Do you have any top tips for layering and reviewing your messaging?

The most important part of messaging is actually your positioning. I like to think of it as a sculpture where positioning is the armature -- the most foundational skeleton or bones of the thing. Without the armature, your sculpture could easily lose shape and fall apart. Without positioning, your messaging could easily lose shape and fall apart. Your positioning should be really explicit about:

1. The name of your product or feature
2. The category that your product or feature fits into
3. The target audience
4. The key benefit(s)
5. The key differentiator(s)
6. The reason to believe

...I typically write this out in a table format, and draft up a short response for each of those 6 prompts. From there, challenge yourself to rewrite it as a simple positioning statement. Does it work? Typically I'll spend a lot of time here with my team, really kicking the tires to ensure that the positioning is clear and defensible. This is the foundation of your messaging. From here, you can begin to draft up some messaging pillars. Think of these as key themes that relate to your positioning. It's really important that altogether, this is shared with your broader marketing team and GTM partners so that any additional marketing collateral, help documentation, sales enablement, etc. all holds up and aligns with the over arching positioning and messaging you've set forth. The reality is that your messaging can change flavors depending on where it shows up. The headline of an ad will be different from the body of an email which will be different from a blog post. Providing your team with the foundations of positioning and some broad messaging pillars will ensure that altogether, the message comes across in the right way no matter what. 

I am so glad you asked! I have a few rules I live by when it comes to messaging reviews:

Read it out loud: This trick is essential for PMMs of all levels, regardless of your proficiency with writing. Whether PMM is just your nine-to-five until Netflix buys your screenplay or you are a PMM with a technical background that dreaded creative writing class, this trick is a great way to filter for cliches, technical jargon, and writerly language that sounds better in your head than it does coming out of your mouth. The best messaging is conversational, which you would say to a friend at a casual hang-out; as Emma Stratton says, "Say it like you would at the BBQ." This trick helps you do just that.

The Coco Chanel Rule: When speaking about fashion accessories, legendary designer Coco Chanel once said, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off." What's true about necklaces is also true about messaging: when you think you're done, take one more pass and see what you can remove to make things clearer. Let's face it: PMMs love to geek out about their products. Don't be embarrassed—it's a good thing! The enthusiasm for innovation and finding new ways to solve problems is something to be proud of, but we must learn to temper the excitement and deploy it effectively. Over-enthusiastic PMMs, myself included, tend to try to tell the entire product story at all times. Every capability, every persona, every benefit. This also happens during feedback sessions; reviewers who are untrained in messaging but feel the need to provide SOME feedback just to check the box will point out what they don’t see in the messaging. This is natural human behavior but also a recipe for ineffective messaging. In addition to checking for spelling and grammar, PMMs should do a pass for clarity and extraneous concepts in their messaging that obfuscate their main takeaway. This tip is good advice for everyone but will be especially helpful for PMMs working on complex, "All-in-one" products.

Enlarge the text and change the font: This is an old-school proofreading tip courtesy of my talented sister, Gabi Moskowitz! As a child, I was diagnosed with Dysgraphia, a neurological condition that impacts my ability to turn my thoughts into written language. I randomly capitalize letters mid-sentence, write unintended words, and am more prone to typos than the average writer. Spell Check and Grammarly Pro are table stakes for me, but they aren't perfect, so I have to do another pass to ensure they didn't miss something grammatically correct but not what I intended to say. Unfortunately, when you re-read a piece of familiar text, you begin to predict what it will say based on a handful of familiar letters due to a phenomenon called "typoglyciema". That's why it's important to shock your system. When I think I'm done with a piece of messaging, I'll take a break, and when I come back to it, I enlarge the text and change the font to Comic Sans (yes, Comic Sans) as a pattern interrupt. My brain can't predict what I write as quickly, and I usually find typos that I missed in my last pass.