We often hear that messaging should be differentiating. How can that be achieved?

Achieving differentiated messaging starts with a deep understanding of customers and actively listening to their needs and preferences. By prioritizing the customer's perspective, finding differentiated approaches to messaging that resonates uniquely and stands out amidst the noise. Here's how we approach this: Customer-Centric Research: Conducting research to understand our target audience— their pain points, aspirations, and the factors that influence their purchasing decisions. This involves ...Read More

My favorite product marketing mentor always gave me the best advice to ensure my messaging was differentiated. What is the one thing you can say that your competitor cannot say about this product or feature. If another company's name can easily be swapped out with your own, then your messaging is not differentiated enough. Get specific with data proof points to create solid evidence to support your messaging and build differentiation. If you aren't sure what makes your product differentiated fro ...Read More

Perhaps implicit in this question is one of my philosophies that a PMM should be customer obsessed and competitor aware. What I mean by this is that we as PMM should really understand our target user and deliver on what they want. We obviously do this in a competitive landscape but if you take your focal point off the target user and spend too much time on competition it will just simply not be as productive. To ensure your messaging is differentiation starts with your positioning - getting this ...Read More

I don’t think I agree messaging should be differentiating but I do think it should make your company easily distinguishable. What I mean by that is that folks that focus too much on making their messaging sound unique against competitors often lose the plot for what their audience is trying to solve, and the words they use to describe their pain and ideal solution. It’s very rare you and your competitors do the exact same thing in the same way for the same ICP. Tune your messaging to your specif ...Read More

Easier said then done but do a 'pinch test' when reviewing your messaging. Ask yourself if you removed your companies brand/name from the message could any other brand/name be swapped in and the message still hold true? If so, it's not very differentiated is it? However, if its unique enough then it would be harder for another business to 'mirror' your messaging/value prop etc. It's a great litmus test to continually apply as you work through messaging evolutions as it keeps you 'honest' on whet ...Read More