Peep Laja

The way to improve messaging is to break it down into five components, measure, and work on each separately: ‍ ↑ Clarity (I get it) ↑ Relevance (it’s for me, helps with my specific challenges) ↑ Value (I want the promises) ↑ Differentiation (I get how this is different) ↓ Friction (resistance, doubts, anxieties)

There are plenty of free training resources available, such as Wynter's B2B Messaging Course. April Dunford's book Obviously Awesome is an affordable way to get the foundations in positioning right. CXL and PMA also have paid courses on the topic but the free one is the 80/20 you get them up to speed. Another way is to run an internal workshop in the topic, combined with an actual messaging exercise you guys are working on internally.

You measure it through message testing. An effective message resonates with the target buyer, and that's what you want to check: how it lands on the people you're trying to influence. Yes, you can wait for the full go-to-market cycle and eventually get some feedback from the market, or measure conversion rates - but only relying on this makes your feedback loops extremely slow and inefficient. Message testing is a form of qualitative research, hence you don't need large sample sizes. You need to get your page/pitch (whatever the medium) in front of the target buyers and ask them research questions. Doing it on a 1:1 basis is very high quality, but slow and expensive. Doing it via surveys is cheap, fast, and can be high quality if the selected panel is excellent. There are 4 heuristics you need to measure: 1) Clarity: do they get it? After reading everything, what's still unclear? What questions do they have? A confused mind doesn't buy. 2) Relevance: does it align with their priorities and challenges at hand? If the message is not about what's important to them now, it won't work. 3) Value: do they want it? Effective message increases user motivation to take action. Don't just describe things and hope for intrinsic motivation. Make a case of how your thing adds the value they seek. 3) Differentiation: why choose you? Is it clear why go with your offer instead of competing solutions? Don't talk about yourself as if you're the only one doing what you're doing. For each heuristic, do a likert-scale (1...5) as well as qualitative, open-ended questions. Ideally, you do this section by section, so you know exactly where the problems are, and you can fix them. What specifically is unclear? How exactly it does or does not align with your priorities? What makes you want a demo with them (or not)? How does this seem different or better than other options out there?

Use a messaging evaluation framework like Message Layers. The way to improve messaging is to break it down into five components, measure, and work on each separately: ↑ Clarity (I get it) ↑ Relevance (it’s for me, helps with my specific challenges) ↑ Value (I want the promises) ↑ Differentiation (I get how this is different) ↓ Friction (resistance, doubts, anxieties) When you conduct back-to-back message testing, you get to see how your copy scores on all of the above. You also see the improvements for each one of those elements in every iteration and notice the changes in your sign-up rate, lead quality, and volume.