AMA: ServiceNow Director of Product Marketing, Don Fuss on Competitive Messaging

B2C messaging usually taps into the personal components and can be more emotion driven. Benefits and value propositions are focused on outputs such as personal satisfaction and somewhat immediate needs. B2B aligns with a longer sales cycle and appeals to the business objectives of the business audience (influencers and buyers).

Messaging is the way you describe and present your product or service to the market. It will describe the customer or market challenge, your solution or product capabilities and the benefits provided. Positioning focuses more on what differentiates your product or service in the market. Messaging: Our product helps you automate tasks to create efficiencies and cost savings. Positioning: Our product leverages artificial intelligence to automate tasks. 

Messaging can best tested in numerous ways. Customers are a great source of feedback for messaging. Leverage key accounts or your Product Advisory Board to gather input. You should also test your messaging with customer facing employees (sales, customer success). The analyst community (IDC, Forrester) provides a great resource to use for testing messaging. 

There are plenty of resources to leverage to hone your messaging skills. LinkedIn Learning and Udemy have value proposition courses that provide overviews of how to build a messaging framework. Interview other product marketers who have shown great ability to message. Continue to test your messaging with various audiences and learn from their feedback. messaging is very much an art versus science.