How and where do you store your buyer personas, messaging and positioning? What is the format that you use?

A product source or truth deck that points to your personas, messaging and positioning is a sound format for this. We use this as a model for hero products.

Another approach that we're using for a new product that hasn't yet launched but we have user research, personas, and positioning around is a product onboarding deck. Same concept as the source of truth or "bible", but being used as the intro deliverable for all of those joining the project as the first touchpoint they should read.

An outline to consider for the source of truth deck could be:

• Marketing goals

  • Key marketing moments to plan around

• Market context

• User personas

• Messaging and positioning

  • message framework/narrative

  • style/tone guide

• Product overview

  • key features

  • mocks/screens

• sales strategy (if b2b)

  • call scripts

  • key questions to ask

  • playbook to navigate from stakeholder to decision maker

• branding

• use cases/case studies
  

When you join a new organization, always invest in some anthropology work to figure out what works best for the culture and don't assume that whatever has worked for you in the past will translate to new teams. And I might suggest re-framing the question from "storing" to "displaying". How can you merchandise these foundational ideas so that they stay top of mind in every conversation you're having with product, sales or other teams? Consider:

• Putting them in the header on the agenda for regular GTM check-ins

• Asking someone on the xfn team to name them before you kick off roadmap discussions

• Finding ways to bring them to life in posts that describe real-world interactions with personas and how the messaging and positioning spoke to solutions they needed

Developing these ideas is critical and difficult work. Keeping them vital and actionable inside an organization is often harder. Experimenting with ways to make them the basis for decision making and ideation might lead you to promising results.

This is a great question. Building a messaging hub / wiki to store all documents, frameworks, surveys and any information related to messaging, positioning and buyer personas is crucial. This hub serves not only as a repository but also enables easy and quick access for you and your team.

The choice of format depends on the size and structure of your company. Startups and small businesses often rely on spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets, although this might not be the most convenient or effective method. In contrast, larger enterprises have various options for storing and managing this information. Some companies use their CRM systems, by creating custom fields for buyer personas and messaging.

In many companies where I've worked, automated tools like messaging enablement platforms such as GrokSpark are employed. These platforms not only help you establish a hub for your personas, messaging, and positioning but also facilitate the easy retrieval of the right messages and content for each persona, use case, feature, and more. Such tools simplify the management of your messaging and positioning efforts.