AMA: Qualia Director of Marketing, Priyanka Srinivasan on Messaging

This is a great question. I'd say this becomes even more complex / challenging if you have not only mulitple products, but also multiple audiences, which we do. One way to think about this is in the context of your website, which is one of the key ways you display all of your products and offerings. I think it's extremely important to show how all of your products 'fit together' and we do this via our pricing page, where we list out all of the products we have for one of our key audiences and we actually group them together (design works a bit of its magic here) so the products really do look complementary. But while all the products complement one another, if you click on one of them, you're taken to a product page where we take you very in-depth on that product and its benefits. That's the way each product gets its 'spotlight.' In addition, we're very thoughtful about how we run demand generation programs to ensure that our products get highlighted to our prospects and customers (when and where they should), but that customers aren't overwhelmed by communications. I think that's the whole strategy of demand gen. These communications both highlight the individual product as well as how they relate to other products in the suite that are relevant for that audience, and are often served at different times in the customer's journey depending on when they are more likely to need or want that particular product. 

At the end of the day, Product Marketing owns messaging, and there should be general alignment around that. I think that's a really important place to start because literally everyone has an opinion or point of view on messaging, but someone ultimately gets to 'own' it. If in your organization, that's PMM, there should be and understanding across the organization that it's the responsibility of PMM/Marketing to come up with product positioning and messaging. If you're an exec / leader in Marketing, you should be building relationships with other execs to create alignment around that; if you're not an exec, make sure your leadership is advocating for you. Now, that's not to say that other teams shouldn't have input or should significantly influence what the positioning ends up like - of course they should! Messaging should never be created in a vacuum. From the start, PMM should be gathering input from Sales, CS, and Product to come up with an initial point of view on positioning. In my experience, if my team is working with these folks closely from the start, it is way more likely that the execs in these orgs will be on board with the final positioning (usually execs just want to make sure you're getting input and feedback from their team). We have regular meetings with Sales, Product, CS for all of our products / audiences, and we regularly share ideas on draft positioning/messaging. And when we've reached something we're ready to share in a more formal way, we share that with Sales/Product/CS exec leadership. 

I really like this question because it's not every day that you're launching a new product. Oftentimes you're making incremental improvements to a product (for example, with several features that add up to something pretty significant). Regardless, you should be frequently revisiting the products you have to ensure they're really resonanting in the market. I've gone through the process of repositioning a product a few times, and I usually encourage people to really start from scratch and have an open mind. That is, don't be bound by the positioning you've had in the past and instead start the process from the beginning of brainstorming what the painpoints and core value props are based on customer feedback, research, talking to sales, etc. Basically, treat it as though it's a brand new product you're launching. Some ideas for where to start: * Talk to your sales team for the product and get their take on what does / doesn't resonate when they pitch. We've been recently working on repositioning an existing product and have discovered, through convos with a few reps, that certain features we thought would be exciting / really resonate actually don't get customers excited at all. On the other hand, there are certain things we would have never thought would be interesting that are completely game-changing to customers. When you have a product that's already in market, you have the benefit of having pitched it multiple times. Which brings me to my next point.. * Talk to customers. Very similar to the sales point above, you already likely have several customers (of different shapes, sizes) that would be willing to talk to you about what they love (and don't care for) about the product. They are also great candidates to bounce ideas off of when you do have a new product positioning. * Talk to prospects who passed on the product. If it's an expansion product (and you have customers using yoru core product), this is easier to do. But regardless, you should always try to get in touch with folks that passed on your product to better understand why * Literally start filling in a blank positioning doc. Again, I encourage people to really start from scratch, and the best way to do this is to start from a blank sheet of paper. The final thing I'd say here is that it's easy to get into the mindset of thinking that just because something has already been positioned that it must be 'working' and doesn't need changing or updating, which can lead to hesitancy to just start from scratch and reposition. Sometimes, however, products were positioned hastily from the start, or you've learned an incredible amount since you first positioned something, or you're now trying to move into a completely different segment (e.g., moving from SMB to Enterprise) with very different needs (and therefore different value props will resonate). There are a number of different reasons why you might need to completely start from scratch, and it's more common than you might think. 

In my view, the whole point of messaging guides is that they are shared as widely and as openly in your organization as possible. We actually keep a "launch tracker" document (google sheets file) that has the latest on every launch we're planning. This document is publicly available and very widely distributed. We link to the positioning guide for the new product or set of features there. In addition, we've built really strong relationships with counterparts in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success, so we are regularly communicating across a wide number of forums (team trainings, slack channels, in person meetings with leadership, etc) and share or point to key documents like messaging guides in these meetings. Unfortunately, in my experience, there is no 'silver bullet' to communicating to large audiences - having lots of channels and repetition is really key. I think the other thing to keep in mind is having your messaging guide be a format that is really easily digestible. We use a format that actually summarizes the goal of the campaign or launch really nicely upfront, then gets into the messaging, and towards the bottom goes into more of the nitty gritty research on the market, trends, competition, etc. We've gotten good feedback that the format is pretty easy to consume, and I think that goes a long way in getting the message out there.