Messaging

The first step is executive alignment. When I start an engagement with a client, I do a thorough messaging audit including internal stakeholders, customers, and sometimes analysts. I analyze my findings, present them to the key stakeholders, and get their buy-in before beginning the actual messaging process. It's also important to note that some of these key stakeholders don't know what positioning and messaging are. They may not care. You'll need to educate them. Positioning is how your product fits in the world (product-market-fit) and different from alternatives. Messaging is the product...

Background: Worked as a Community Manager and Product Marketer for an open source database software company DataStax; we sold a proprietary version of the open source database Apache Cassandra, targeting the developer and administrator personas. Developers are experts at searching for information; they're most likely to make buying moves after doing their own research and product comparisons. By the time a developer is actively engaged with sales, you can almost guarantee that they've made up their mind about what they want. One way to enable your sales team in selling to developers...

Sales enablement changes when your company is "business to developer" to point at a different stage in the funnel: the charismatic, knowledgeable developer who probably already has a solution.   When you are pitching to developers it helps to build a scientific, clearly logical and reasoned case for them to abandon their current solution and adopt yours based on a productivity or efficiency gain, or because you enable them to do something they simply couldn't do before.   Keep it simple, explain yourself in plain english, and err on the side of less bs and more details and developers wi...

Selling to developers can be difficult, often because they have a ton of say over the decision but not explicitly the budget, but marketing to developers is simpler than people think. Quickly and concretely explain what your product does and how it works/fits in with other stacks (as much as developers love to claim that they're immune to marketing/branding - just look at the stickers on their laptops. C'mon - that's brand loyalty/affinity on par with pre-teen pop music fans) then get them into some demo/free trial/"doing the thing with your product" as quickly as possible with resources (d...

I love this question, <3 Developers! The fundamentals of sales enablement dont change, it's more the way you communicate the needs of your audience to your sales team that changes. If we unpack developers and what they want, then it makes it really easy to figure out how to approach sales enablement. 1) Developers will question to the end. They will question every word on every slide and understand it as a direction or intention. So make sure that any presentation or pitch you build for your sales team is fully accurate and defensible. A developer will ask about every permutation of the co...

Great question, something I think about a lot. I’m a huge proponent of specialization with technical products. I wouldn’t expect every member of our enterprise field organization (which is in the thousands) to be able to carry a highly technical conversation from end-to-end, nor would I want them to! But I am responsible for dev and ops-centric products, so it can't be ignored. What I try to do is zoom out of the customer lifecycle, pinpoint who on the team is having the conversation, and what they need to do to get to the next phase effectively – then I craft enablement for that, and that...

When selling to developers your enablement activities are likely to take on a different focus so that the team understands how to engage in a discussion and build a community while keeping their sales pitches locked in a drawer.  It will also require in-depth technical enablement and understanding of technical use cases as well as how to answer questions without trying to sell them something.  The biggest shift might be the mindset, where the sales team needs to focus on what is the best answer to my customer/prospect vs what I want to sell them. It is a very different motion and requ...

I love this question. First, I would say to save your company's BDR/SDRs time and avoid trying to set up calls with developers. You'll avoid a lot of frustration on both ends. Gating content content from developers and forcing them to fill in forms might give you a short term bump in leads, but the quality will be low. Instead, think of the sales funnel as living side by side with the individual developer journey and look for ways to compliment the activities with the key decision makers and their technical practitioner teams. The developer journey can be sliced and diced a few way...

This is a classical problem for many developer-first companies. Without mentioning names, many have successfully figured out the working model with both strong developer engagement alongside a thriving enterprise revenue stream. Learning from these companies, they always focus on the developer success by doing things such as corporate hackathons, architect support, engineering blogs, etc. that helps to build advocacy for their products. It will be hugely beneficial if the sales enablement programs can incorporate a developer-first mindset by acknowledging that developers are the key influen...

This is a classical problem for many developer-first companies. Without mentioning names, many have successfully figured out the working model with both strong developer engagement alongside a thriving enterprise revenue stream. Learning from these companies, they always focus on the developer success by doing things such as corporate hackathons, architect support, engineering blogs, etc. that helps to build advocacy for their products. It will be hugely beneficial if the sales enablement programs can incorporate a developer-first mindset by acknowledging that developers are the key influen...

