AMA: ThoughtSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing, Christine Sotelo-Dag on Messaging

Message testing is really important and often overlooked, however there are several ways to qualitatively test your messaging that are rather easy to implement. A/B Testing: Conduct A/B tests where you create two or more variations of your messaging and expose them to different segments of your audience. Measure key metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and engagement to determine which messaging resonates best with your audience. There are great and affordable tools out there t ...Read More

There are a few parts that go into this at the foundational level, that I think help when doing the tactical writing for gap closing features. Prior to writing any code, you and your product counterparts should have aligned on the why behind building this feature (ie X competitor has it, and we are losing deals because we don't) but you should have also established the differentiation in what you're building. If the feature is basic, and functionally the same - it is still a part of your wider o ...Read More

Creating a closed-loop messaging program / projects largely sits in how you set these programs and projects up. When I've done Company / Platform messaging creation or updates I like to kick the project off with aligning on the goals of messaging, ensuring my internal stakeholders know: 1. What a messaging house is2. How it should be used, and by who3. What goes into creating good messaging (ie. this is not a silo'd writing project that is quickly whipped up) Here is an example from one of my fo ...Read More

This definitely depends on your business, strategy, industry etc. In my past experience the more macro level messaging like Company or Platform messaging is iterated on less frequently. This is usually updated in relation to specific events such as company level strategy shifts, net new product (product SKU), acquisitions, etc. Maybe once a year. Product Messaging likely gets updated more often. Definitely when you introduce new (Tier 1) features that may open your product to new segments or aud ...Read More

The best way to mitigate this risk (and this is a very common risk) is to stand up messaging projects as a formal project. This means: There is a clear project plan that gives stakeholders the opportunity to feed into messaging with their insights and opinions. Related to the above, try and steer stakeholders away from gut opinions as the only input, what data or evidence do we have to back up those opinions In the project plan bake in a couple rounds of feedback prior to approval Create a clear ...Read More

While I was working at Intercom under Matt Hodges he recommended our entire team read 'On Writing Well' and I still go back to this book often for tips on good writing. Although, it's not specifically teaching how to avoid cliches, it does help the reader with tips on keeping writing clear and succinct and compelling. So I'd check that out. I also follow Emma Stratton at Punchy and I have consumed SO MUCH of her content. She does specifically tackle how to avoid jargon, and why it doesn't work - ...Read More

Value props are directly linked to customer pain. If you truly understand the pain you are solving for (through customer, prospect and market research) then you can take that pain and map it to how your product or solution solves that pain - which is your value prop. Clearly communicating those value props also requires that you state your value in a way that is tied to the impact the customer can expect from using your product, and how your product solves their pain in a way that competitors ca ...Read More

I love this question and I'm a huge fan of JTBD again from my time at Intercom where this was a huge part of how we build and marketed our products. This actually needs to start before you get to the messaging stage. This needs to start at the product scoping stage, where you and your product team should develop a PRD (Product Requirements Doc). This doc should clearly define what is the problem to be solved (what is the job customers want to do). Once this has been defined, and a solution is de ...Read More