For me, great messaging always starts with two things:
- Point of View - which articulates your perspective on the problem(s) your target market is looking to solve [why is the problem worth solving, what are the key steps in solving the problem, what kind of tech solutions will help you to solve the problem].
- Positioning - which articulates your unique value proposition for your target market
These two things inform the messages you want to deliver for each audience in your campaign [buyers, users, analysts, internal sales reps, partners, etc].
When it comes to developing the messages themselves, the process I follow generally includes brainstorming with key internal stakeholders (depending on whether this is company-level messaging or product-level or campaign-level- this may include the exec team, product team, sales/ customer team, etc.) with the objective of developing as many candidates for messaging as possible.
From there, we’ll winnow it down to two to three top contenders and create assets that will enable me to test out the messages with the market [e.g. sales presentation slides, landing page, etc.]