Adventures In Messaging
Hosted by Emma Stratton
Adventures in Messaging is a weekly, 15-min video series hosted by me (Emma Stratton) where top product marketing leaders share their insights into the wild and wonderful world of messaging. We discuss the craft of creating great messaging, offer advice and wisdom to up-and-coming product marketers, and dispel some myths along the way. Thanks for watching! 🙌 👊
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E15: With Jason Gatoff, VP of Product Marketing at Pendo.io
It feels like every startup wants to create a new category. Category creation has become the holy grail — but it’s not the only way to win. Differentiating your company within an emerging category can be just as powerful. (And it’s not all on you to explain what your new category means.) In the f...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E14: With Jiong Liu, Dir of Product Marketing, Customer Identity at Okta
Sometimes product marketers have to launch a little early. Sometimes they have to launch a LOT early 🙂 So how do you create a positioning and messaging strategy for a product that isn’t fully formed or completely understood? When you haven’t got end-to-end use cases or customer feedback? You go b...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E13: With Jordan Greene, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Outreach
Not enough people talk about using your intuition during messaging development. Because it’s a total secret weapon. The best product marketing teams have a gut sense about which messages will land with their customers, resulting in stronger hypotheses and faster messaging development cycles. And ...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E12: With April Rassa, Vice President Product Marketing at HackerOne
How do you bridge the gap between your product today and the vision for tomorrow? Pretty much every high-growth startup faces this messaging challenge: striking the balance between “what is” vs “what could be.” Luckily, awesome marketing leaders like April Rassa have been there, done it, and deve...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E11: With Jarod Greene, Vice President Product Marketing at Highspot
In so many ways, messaging doesn’t belong to your company. It belongs to your customer. Your buyer. And the companies who get closest to the customer — and use their insights and language to help guide messaging strategy — are the ones who win. In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, the awes...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E10: With Jack Wei, Senior Director Product Marketing at SmartRecruiters
When writing messaging, the natural reflex is to start with what’s so great about your product. (Especially when you know how amazing it is.) The trick is to consciously step back and start with the bigger picture. Why does your product matter to your audience? Why should they even care? Answer t...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E09: With Christine Sotelo-Dag, Group PMM at Intercom
The secret to messaging that resonates? Start with empathy, not features. Before you put pen to paper, make sure you truly understand your customer’s challenges, aspirations and feelings. That’s how you find the emotive hook to bring people into your story. In this episode of Adventures In Messag...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E08: With Peep Laja, Founder at Wynter
A CEO once told me he stayed awake at night wondering how many ideal prospects visited his site, struggled to understand what his company could do for them, and bounced for good...never to return. As marketers, we can all relate to that fear: is our messaging actually grabbing people? 😱 So what c...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E07: With Jeff Beckham, Head of Product Marketing at Mixpanel
This may sound like heresy, but there are times when speaking to high-level business value isn’t necessarily the best way to go. Like when your buyer isn’t responsible for those top-level business metrics. Or when messages like “reduce costs” or “increase revenue” are a dime a dozen in your space...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E06: With Caroline Walthall, Head of Product Marketing at Quizlet
Product Marketers face the challenge of finding the perfect balance for their messaging, identifying which details illuminate the message and which ones just create extra noise. Caroline has a few methods for narrowing it down. In this episode she’ll share the platforms she uses for effective mes...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E05: With Derek Frome, Head of Marketing at Ouster
When it comes to category creation, success lies in intimately knowing your product and the market, and then getting creative with that knowledge. In this episode, Derek will get into detail about the category creation process he’s used in his past few roles, including his current company which j...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E04: With Jason Perocho, VP Product Marketing at Braze
Finding your product’s unique space in the marketplace is everything. That’s why positioning and category definition are two of the most important (and juiciest!) things a product marketer can do. And if you want to do it right, you gotta start with your customers. In this episode of Adventures i...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: S02E03 with Kevin Garcia, Head of Product Marketing at Retool
Research does more than just inform product positioning and messaging — it helps build conviction around how to move forward as a company. The key is to ask specific and nuanced questions; listen to what the research is telling you; and pivot accordingly. In this episode, Kevin Garcia, offers awe...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E02: With Andrew Stinger, Product & Corporate Marketing Lead at Coda
“Your job communicating isn’t done until you’ve been understood.” Words. To. Live. By. 🙌 Just because you’ve put a message out there to your team — on a deck, a doc, an email — doesn’t mean you’ve effectively communicated the idea. You have to consider different communication needs, different aud...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging S02E01: With Indy Sen, VP Product Marketing, Matterport
Messaging should be like an API inside your company – a living, breathing narrative that any team or region can plug into and get what they need. That’s how messaging becomes a multiplier inside an organization. Indy Sen, VP Product Marketing at Matterport, is full of clever messaging analogies l...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E15 with Mary Sheehan, Head of Product Marketing, Adobe Ad Cloud
So much goes into creating new positioning and messaging. You have to decide who you want to be as a company. You have to get alignment across different teams. You have to understand what your customers think. Then you have to find the right words to bring it all together! In this episode Mary Sh...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E14 with JD Prater, Global Head of Product Marketing at AWS Activate
It’s one thing to get asked to position and message a small new feature. But what do you do when the CRO asks you to lead the charge on new positioning, messaging and competitive differentiation for the entire company? In your first few months on the job? First, you jump up and down with exciteme...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E13 with Savita Kini, Director of Product Marketing at Speech A, Cisco
At what stage of product development should product marketing be brought in? When should you start creating and testing messaging for a new product? Savita Kini has worked in engineering and marketing at companies of all shapes and sizes. And she believes both sides should begin the product innov...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E12 with Dan Palay, Head of Product Marketing at SignEasy.
