AMA: Triple Whale 🐳 VP of Marketing, Jenna Crane on Storytelling

There are two components to get alignment on here — the playing field, and the scores. With both, the first step is creating a feature/functionality matrix for your company and its key competitors. * The choice of competitive set is important — these should be alternatives that you're actually encountering as direct competitors. * Along the rows, detail out all the relevant features and functionality, ideally in categories (infrastructure, product lines, support/service, etc.). * The columns should be companies — your company and its competitors. * Do your research to determine not just the availability of different features/functionality, but the strength and completeness. Look at company websites, review sites, and analyst reports. Work with your product team. Talk to your sales & CS teams. Make sure to save your documentation for future reference! * Color code each cell red, yellow, or green. * Green = Complete / strong solution * Yellow = Partial solution / doesn't work well / coming soon * Red = No solution * If you like, you can add text to the cell to explain why you gave that color. Now the two things you have to get alignment on are: * The playing field. Are these the right competitors? Is this the right set of functionality to evaluate? (Note: Do this first, before you research!) * The scores. Does everyone agree that this is an accurate reflection of the company's capabilities, and the competitors' strengths / weaknesses? This is where your documentation comes in really handy.

With any great messaging — but especially in this case — the key is articulating why this differentiator is valuable to your target audience. What standout outcomes does this proprietary algorithm unlock? What about this approach makes it more valuable to a customer than the alternatives? You may have to ask 'why would a customer care?' a few times to get to true benefits. This was the case at Klaviyo. We spent hundreds of hours trying to compellingly articulate one of the platform's most valuable differentiators — its data architecture. Klaviyo was the first in the industry to be built on top of a very unique hybrid OLAP + OLTP data engine. Why does that matter? It unlocks the ability to store vast volumes of data and query it in real time, where alternative solutions make you choose between data volume and querying speed. (Keep asking why!) This means marketers have millions of data points at their fingertips to use in building customer segments, personalizing messages, analyzing behavior, and more. (Keep going...) This makes it easy for marketers to power smarter digital relationships with their customers, because the experiences they create are more relevant and more valuable (and as a result, more profitable).

I'm not sure if you're referring to internal attention or external attention, so I'll answer both. Internal attention The quickest way to have messaging ignored by key stakeholders is to make the messaging doc too long and verbose. Focus on short and sweet statements that capture value and differentiation in a pithy, punchy way. Your messaging will be better for it, and your cross-functional partners will be grateful for it. External attention At this point my gravestone will probably say 'messaging is not copy!' The role of copy is to convey your meaning in a way that captures attention. There are lots of great books on powerful copywriting techniques, but a perfect place to start is by subscribing to Eddie Shleyner's VeryGoodCopy newsletter: https://eddie-shleyner.squarespace.com/. It's a fantastic resource.

* One of the most critical times to tell a great story is your sales pitch. And for that, the classic is the old world / new world framework that Andy Raskin popularized: https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0 * Another valuable framework for strategic narratives is the ABT method (and, but, therefore). It distills a story down to its core elements, which you can then elaborate on: * We believe that [statement] * and [statement]. * But, [tension/problem]. * Therefore, [resolution]. * Here's an example of how that would look for Dropbox: We believe that creativity and productivity are two of the most powerful forces in the world, and that the only thing more powerful than harnessing them solo is amplifying them with others. But way too much time and energy is wasted on the inefficient parts of working, especially collaboratively. Therefore, we built a platform that lets you get to work with a lot less work — with tools that help you move your work forward faster, keep it safe, and let you collaborate with ease. * There are plenty of other great frameworks — the hero's journey, the Pixar Pitch, etc. (Side note: Creativity Inc. is a wonderful book on this topic!) — but in general you need to set the stakes, introduce tension / pain / problems, and resolve the tension. The ideal is not actually making your product the hero of the story; the hero is your customer after using your product.

There are two ways to stand out — what you say, and how you say it. What you say This is the core of positioning. Find your competitive differentiation, even though you may think everyone's solution is the same. (April Dunford has a great framework for determining whether there really is no differentiation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aprildunford_one-of-the-most-common-questions-i-get-is-activity-7242555636188676097-b937). If you're writing this as a PMM for one part of the product, and that area really has no differentiation, try messaging how your part of the product is better than alternatives because it's made more valuable by the rest of your product. How you say it The substance of what you say is only part of the story. Your storytelling techniques are often more powerful than the content itself. Let customers tell your story for you, and give them a megaphone. Find stats that illustrate just how valuable your product is. Showcase incredible quotes from customers that represent how you want everyone to feel about your product. Do a product overview video that brings the power of the product to life. Highlight use cases that people can envision doing themselves. Pinpoint the most urgent pains your product solves, articulate those pains in a way so accurate it's almost uncomfortable to listen to (or so funny they stop what they're doing to listen) and then save the day with your solution.