AMA: Ethos Head of Product Marketing, Aneri Shah on Messaging

When your product or solution isn't sufficiently differentiated, focus on the other key aspect of your positioning: the audience. Who is your product disproportionately better for? While many products in a given category may be highly similar, is there a user persona for whom your product is better, e.g. a specific vertical, geography, company size, or role? Don't be afraid to take a strong POV and use your messaging to lean in to a specific persona until you have deep penetration within that segment. An example I love here is Klaviyo, which sits in the crowded marketing automation platform market, really positioning itself for retail and e-commerce brands, and that positioning reflecting as a through line from their website messaging to their case studies to their content marketing.

Do it for fun! Try it on products you use but don't work on, ads you see on TV etc. It makes it much lower stakes to get into the mindset of using a messaging framework, and you'll find it's a muscle you can build over time. It's also much easier when you try it on a product you use - you can ask yourself the questions you'd be asking in messaging research: who do you think it's for, why do you use it over others, what problems is it solving in your life? Think about this the next time you watch something on your streaming app of choice, order from your favorite delivery app, or buy something online. Why this product, and how should they tell their story?

Your Sales/Customer Success teams are your biggest asset! I'd run the following playbook: 1. Test the messaging internally: Round up all the internal teams that work most closely with customers (Sales, CX, Success, Solutions Engineers, SDRs etc.) Host a working session to get their feedback on your initial messaging. This can be structured in different ways based on the size of this group and the culture of your organization - it could be something as simple as a Zoom call with your messaging doc shared, or something more structured like a series of interviews. 2. Refine and test the messaging with a few key customers: Once you've refined messaging based on the initial insights, find an example of a customer that meets each of your personas (ask your customer-facing teams for intros, or if you can join a call with them). 1-2 samples in each persona can give you a ton of quality insight. 3. Don't be afraid to get scrappy: Think outside the box! This may vary based on the type of product you're working on, but you can look into things like UserTesting, recruiting family/friends to provide feedback, posting on LinkedIn and offering a gift card to anyone who connects with you, or even using a Craigslist ad! One of my favorite examples is doing message testing with fellow Facebook employees by setting up a table at a cafeteria and offering a $5 coffee gift card to everyone who gave us 15 mins of their time. We needed international feedback, so we did this across multiple companies and were able to get all the feedback we needed in a quick and effective way. Later, we ran a similar study with a 6-figure budget using a vendor, and we netted very similar results. The simplest way is often the best one!

Here's a template for the framework I use! Feel free to make a copy and try it yourself.

Here's my messaging framework! Feel free to make a copy and try it yourself.

I find that you have to: 1. Understand the audience, their problem, and how they currently solve it 2. Use that to define your product's key benefits and proof points 3. Once you have both the problem and solution well-defined, build your messaging. This is a high-level exercise that tells the story you want to tell about your product. Here's my messaging framework template if you want to see how this comes to life.

Here's a simple 6-step process you can follow: 1. Write the brief: Write the brief for what you want your name to accomplish. This should include a description of what the product is, all your positioning work (audience, problem to be solved, key differentiators, proof points etc.), and the goal your product is trying to achieve. This should be widely socialized with everyone involved in the naming process. 2. Define naming categories: The next step is to structure your creativity. There are many different types of names, and you want to come up with options in a range of different categories. These may vary based on the business and your brand guidelines, but some categories include abstract (e.g. Asana), functional (e.g. Marketing Cloud), descriptive (e.g. Photoshop Express), evocative (e.g. OneNote), branded (e.g. GSuite). Having a range of categories will allow you to generate many different outputs and provide guardrails. 3. Have a 'namestorm': This is the fun part! Work with a group to come up with a long list of names in every category until your creativity runs dry. 4. Vet the names: Go through the names and see where common themes are arising. Come up with a shortlist. 5. Go through necessary checks: Go through various checks: trademark, legal, cultural sensitivity etc. Think about SEO and domain names if necessary. Present the final contenders to key internal stakeholders. 6. Finalize & flesh out: Decide on your final name and the full package that goes with it, e.g. logo, tagline, brand guidelines.

1. Speak like you would speak to a human: We often write messaging that speaks to corporations rather than individuals. Think about how you'd explain what you do to a client on a sales call. Now think about how you'd explain it to your mom, a friend, a child, or a stranger at a party. What do all of those descriptions have in common? What are some of the most salient concepts for you to communicate? Focus on those. Pro tip: Use AI to help you riff on your messaging if it's feeling a little stale. Ask ChatGPT to 'summarize this for a 10 year old', 'phrase this more colloquially' or 'rewrite this without corporate buzzwords'. 2. Show it's the best in a specific way: Often, the goal of using these cliches is to show something is "the best". Ask yourself to be more precise. In what way is it the best? Is it the cheapest, the fastest, the easiest to use, the most scalable, the most well-known etc.? Lean in to your specific advantages.