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

Question

Elise Beck · Accepted Answer

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.

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