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What documents do you create for messaging of a new product and or feature. What are ways in which you differentiate the messaging? Do you create a matrix of messages via vertical, persona etc?

Alissa Lydon
Alissa Lydon
Dovetail Head of Product Marketing | Formerly Mezmo, Sauce LabsMay 6

For new products and major features, I find it invaluable to go through a complete messaging exercise. This is an iterative process that involves collaboration with Product, Marketing, and Sales. I've developed a template for this over the years that combines the things I liked most from the past messaging exercises. While this list is not exhaustive, these are the things I have found are most valuable to building messaging that resonates not only externally, but also internally with the teams that need to market and sell the product:

  • Define worldview - What is the problem we are seeing in the market that necessitated the creation of this product/feature?
  • Define solution - What have we built that helps solve the problems defined in our worldview definition?
  • Positioning statement - How are we differentiated from similar players in the market?
  • Competitive value - A deeper dive into the competitive landscape, how we compare at the feature level, and our differentiated value.
  • Messaging matrix - This is the holy grail of how to message to various personas. This includes a mapping of value props, key messages, and features/use cases to the challenges faced by different personas. I often abstract this out into its own asset (which I call the Value Framework) that acts as a kind of cheat sheet on how to message to various personas.
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Candice Sparks
Candice Sparks
Attentive Director of Product MarketingJuly 7

For a new product or feature I always start out with a simple messaging framework (there are a ton of great ones out there for you to leverage)! At the very least, your product messaging framework should include your value proposition, target audience, and a statement about what differentiates you from the competition. To dive deeper into the differentiation, I always pick 3 market trends and 3 pain points our target buyer has and then describe how our product uniquely solves these pain points or addresses these trends.

This can be a rather in-depth document that I'll use to help create our comms from content, PR, SDR outreach etc. I then also have a simplified exec version that provides a more high-level view of our messaging so a sales rep, executive, or anyone at the company wanted to quickly read our messaging they would have access to this presentation.

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Reshma Iyer
Reshma Iyer
Prepared Head of MarketingMay 24

I try to keep to one single messaging artifact -- this can contain the following:

Section A- overarching messages, true to all:

  • master value prop

  • technical capabilities/product features

  • value pillars (can can contain further point of substantiation on why and how)

Section B-

  • Persona based: feature/functionality value delivered based on jobs to be done by this audience

  • Vertical based: feature/functionality value delivered to business outcomes

Including a competitive lens for differentiation can be of use for large/Tier 1 launches.

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