Does anyone have good ideas on courses, trainings, trainers or ways to help a Product Marketing team improve their storytelling and copywriting skills?

Read more, write more, get more feedback. I think there are courses you can take to help but in my experience its more a matter of just getting more reps and experience. Writing and storytelling is like going to the gym. Reading more, especially non-business news will help. Read writers you like and pay attention to their style and voice. Why do they captivate you? Write as much as you can. It can be social posts, internal memo's, wiki posts, things you never share with anyone, just write more. And get feedback. It can be hard, but if you write in Google docs, share it with people you trust who will give you really good feedback. Getting great feedback is the key to writing better faster. 

Thanks both! Lots of planning and then lots of writing and reviewing and discussing is our plan so far, and Donald Miller’s book is up next As well. I like the idea of having someone in the target audience to bounce stuff off of.

My big personal challenge is translating the concise ”write as you speak” approach that is common in the US to a Portuguese-speaking world where everything is more verbose.

Cheers!

Farren is a sales/growth pro who has a set of tools and training for copywriting: https://www.farrenneu.com/

I agree with Marcus. Another method that I use with lots of success is to have someone who is in my target audience review any larger pieces of content and get their feedback. Just ask them, does this resonate with you?

But the best thing to do is get the story straight in the first place. One way I recommend you do this is to read the book, Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Too many companies either focus on product/features when they should be focusing on how they solve their customer’s problems. When you use the StoryBrand framework, you create consistent messaging to use across all channels and it’s hard to go back to company-centric messaging. 

As you may have guessed, I am a product marketing coach and also provide PMM training on how to create powerful stories and messaging for companies and products to help them get a greater ROI on marketing spend and to make products memorable. 

Short, self-serving answer: Call me.

Longer, more altruistic answer: I always view one's writing skills as a proxy for their ability to clearly communicate an idea, while demonstrating an understanding of what makes a particular audience tick. I would focus less on copywriting specifically and more on this idea of communication. Perhaps they can practice by ghostwriting for others in the company on topics slightly outside of their specific domain (always easier to do this when there's a little distance between your topic and your day-to-day). 

Storytelling is all about seeing, understanding, and filling gaps. Gaps between what someone has now and what they need to do their job. Gaps in understanding how two things relate to each other. You get the idea. If you see where things are now, and where you need them to be (whether internally or for customers), and can come up with a narrative connecting them, you have your story. 

Helpful?