How do you deal with big and conflicting opinions from key stakeholders on your messaging?

This happens a lot as a Product Marketer! While it's great to take multiple stakeholders opinions into account, product marketers have a unique vantage point in their organization that enables them to see the broader company context in a way that not all teams have access to. To manage conflicting opinions, I like to ground teams in what we're communicating, why we're communicating it, and the outcome we want to drive. Usually grounding conflicting voices in those 3 things - and aligning together - can help to move the group toward a shared understanding and hopefully agreement. Strong research can also prove or disprove messaging hypotheses and help to mitigate internal disagreement -- having an unbiased opinion from customers always goes a long way!

The best way to resolve conflicting opinions from key stakeholders on messaging is to test and validate your messaging with your target audience. If you have data, even qualitative data, you are much more likely to get key stakeholders aligned on messaging that is actually driving impact. With that said, I realize testing is easier said than done and not always available to all product marketers. Get scrappy here. I always say that a PMM's super power is the voice of the customer. You should know your customer better than any stakeholder and feel confident expressing your point of view because you know its rooted in the customer's point of view. I would use a similar tactic when resolving conflicting opinions. It also helps to really understand why each stakeholder feels strongly about specific messaging. In many cases, founders or product leaders see the benefits of their product differently. Often times PMMs get stuck in a messaging bubble and it helps to see the different angles after dissecting conflicting opinions.

This is a challenge at many organizations. The way I approach this is to prioritize customer insights and feedback as the guiding force behind our messaging decisions.

This is always hard and only gets harder as you move up in an organization. Ultimately, you need to figure out who is the main decision maker (is it the CEO, head of product, etc) and treat all other opinions as feedback that you may or may not incorporate. Listening to all stakeholders is key.

You can also present out Option A, B, C and have a discussion and decision. You need to be upfront that an outcome is needed and be VERY clear on the question you are asking and need an answer on.

The best way to mitigate this risk (and this is a very common risk) is to stand up messaging projects as a formal project. This means:

• There is a clear project plan that gives stakeholders the opportunity to feed into messaging with their insights and opinions.

• Related to the above, try and steer stakeholders away from gut opinions as the only input, what data or evidence do we have to back up those opinions

• In the project plan bake in a couple rounds of feedback prior to approval

• Create a clear DACI / RACI that outlines who is the final approver on messaging (This is key because at the approval stage there may need to be the decision to disagree and commit)

• Share a plan for testing and iteration that allows for iterations if message performance isn't performing
  

Disagree and commit. When we come to a crossroads, we often turn to AB testing as the deciding factor—or even launching a survey asking similar audiences what they find most clear. But remember, this is your role for a reason so I recommend clearly identifying how you came to your decision and going on from there—and internally deciding which decisions you're most passionate about. Don't waste time on the back and forth.

If the opinions on messaging feel REALLY divergent, it’s usually because 1) you’re not all answering the same question or 2) you’re actually disagreeing about copy not messaging.

For the first, I wouldn’t ask a group of stakeholders, “what should our topline message be?” because that’s far too broad. I would get much more granular:

What value do we provide to which audience, when, and how do we do it? What data supports that those are the things our audience actually cares about? What’s our answer to that question today, vs what we want it to be in 5 years?

If you can map these details out there shouldn’t be any disagreement about messaging

2) If you feel aligned on value for the audience, and how the product helps, you might actually be having a copywriting problem. Someone doesn’t like that particular word or phrase. Make sure to clarify if you’re directionally aligned, and just need to find a different way of phrasing.