Start with who needs to be involved. I'm a fan of establishing a RASCI or RAPID framework before embarking on a messaging project. Drive alignment on roles and appropriate involvement. Get an ex ...Read More

If you get to know who you're talking to, it's a lot easier to know what to say. That's a core tenet of messaging and being a good conversationalist in general. Your first step with a question like this is to establish buyer personas. Who's involved in the buying committee? Are they the key decision maker or an influencer? What do they need to know? If you don't know, start by doing win/loss in partnership with your revenue teams. Try to get a handle on who was involved in recent purchase decisi ...Read More

Others have said this but it bears repeating: if you product is truly undifferentiated, then marketing is your path forward. Feature/function is a losing battle in this scenario. Figure out your brand marketing and how to give the buyer a little something extra that makes your product the top-of-mind choice. Frankly, I think consumer brands have this on lock. What's one brand of orange juice compared to another? In a blind taste-test, not much. But I'll buy Florida Natural because somehow the wa ...Read More

Never stop iterating. But first, let's establish that there are degrees of iteration. To use a home improvement analogy, there's down-to-the-studs rebuild and then there's freshening up the paint. The latter should happen all the time. Basically anytime you have a notable release. The former requires organizational alignment as much as actual messaging work and shouldn't be taken on lightly. If you're in tech product marketing, you should look at change to the product as an opportunity to improv ...Read More