How do you drive alignment across the exec team on messaging

Customer proof. The real question you're asking is how do you get consensus around a lot of opinions. Getting messaging approved can feel like being stuck in a wave pool. It's because messaging uniquely forces uncomfortable reflections like what do we stand for and why will anyone care? You can't know the answers without deeply understanding your customer. And that deep customer empathy is what makes a great PMM. I always go back to the customer's pain points when trying to drive exec alignment, ...Read More

I see three parts to driving alignment, both with execs and among all other stakeholders: First, bring them along for the journey. Messaging cannot be done in a silo, and it’s difficult to properly adopt if not everybody feels bought in. Interview your execs and stakeholders to learn their perspective, where they feel the company or product is differentiated, what customer pain it solves, what benefits it delivers. The answers will vary and will be meaningful inputs as you craft and test your me ...Read More

Start with data. Ground your messaging in first and third party data that illuminates what is important to your target customers, key pain points, aspirations, how they like to be messaged to, language they use, etc. Show your work -- don’t just include the suggested messaging in the doc; add an appendix or reference section that demonstrates a thoughtful approach that is grounded in the data. Next, see if you can get some quick feedback from target customers on your messaging to further validat ...Read More

To drive alignment, make something that execs can respond to. Recently, I created an example “future state” pitch deck to articulate a future narrative for Glassdoor. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped drive discussion and alignment on overall company positioning and direction. But in general, make something for folks to respond to. I think it is so important for product marketing teams to establish credibility and expectations that PMM owns specific artifacts that ultimately help the company make ...Read More

Every executive team is different, so I would encourage you to think through the culture (and sometimes - quirks!) of the members of that team as you craft your own approach. That said, I've found a couple things particularly effective in my experience.  Bring along key lieutenants for the ride - once you get to the exec team, a number of important leaders should have been part of the ideation and review process. Individual sales leaders, product owners, customer success leads should all be stop ...Read More

It's key to align around a high-level story that powers success—in sales, marketing, fundraising, product development and recruiting—by getting everyone on the same page about strategy and differentiation. Alignment is difficult. If you can start with your CEO, that is key. Ultimately, your CEO is yuor ultimate storyteller and if she is bought in, then its easier to get the rest of the executive team aligned. The story is the strategy and that should be your starting point. What’s driving your s ...Read More

I feel fortunate that I’ve led positioning/messaging workshops since I graduated college because I worked for an agency that mandated them for every project we worked on for tech clients.  Getting an exec team to agree on a document outlining positioning and messaging isn't the hard part in my opinion. The difficult part is to get the messaging to stick once you put it out in the world: on a homepage, in a blog post, an ad, a slide deck for sales, etc. When positioning and messaging is put to us ...Read More

We typically prepare and validate a strong Messaging and Positioning Framework (MPF) document first. Our template typically includes things like the market context, objectives of our messaging (i.e. what we hope to drive/influence), quick single-sentence description of the product etc. Once we have this document, we circulate it among the exec team (typically months in advance of a launch to give everyone enough time to reflect and comment). We also typically have multiple live discussions on th ...Read More

Here's my process, I Conduct customer and prospect research (exec team will be more likely to be bought in with data - especially from your key personas and customers)  Consolidate findings and prepare a messaging brief using the framework we landed on.   Present those findings to and get feedback from key stakeholders - including marketing leadership, sales, and product team - and (most importantly) customers  Incorporate feedback into the final messaging brief  Present messaging to leadership ...Read More

At the end of the day, Product Marketing owns messaging, and there should be general alignment around that. I think that's a really important place to start because literally everyone has an opinion or point of view on messaging, but someone ultimately gets to 'own' it. If in your organization, that's PMM, there should be and understanding across the organization that it's the responsibility of PMM/Marketing to come up with product positioning and messaging. If you're an exec / leader in Marketi ...Read More

I start with personas. I develop a thesis about core personas based on sales and customer success feedback, and then conduct user interviews to validate or invalidate those ideas. That's probably the most important bit–my job isn't to just synthesize learnings from within our business, it's to continually test and validate those learnings externally. I then circulate research + personas with key executive leaders (CEO, Head of Product, Head of Sales), until we agree on the shape of each. Then I ...Read More

This is so important, and not focused on enough so I'm glad you asked! A few thoughts around this: Get your CEO and CMO involved early. Ideally you can get early drafts to them, and also get them bought into the importance of the process and value of this effort which will make every aspect of this a lot smoother. Have a consistent review process. Depending on your size and stage of company, it's unlikely that your executive team needs to see or review every piece of messaging. If you're working ...Read More

The best way to drive alignment on messaging across the exec team is to be super clear about the process and milestones without going into too much detail (which a great rule of thumb for all things working with execs). The process needs to build off a set of hypotheses about messaging (basically a reasonable draft as a starting place), then offer opportunities to provide feedback, and solicit ideas at regular intervals leading to a refined version that you and your team is driving. That's key - ...Read More

First, start with data-driven positioning. Who are you in the marketplace? Where are you heading or trying to become? How do you think your competitors are moving in the space? If you skip this step, you'll lack differentiation in your messaging, and you'll get a lot of resistance from executives who think in visionary terms. To build the most effective messaging, you need to start with a deep understanding of how your customers think about your company and why they are buying it in the first pl ...Read More

This requires having a strong relationship built on trust with your executive team and, depending on the size of your company, the CEO. Get the executive team involved early and often, and be willing to disagree and commit. Come prepared to conversations with data, market insights, competitive intelligence, and anything else that will help them understand how critical the work you are doing is. Help them buy into "why this messaging" and "why now" by anticipating their questions, bringing a lens ...Read More

It goes without saying if your messaging is good then people are going to remember it. So, remember to be: ·        Memorable ·        Simple ·        Concise ·        Unique ·        And always cut the waffle Once you’ve nailed your messaging you need to get it in front of your people. Land the importance of messaging: For non-marketers messaging can feel a little fluffy. It’s important to set the scene on why messaging is so important – back this with data and real-life examples. Take them on ...Read More

Twenty-one answers on this question tells you something: everyone has the same problem and no one has fully solved it. Here's what's worked across my time at Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and now UiPath. The core issue is that execs align on business goals but rarely on the words. The mistake is starting with messaging. Start instead with a shared diagnostic: what's the market problem we're solving, for whom, and why is now the moment? When you get alignment at that level, the messaging debate ...Read More

It's hard. Real hard.  Many PMMs make the mistake of starting with messaging. This is a no-no. Messaging comes last and just puts words behind what was already decided. You have to nail this in sequential order.  First comes strategy Then comes positioning And finally comes messaging Your CEO owns the strategy. Period. If they don't know where you are going, the positioning will be unclear or may work for a little while until the market or your product evolves. I recall a meeting in a prior comp ...Read More

The final step in the positioning framework I use and teach is to get management approval for the proposed positioning and messaging. There is a standard presentation my clients use to present the evidence that helped them converge on the proposed position. It includes: -          A list of target audience problems ranked by importance. It is used to show that the positioning statement expresses a benefit that solves the target’s most pressing problem. -          A competitive map that makes it ...Read More