AMA: Mezmo Director of Product Marketing, Alissa Lydon on Messaging

When positioning your product against competitors, messaging should really focus on the key differentiators (i.e., what do you do better than competitor X?). To accomplish this, I start with the core use cases that our product supports and then map our features accordingly. From there, you can do a compare and contrast with your competitor's capabilities, and find that white space you can turn into compelling messaging. And don't forget to connect those differences back to your core value props to help make your story more consistent and powerful. And remember, it doesn't always have to be product features! Don't underestimate the value of easy onboarding, faster time to value, great customer support, etc. While these aren't as obvious as the knobs and dials in your product, they go a long way in telling a story that gets people excited. Lean into all of the things about your product and company that makes you different from the rest of the market, and let those guide your messaging.

Almost everything I learned about messaging I learned by watching other companies who do it really well. These can be similar players in your space (even competitors), or even products/brands you really admire. What are the things that they talk about that help them stand out, and how can you apply it to your own product/industry? I've also read a few good books on messaging, which I address in another question below!

Messaging is notoriously difficult to train teams on because it is all-encompassing and ever-changing. To help make messaging more accessible, I find maintaining a few different assets helpful. Firstly, you will want a primary messaging doc that is multiple pages long and includes every detail related to: * The defined problem in the market * How your product solves it * Personas * Use cases * Business impacts * Feature maps * Etc. But while that is useful for someone in marketing who needs that level of detail, no salesperson will ever take the time to read it. For them, I distill the primary messaging doc into shorter, more snackable messaging guides. They are often in table or grid form for easy scanning so folks can get exactly what they are looking for and move on. To help with the always-shifting nature of messaging, I try to incorporate new/updated messaging into almost every training that I do. For example, when we are getting ready to launch a new feature, I always have a callout during training on how this impacts our messaging framework. Or using roadmap updates as a natural place to reaffirm existing or introduce new messaging. This way, it feels more tangible rather than just the things we say on our website.

There are a few key components of messaging that are crucial, no matter what framework you are using: * Define the problem statement. What is happening in the market that necessitates your solution, and what are the business impacts? * In an ideal world, what does the solution look like? This shouldn't mention your product at all, but instead should be more of a point of view. This is helpful when determining what your thought leadership should focus on. * What is your solution? This includes short bites like the elevator pitch and positioning statement, but can also have longer form persona-based stories focused on more specific pain points, solutions, and benefits. This is where feature mapping can also be helpful. * How are you different from the competition? I find it useful to map competitive messaging to our value props. Make it easy to see where that white space exists and guide how to present that message.

I've read a couple of great books on building messaging. The two I enjoyed the most were: The Aha Moment by Andy Cunningham. She has worked with some of the most iconic brands in tech (including Apple during Steve Jobs' heyday). She provides a great framework for understanding what she calls "your positioning DNA." And she not only presents her concepts in a very straightforward way, but she also supplements them with lots of great stories from her experiences. Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace. This is a book that gets detailed regarding the anatomy of good stories, and how these building block fundamentals used by writers can be used for both brand and product messaging in the corporate world. It's very rooted in the psychology of storytelling and is also filled with lots of great case studies and real-world examples.

Messaging is made up of two equally important components - Brand and Product. Brand messaging encompasses the product, vision, market, customers, culture, and more. It can be much more aspirational and future-facing. This is normally owned by corporate marketing, or maybe you have a specific brand team that cultivates this message. Product messaging (as you can probably guess) is solely focused on the product. More specifically, it speaks to the problems your product is solving, who you are solving it for, and the impact it has on those personas and their business. While there is some room for future-facing vision, it is much more grounded in reality than a brand message and is often connected to a roadmap. This is what Product Marketing typically owns. For Product messaging, there are several frameworks you can use. But the best that I have seen start telling a high-level story, and then drill down into specific personas, pain points, features, and impacts. To keep it easy, think about what you want your website to look like. What are the top value props you would want on the home page? And if someone liked what they saw and clicked on your product page, how would you go one level deeper? What use cases would you want to showcase? Which features speak best to that use case that you can show in a short video? Rather than throwing everything into product messaging, you can get more bang for your buck by focusing on these key stories and then building from there.

This is always difficult to find time for (really anything post-launch is hard to prioritize, we are all guilty of getting to launch and moving on to the next shiny object!). But one thing I find helpful is to align messaging updates with roadmap updates. Updating the roadmap is a pretty standard cadence for Product and Product Marketing, and I found that it is a natural forcing function to reevaluate higher-level messaging. Plus, you get more bang for your buck! When the sales and marketing teams are enabled, they will get the tactical roadmap and an update on how the messaging is impacted. Win-win!