AMA: The New York Times Executive Director, Head of Product Marketing, Monty Wolper on Messaging

Positioning and messaging are different, but tightly intertwined. There hasn’t been a time where I’ve done one without the other. Positioning statements are an internal framework used to identify what’s unique about a product. As the name suggests, this informs how a product is positioned and therefore perceived. Messaging is the words used to convey that unique value to customers. It's the mechanism by which the positioning statement comes to life in a compelling way. It’s important to start by crafting a positioning statement because there is no basis for a messaging strategy without it. First, it’s helpful to establish what sets your product apart before you can clearly articulate to customers why it’s uniquely positioned to benefit them. A positioning statement should cover: what you’re selling (the product), who it’s for (the target audience), what problem it’s solving (the need or opportunity), why they should care (key benefits), and how it’s better than alternatives (the competition). Once these positioning statements are established, you can begin translating them into clear and concise messaging that compels customers to take action.

Message testing should take place during strategy development, and again when going to market. You can leverage qualitative methods to gather open ended feedback on messaging directions, and quantitative methods to make statistically significant decisions between your options. I often start with a qualitative approach, conducting interviews or focus groups to understand what sort of messaging appeals to my target audience. What I’m assessing at this stage is clarity, value, relevance, appeal, differentiation, timeliness, and urgency. I’ll use those findings to write messaging that simultaneously leads with emotion and is built on logic. Once I’ve narrowed down the options, I’ll run a survey or experiment to confirm the messaging hypothesis at scale. You can also take the opposite approach, depending on the resources you have at your disposal, starting with a survey or poll to customers asking about their experience with your messaging and then follow up with more in-depth interviews, focus groups and user tests to get at the why behind some of the trends that emerged in the survey results. Other useful quantitative testing methods for when you go to market include on-site behavior analysis and A/B testing across channels, including web, email, and paid, which can be continually optimized for the most performant variant. Don’t forget to revisit your messaging framework and update it according to the learnings you collected in-market.

Lead with the why. Your messaging framework should be rooted in the positioning statement, which speaks to the problem you’re trying to solve, who you’re solving it for, how you’re solving it, and why you’re uniquely positioned to do so. Once you’re clear on that, you can summarize it in customer friendly language. What’s the most important thing you want customers to take away from your message? This is your key message, around which the rest of the framework can be built. Your key message should be rooted in benefit to the customer, and supported by benefit oriented messaging pillars that further substantiate your key message. I’ve personally found that harnessing the power of three messaging pillars works best, because it gives you enough room to address the breadth of benefits your product offers, but is still simple enough for customers to remember. After nailing your messaging, you can figure out which benefit each product feature ladder up to, making it true. Often, a single feature will support multiple benefits, in which case you can either choose to align that feature to the benefit it’s most closely associated with, or include it more than once. It’s also helpful to think beyond features when considering proof points that back up the claims being made in your messaging. Proof points can take the form of customer testimonials, case studies, data points, and more.

The simple answer is never, but let’s talk about what this means in practical terms. The cadence at which you revisit your messaging varies case by case. How quickly is your product evolving? How crowded is the space in which you operate? Are competitors closing the gap between their product and yours, undermining your claims of differentiation? Has there been a dip in campaign results? Is your messaging getting tired? Any meaningful changes to your product strategy, portfolio makeup, market landscape, and go-to-market performance will likely require you to revisit your messaging strategy. If there aren’t any noticeable internal or external factors at play, a good rule of thumb is to consider revisiting your messaging every 6 months. That said, there are internal and external benefits to consistency so try to refrain from switching up your messaging on a whim. Internally, messaging frameworks serve as a guiding north star for collateral created by all customer-facing teams. Each time there’s a change in messaging direction you’ll have to invest time in retraining teams to internalize the new approach. And externally, repetition is key to unlocking the full potential of your marketing.

Feedback loops across various sources allow PMMs to learn what works, what doesn’t, and where we need to improve our message so it “hits home.” Continue leveraging the aforementioned qualitative and quantitative methods for message testing as channels for ongoing feedback collection as well. I’d recommend supplementing the learnings gathered through these channels with sentiment monitoring across social media, review sites and press coverage. Another often underutilized resource is the customer-facing teams within your organization. Customer support agents and sellers hear directly from dozens if not thousands of customers on a daily basis. Use this immense wealth of knowledge they build up over time to your advantage by finding ways to incorporate their insights and reporting into any feedback loop systems you establish. Once you’ve compiled feedback across all of these sources, look for patterns and trends in your findings and map out an action plan accordingly. Implement those new plans, test, and measure again. It’s called a feedback loop for a reason.