What's the best way to ensure messaging evolves with the pace of the company while maintaining consistency? Should I abandon the idea of running a campaign that lasts more than a few weeks?

Brilliant question. If developed correctly, your messaging pillars should be evergreen (i.e. should not change on a dime) from campaign to campaign. Ultimately, your messaging pillars bring to life the core value your product/service delivers to customers and hence should be foundational. As you release new product features, think about how they ladder up to your core messaging pillars (aka the value you deliver to customers) and map them as such.  Here are some best practices to ensure you get ...Read More

First of all, I feel your pain! With the company moving fast, it can sometimes feel that your messaging is always playing catch up. In cases where your product and business evolve quickly, I recommend anchoring your messaging on the elements that remain most constant: The market trends around you The top pain(s) your audience feels The top use cases your company solves If you work for a mobile attribution company, your product might change every day. But the growing number of digital touchpoints ...Read More

Above all, meet your company where it is. If you’re a small team just getting started, you’re likely going to have nail a brand identity and core message, and then be flexible as you evolve from there. If you’re part of a 500 person marketing team, you’re going to navigate some different challenges related to step-wise refinement of your messaging.A few tried & true rules here: Define & Know your Core Nouns  Assign them value props and core messages of 25, 50, and 100 words Establish cle ...Read More

The best ways I've found to ensure your messaging lives for more than a few weeks:1) Collaborating with your company leaders to not just review, but also develop the messaging2) Testing the messaging with real customers (and sharing their responses with your coworkers)2) Training — and sometimes testing — your coworkers on the messaging so they know how to use it3) Spreading the messaging everywhere — website, video, emails, etc. — you can and measuring the effectiveness (and sharing that measur ...Read More

I think the key to keeping at pace with the needs of the company while maintaining consistency is to have brand messaging that is aligned to your unique value propositions (UVPs). Then you can run integrated campaigns throughout the year that support each of those UVPs. This ensures you stay consistent with the agreed-to brand messages while still creating new campaigns that refresh every few months. You can see which campaigns resonate the best and continue to refresh your campaigns with those ...Read More

This is definitely a question / problem that most PMMs will face and exactly why we create value pillars to help ground us. I like to think about it this way: you messaging house shouldn't be touched more than once a quarter (and even this is a bit aggressive but if you're at an early stage start-up, you might have a need to make tweaks more often than others). A good template for a messaging house will include: the problem your product is solving purpose of the company mission statement emotion ...Read More

Definitely not! Customer problems drive your positioning and messaging so unless the problems change, you should stick with your current messaging. It takes at least a year to claim a position in your market, and once you own it, stick with it for an extended period of time. This assumes customer problems don't change - they rarely do - and your positioning and messaging is: Unique - they differentiate you from the competition Important - they address your customers' most pressing problem Believ ...Read More