Any suggestions on how to build and validate market driven messaging, versus the easier and more prevalent product/feature centric messaging?

For guidance on how to build messaging, see my answer to, What are good messaging framework resources that you use?. In terms of how to validate it, I’d recommend a combination of the following tactics:   Talk to your customers: Invest time talking to and learning from your prospective and existing customers. Specifically, listen to how they describe the problems they have, the pain points they experience, and what a better world would look like for them (in their minds). Partner with your sales ...Read More

Similar to the question above on uncovering buyer trends, I’d suggest starting broad and then going narrow to develop market driven messaging. Start with a few key insights about your target market and their pain points. I leverage personas for this. If you don’t have them, the work should start there to really understand your customer’s needs and concerns.From there, I would build some options and do high-level testing with focus groups or customer panels. I’ve also done this via quantitative s ...Read More

Product positioning/value propositions/messages are developed for people (personas) in markets. The first step is to identify the personas that influence a buying decision for your products. When you understand that, you can dive into the problems each persona is experiencing and develop a value prop for each. A message for a technical buyer won't resonate for an economic buyer, as you point out. Trying to create one message that resonates with both may be impossible (and will be too generic).  ...Read More

Are you talking about messaging specifically (precise wording) or a more general positioning? If it's the former, then I think Lia is correct. For the latter it takes some pretty heavy primary research. The way I do it is by spending time with a client's customers, prospects, or others who would be representative of such, asking questions. Lots of questions. The key is to ask questions about anything but the product/product category. Learn what preoccupies their thoughts, then figure out how you ...Read More