How do you align executives and stakeholders around messaging, when it's very subjective and subject to debate?

Building strong messaging, aligned across executives and stakeholders can be done using 3 key tactics. First, include and cite trusted datapoints, both qualitative and quantitative, from third party sources as well as directly from your target audience/customers. Second, enlist input from trusted experts in your field. Analyst briefings have been enlightening in my experience and documenting their feedback as a source helps reinforce the market perspective. And finally, face the feedback from ke ...Read More

You need to listen to people, share positioning work as it develops and be iterative. If you just show up with a messaging strategy without involving leadership in the formulation you are most likely going to get pushback because everyone thinks they know what we should be saying to the market. But if you take time to listen to people, and shape the messaging in response to their feedback people will be much more likely to agree. It goes back to that old adage that you should never show up to an ...Read More

This response is for messaging alignment (not alignment on all marketing activities).  - Build a comprehensive messaging framework. A good framework captures buyers, pain points, overall positioning, value pillars, differentiators and reasons to believe/proof points etc. Usually a lot of alignment can be gained by simply agreeing on the assumptions I often find confusion and misalignment is on the altitude of messaging that execs are expecting. Some execs expect a more feature centric messaging ...Read More

To align executives and stakeholders, and receive their buy-in, you have to tell them where your brand is going before you say how to get there. Concerning your question, you need a solid Communication Strategy, which is made of two parts: Copy Strategy and Media Strategy. The former states, in strategic terms, what Benefit your brand offers, the Reason Why the benefit is what customers want, and the Acceptance of customers of your copy strategy. The latter details how to bring the copy to the t ...Read More