The best messaging gets into your buyer’s head. It connects the dots between their world and your product. Personas can help you get there. But not if you retrofit them into your own product narrative. In this episode, Daniel Palay talks about how your narrative should fit into what your customer...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E11 with Judy Abad, Head of Business & Operations
With spells at WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram and Facebook, Judy Abad’s resume reads like an iPhone home screen. 😉 She knows what serious demand feels like — the twists, the turns, the thrills — and it’s given her a unique perspective on taking popular products with clearly-defined users to a wider g...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E10 with Jeffrey Vocell, Director of Product Marketing at Iterable.
Every product launch has to land. The stakes are high for product marketers and the pressure is real. That’s when you REALLY want messaging research in your corner saying: “We prepared for this. We got this!” Because without understanding exactly how customers are using your product, how it fits ...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E09 with Sarah Din, VP of Product Marketing at Unbabel
Subjectivity bleeds into a lot of messaging development. “I don’t like this word.” “I think we should say this instead.” “What about ‘accelerate growth’?” Opinions are everywhere. And while they’re valuable, they can also derail the process that leads to GOOD messaging. It’s a challenge that Sara...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E08 with Jon Rooney, GVP, Industry Marketing, Oracle
Think of messaging as draft and hypothesis. Something to stress test and poke holes in. Something to iterate and add rigor to. Not something to just fall in love with inside the building. 😉 “It's a discipline. It’s not ad hoc. It's not a fire drill. And so if you build it like a machine, you will...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E07 with Michael Peach, Head of Product Marketing at Tray.io
Creating a cohesive, overarching story for a product with different audiences and use cases can be tough. It’s a challenge that many product marketers face. But there’s always an answer...and it often lies in your customer's mind. In this episode, Michael Peach, Head of Product Marketing at tray....more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E06 with Diana Smith, Director of Product Marketing & Brand, Twilio.org
It’s easy to think you know how to talk to your customer. But are you using the same words they use? Are you highlighting the same problems they discuss? Are you truly empathizing with their situation? The words you use have the power to build up or belittle your customer. To show you understand ...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E05 with Steve Feyer, Director of Product Marketing, Eightfold
It’s easy to play it safe with messaging and say what everyone else is saying. (LOTS of companies do it.) But safe messaging gets ignored. If you want to grab people’s attention, your messaging needs to go out on a limb and say something different. In this episode of Adventures in Messaging, Stev...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E04 with Kristen Ribero, Head of Brand & Corporate Marketing, Handshake
There are many things to learn about messaging: value props, product pillars, proof points, etc. But the secret to great messaging isn’t in a framework. It’s about keeping it real and simple for your customers. In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Kristen Ribero, Head of Brand & Corporate ...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E03 with Ajit Ghuman, Head of Product Marketing at Narvar
You’d think a solid ROI calculator could convince people to buy. But most purchases aren’t based on rational facts and figures – they’re based on how your prospect feels. That’s why pathos – evoking emotions in your audience – is a key part of messaging. Your buyer’s emotions drive the discussion...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E02 with Sarah Lambert, Director, HCM Product Marketing at Oracle
Talking to your customers about their challenges – and diving deep into how they make them feel – is an incredible way to test your messaging. The key is to be subtle about the testing part. In this episode of Adventures In Messaging, Sarah Lambert, Director, HCM Product Marketing at Oracle, shar...more
Adventures In Messaging
Video: Adventures in Messaging: E01 with Francisco T. Bram, Head of Global Product Marketing, Uber
Great product narratives are never about the product. They're always about the audience. How the product makes them feel. How it makes them act and react. How their lives will be improved, thanks to your solution. These are the real reasons people buy. In this episode of Adventures In Messaging w...more