What is the best way you've found to coach a new product marketer on creating messaging?

The best way I've found is to start small, and grow over-time. To explain that further, when a brand-new product marketer starts I will typically walk through step-by-step the messaging process with them at a granular feature level just to get them some repetition practicing. After doing that a number of times, I'll let them take on some of those (very) small releases on their own and will read messaging (i.e. blog content, in-app messaging, etc) ahead of time to make sure they're on the right t ...Read More

I see three prongs to creating good messaging: understanding the customer, understanding the market, and understanding the product. I’d recommend the following to coach a new product marketer: Listen to customers. Join sales calls, set up new calls, listen to recordings, or read transcripts. Learn their pain points and listen to how they speak. Know the market. Understand what competitors offer and how they’re positioning it. Read their websites, search for them on Google to see their SEM ad cop ...Read More

I had to coach a few people on messaging on my past role, which pushed me to develop a structured approach to coach inexperienced product marketer on writing compelling messaging.What follows are my go-to three steps to ensure a new employee can differentiate good from bad messaging, learn how to frame their messaging in a way that resonates with our personas and validate this message with users before launching. 1. Distinguishing good vs. bad messagingObviously, this is a skill that comes with ...Read More

I tend to think newer product marketers might messaging on function, rather than benefit. Meaning: they'll write what you can do using the product or feature— which is often less compelling.  In order to message to benefits (how the product/feature or workflow makes the user's life better), I rely on a framework that a former manager taught me: that product benefit should help the customers make money, save money, or save time. If the marketer cannot connect a product/feature to a major benefit, ...Read More

Provide the frameworks, processes, and introductions to the right people.  Be very clear to explain or confirm their understanding of various elements; feature, use case, business outcome, etc. Ensure they have a clear understanding of the target audience. Before they go near a messaging document, have them speak to sales, and explain how to ask questions. Have them sit in silently on customer/prospect calls and read your customer forums or external reviews. Have them work on a small project and ...Read More

I try to teach new product marketers how to think critically about positioning and messaging. It's very tempting to rest on more obvious product and feature descriptions that give the audience lots of detail about how things work. But what's more challenging to answer is, "what are we building and why?". What business opportunity do we see in the marketplace that we are trying to exploit? I encourage my product marketing teams to think about developing their expertise in four towers: product, ma ...Read More