B2d follows a whole different motion. A developer is not eager to talk to Sales (and they don't want to be sold to). Developers want to try out the product themselves, tinker with it, and only if they enjoy the experience (or get to the aha moment) will they evangelize the solution up the company's ranks. Developer motion strongly aligns with the product-led-growth (PLG) motion. The trial experience from onboarding to docs, inviting team members, and getting to the aha moments can play a pivotal role in converting them to customers. Growth marketing also plays a significant role because thi...

It depends a bit on how your sales team is organized today. But in any event, your product value pillars should always translate to both individual and company-wide gain, so your core message is always consistent, even if the language changes a bit to accomodate the audience. You might consider a mapping exercise that lets you chart that narrative. For example, "velocity" is one of our core product value pillars.  For the individual: Code portability, modularity, and packages helps each developer code faster, to focus on higher value work. For the company: More developers coding faster me...

I'd say the mindset shift in B2D is that it's no longer "sales enablement", but just "enablement". And that should be a shared goal across your organization, whether it's the marketing team, sales team, product or support team who are dealing with your developer.  You are correct in saying that developers do not want to be sold to, but they'll still want good support if they need it. That comes in different forms and the good news is that your organization can divide and conquer across this.  1. First of all your docs gotta be like butter. Most developers will try and figure out a ...

Your sales team needs a higher level of technical proficiency when you're a B2D company. It's important to hire sales reps that can form their own mental model of how your product works and integrates with the rest of a customers tech stack for them to be successful. They don't need to know how to code, but they do need to be able to develop a strong functional understanding of the product their selling.  Assuming you've hired sales reps that fit this criteria, enablement should focus on use cases and technical vocabulary. You should train reps on the types of implementation patterns or ...

This is something we would like to get better at within our team. We aspire to be persona-led and data-driven, but don’t have processes/tools in place to perform the right testing for messaging and positioning. Today, we are able to test messaging and positioning with the sales teams(joining customer calls for customer feedback), Customer advisory board. We have identified champions across sales, presales, etc. for focus areas or use cases (by solutions/products/industries) to help us test the messaging with biweekly guild meetings. We would like to put more processes and conduct surveys to...

100%. It’s a great option when you either 1) don’t have a direction and need to narrow your field of view or 2) you have very similar finalists for messaging and are hoping to choose a winner. Note that surveys rarely have crystal clear results. You’ll still need some amount of qualitative or other insights to help you make a final choice.

Yes! We can and we do - surveys, interviews, localization checks, experimentation, and instructor advisory boards. Some of these are a heavier lift than others, so it’s important to ensure you are really thoughtful to marry the content and desired outcome to the testing approach, to ensure you can glean as much actionable data as possible.

Sure do! I like to start with some qualitative research first to help get at any nuances in messaging, especially across different audience segments. Then, run a survey (max diff is a great technique) to understand what resonates most with your different segments. If you also have the budget and/or time, running your messaging by focus groups is another good option, so you can get a deeper understanding of their reactions and sentiment.

All the time! Again, I'm lucky to be a product marketing leader working on a market research product, so I have unlimited access to our own message testing solutions. We approach quatitative message testing a couple different ways: - Our live marketing assets provide a great testing ground for messaging: you can A/B test things like ad copy and email subject lines and copy. Click-through rates can be a great indicator of what resonates. (Keep the visuals the same so you know results are only related to the copy/messaging itself) - We also run copy tests on high-traffic webpages, like o...

Yes! Glassdoor, under the leadership of Bonnie (Head of Market Insights), established two market research online communities (MROC): one for consumers (B2C) and one for customers (B2B). We regularly field message tests to these two research communities to get quick, detailed feedback on messaging. This is what Bonnie had to say about MROCs: 1. MROCs make message testing easy, efficient, and effective! Once your online community is fully recruited, you can send them a survey and usually get a sufficient number of responses back within 48 hours. Automatic reporting dashboards ma...

Positioning is an internal exercise during which you define the unique value proposition for your product, how the product is differentiated from the competition, and where it sits relative to the competition/alternatives in consumer’s minds. Positioning is a building block for messaging. Messaging is customer-facing articulation of the product’s value proposition. Messaging is the building blocks of all customer-facing language whether it’s on your site, your pitch decks, or your ads. In general, explaining this to stakeholders will be two separate conversations. First, you’ll want to al...

