Do you approach crafting overall product messaging differently than feature launch messaging?

Yes!

At Coda, I’m very lucky to have a wildly talented Brand Team that supports our company, and privileged to have worked on 100+ customer-facing feature launches in 2020. (Seriously. Over 100. Because Coda runs on Coda, our product team ships incredibly. You can count all the launches here if you don't believe me!)

Your overall product messaging should serve as an umbrella covering all of your individual feature messaging. Top-line product messaging is going to play a role in generating evergreen assets and long-term marketing strategy. As such, we set out to have core product messaging for Coda and its primarily building blocks like pages, tables, buttons, Packs etc. that can stand the test of time. As part of our recurring “marketing infrastructure” work, we meet across Product Marketing, Brand, Education & Solutions at a regular cadence to audit and fine tune this messaging, but for the most part make small tweaks vs. large-scale changes.

The product messaging then serves as a set of guiding principles for our feature messaging. For example, the way we talk about pages and frameworks we use should match features that apply toーor are experienced withinーpages in Coda. With new features launching every week, we can’t always dedicate the longer message-generation cycles with a cross-functional team for each feature launch, so the initial messaging (especially in the feature brief) is likely the product of a few quicker drafting sessions by PMM + PM. For higher tier launches, we loop in our colleagues from other teams to fine tune the message or help craft a smoother story.

The moral of the story here is to understand the hierarchy of your messaging (and value props!), and support it with a mechanism of tiering/prioritization if you’re going to be taking a lot of features to market in short order.

Whether we're looking at our high-level product messaging, solution messaging or feature level messaging - we follow a messaging framework that remains consistent. 

• What is it (short desciprtion & long description) 
• How does it work? 
• 3-5 Key benefits 
• Differentiators 
• Target audience 
• Claims & proof points 

You don’t want a new feature to distract from the main hero product so you should think about the specific benefit customers that already use your main hero product are going to get. Of course you need to communicate the value of the feature, will your users or customers be able to do something they couldn't do before? Can they make more money? Is their experience simpler? Think about your feature messaging in the context of your hero product and that will help you figure out the main differences.

I think of feature launch messaging as a subset of overall product messaging. Both should stem from your company mission and brand promise, and take into account customer needs, broader market trends, and competitive differentiation. A feature launch may have a smaller target audience though, solve a certain customer pain point, or serve a specific use case. So you would typically hone in on a more specific value prop for a feature launch. 

Cross-posting and building on a similar answer!

Borrowing from April Dunford, positioning is "context setting for prospects." Once you've established your positioning (which takes time, especially if you're pre-product market fit!), you need to be consistent over a relatively long timeframe, think 3+ years. Positioning answers the value you deliver to your ideal customer, through what differentiated capabilities, and in contrast to what competitors within a particular category.

Messaging operates on a nearer term horizon, and is how you convey your value (whether as a holistic brand or as a product line) to the market; it's the storytelling strategy. Any given campaign or piece of content needs to be laser-focused on a single persona, main point, and genuine proof points or reasons to believe the main point.

To sum up, core product or platform positioning (context setting) is going to be a long-term true-north that informs your messaging (storytelling) for feature launches; if the feature launch messaging isn't rooted in your positioning, it'll undermine the market's ability to understand where you fit in their context. That's not to say you can't be creative with feature launch messaging, of course—often with launch messaging you're able to be more specific/nuanced in terms of your target persona, their jobs to be done, and the competitive alternatives they have to choose from. Just consider closely if you find your messaging feels significantly disjointed from your positioning.