Positioning is the DNA of your differentiation and messaging is how you bring that to life with your brand's unique personality.  Positioning establishes context (for who? what benefit or outcome?) and messaging is the way you communicate or express this unique position to your target audience. I'll try using the classic iPod example - Positioning: A simple, stylish and innovative portable digital music device that appeals to young adults who are tech savvy and have a passion for music (kind of cool, but straightforward) Messaging: 1,000 songs in your pocket (really cool, concis...

For me, positioning is the statement about why/how your product is unique and why it is better than the competition. Messaging, on the other hand, is how you articulate (the words) the positioning to a specific audience/persona. The positioning your create for your product is really the foundation the messaging is built on.  To get buy-in with stakeholders, I really focus on starting wtih the positioning and getting sign-off from leadership on those key statements. Once there is alignment there, the messaging becomes an exercise in iteration and testing.  Here is one example of Slack'...

Most people talk about positioning and messaging under the same breath and interchangeably, but in fact, these are two very different things that have inter-dependencies. Positioning is contextual. It’s simply about your ownable market position. The goal is to answer “how are you unique?” And “how do you want to be perceived in the market?” In practice, this is your core value proposition - and you can find a plethora of templates online for this. Messaging on the other hand is about how you communicate that position to the various audiences you serve (because it really should be tailored...

Great question and one that took me sometime to figure out as well when i was new to product marketing few years ago! We have used positioning to get clear on who the product/solution is for, what they are trying to address and what differentiates this solution. Messaging can be a simple one-sentence (or a few lines) description of what the product/solution does

I feel like every organization struggles with this. Everyone (and every function) brings their own definitions and biases with them.  Here is my definition of this: * Positioning: This is the combination of audience definition, problem statement, product/category definition, and unique differentiation. Ideally can be summarized in a single statement (1-2 sentences) * Messaging: A structured breakdown of the key pillars of your message, focused on an audience or launch. This is a framework that is used to develop copy, content, and sometimes targeting strategy.  What messa...

I like to think about positioning as the internal facing framework of how you want your sellers to perceive, understand and feel about your product. Positioning informs your messaging. It can reflect the vision for your product, key differentiators, and defines what your product is. Messaging is external facing - how your positioning comes to life with the actual messaging in the market. The key value props that are compelling to your customers can be thematic while the messaging itself is how the value prop is communicated externally.  

For me: Positioning: overall strategy of who we serve and how we do it better than the other major options Messaging: language and themes we use to communicate Positioning. And for good measure, Copy: exact words that appear on marketing assets, informed by Messaging.

I've used a few different panel providers for large-scale segmentation studies, messaging feedback, and more. I won't call them out by name here, but I'll suggest things to look for as you evaluate options:  1. How well can they recruit against your unique market, and how will they make sure to meet their targets? What will it cost to meet your goals?  2. When responses come back, how do they filter out bad responses, and what visilibity will you have to the data coming in (before you're out of field).  3. What support do they offer for survey design to make sure you get the...

We have used usertesting.com and Survey Monkey panels. Usertesting is better for qualitative insights and SM is better for quantitative and quick results. It's impt to be aware of panel quality and to use the feedback accordingly. For example, you might want to validate what you hear from a panel by using multiple sources. PMs have been involved in development of questionnaires, we make it easy for them to see results and they use the results to inform roadmap priorities. 

I have done many messaging projects for both developer and non-developer audiences. The process is the same regardless of audience: understand the personas and their needs, develop a unique value proposition that meets those needs, create key messages. The differences come in the content of the messages and language used.  It's true that developers are not at all tolerant of "fluffy" messaging. But neither are other buyers. You need to do enough research and deeply understand your buyer's needs (and your product!!!) so that your messages are credible, compelling, and relevant. Write and ...

Positioning is the precursor to messaging.  If you don't know who your product is for, what it's good for and how it's different from other products in its space, then it will be very hard to come up with viable messaging.  Put another way, positioning is the primitive, typically expressed as an internal statement (see question above re: Geoffrey Moore's framework), whereas messaging is a set of derivative assets, typically copy and value statements that help suit the needs of different channels and media (web, print, social, video, on-site activations, etc)

I generally anchor to the time-horizon and the purpose. Borrowing from April Dunford, positioning is "context setting for prospects." Once you've established your positioning (which takes time, especially if you're pre-product market fit!), you need to be consistent over a relatively long timeframe, think 3+ years. Positioning answers the value you deliver to your ideal customer, through what differentiated capabilities, and in contrast to what competitors within a particular category. Messaging operates on a nearer term horizon, and is how you convey your value (whether as a holistic...

Yes! At Coda, I’m very lucky to have a wildly talented Brand Team that supports our company, and privileged to have worked on 100+ customer-facing feature launches in 2020. (Seriously. Over 100. Because Coda runs on Coda, our product team ships incredibly. You can count all the launches here if you don't believe me!) Your overall product messaging should serve as an umbrella covering all of your individual feature messaging. Top-line product messaging is going to play a role in generating evergreen assets and long-term marketing strategy. As such, we set out to have core product messaging...

Cross-posting and building on a similar answer! Borrowing from April Dunford, positioning is "context setting for prospects." Once you've established your positioning (which takes time, especially if you're pre-product market fit!), you need to be consistent over a relatively long timeframe, think 3+ years. Positioning answers the value you deliver to your ideal customer, through what differentiated capabilities, and in contrast to what competitors within a particular category. Messaging operates on a nearer term horizon, and is how you convey your value (whether as a holistic brand o...

The best way to rapidly test whether your messaging is working as intended is to deliver it to your sales reps or other collaborators and see whether it helps them or not. Ideallly, you'd equip a few of them with a beta of your  The best way to tell that your messaging didn't resonate is that reps end up going back to their own content or ignore the deck and assets you created. I've often seen companies where sales just putting their own messaging together

The best way to rapidly test whether your messaging is working as intended is to deliver it to your sales reps or other collaborators and see whether it helps them or not. Ideallly, you'd equip a few of them with a beta of your new pitch deck, or messaging artifacts and either get their gut reaction right then and there, or have them pilot it on a few conversations. Of course, if we're talking about digital channels than quick a/b tests via tools like Optimizely on the web, or tweaks you make to your assets like newsletters and nurtures that you test will also give you a sense of how your ...

Getting messaging into the market is the best true test. Depending on the key channel you wish you utilize the messaging this may come in the form of marketing or sales initiatives and varies based on the investment. You could start with a landing page to test conversions or with a little budget a webinar covering the new messaging, promoted by digital ads, with open Q&A and a feedback survey. Alternately you get gut reactions from a few sales executives, and request they use it in an upcoming conversation with target audience, then review Gong recordings of the response/success in the wild...

For rapid message testing, I'll rely on channel metrics that we've set baselines for in the past. Ideally you're able to identify message tests as experiments with explicit goals, for example, to increase demo request conversion. Cross-posting an answer to your related question: To measure market messaging, I focus on resonance, clarity, and differentiation. Whenever possible, I use a mix of qual and quant strategies to get data, but in my experience, even a handful of qualitative interviews with target personas provides a treasure trove of insight. What matters most is getting outsid...

We have a strong community in the dbt Slack channel, but it's not inclusive of all dbt practioners. So we use four main channels to get in front of our target audience: 1. The dbt Slack community, when announcements are highly relevant to their work 2. Quarterly product launch events targeting existing users that want to go deeper on new releases 3. A "how to" write-up for our DevBlog paired with a "why we did it" blog for our Corporate Blog  4. A monthly product newsletter that might include an invitation to participate in the beta, or quotes from early users. Bonus 5. I think we'll s...

Interesting! We also worked with dev communities and opinion leaders with their newsletters, podcasts, and blogs. My focus was on iOS developers (developer tooling).

I'd suggest: * An engineering blog on your website which would include blogs about how your engineers did x,y,z; overcame certain professional challenges, etc.  * Using Twitter and LinkedIn for communicating about the product and for pushing the Engineering blog/posts * Participating in Stack Overflow channels that are relevant to you  * Depending on the current size of your customer base, I'd create support/forum channels specifically in Slack and/or * Provide proper developer documentation - check out Twilio, Facebook or other similar sites for ideas * Using a notificat...

I'll answer how I get to creative value props for developer-focused products, I hope that helps! 1. Be unfailingly curious about who your persona is—developers are incredibly diverse, so you need to dig into the nuance of your target's unique motivators, goals, beliefs... Capture this detail and use it to inspire the core message. 2. Take inventory of the messaging in your space. Understand what it's like to be your target persona in a sea of messaging that they encounter each day. If your core value prop blends in with the background, keep re-working. 3. Ask yoursel...