AMA: Snorkel AI Director of Product Marketing, Molly Friederich on Messaging

First I'll say that once you've achieved product-market fit, the core positioning and messaging shouldn't be wildly dynamic. Creating meaning in the market demands repetition and credibility over time. To know whether a product or new capability warrants a change the messaging, I'd consider whether it's a fundamentally new value, or whether it adds to existing value. For example feature X might be really powerful for benefit Y, but if benefit Y has been a long-standing pillar of your messaging, you simply treat it as a new proof point vs. changing the messaging. In terms of tactically how to keep product feature/capabilities up-to-date, working closely with the product team to know what is coming down the pike and the impact of each ship allows you to plan for cross-channel updates you want to make. Things like docs are a no-brainer, but it's important to think through what warrants updating website videos or feature highlights. A couple of considerations: 1. How much potential does the new or evolved feature have to drive pipeline or improve conversion? 2. How much risk does the new or evolved feature pose in terms of creating confusion or disappointment for a person who goes from marketing content to product trial? As a product marketer you're always going to have more on your to-do list than is possible, so making sure you are strategic about investments of time (even if it's a "quick" website update) is important—meeting your goals is hard in the face of a thousand "quick" paper cuts! 

While I often bristle when people call out that technical audiences don't like being marketed to (the implication being other personas like fluff marketing?!), I absolutely believe that core differences in how personas evaluate solutions matter. To build trust in the value of AI/ML features, here are a few ideas that come to mind: 1. Given the amount of hype in the AI/ML space, customer proof becomes even more powerful. Showcasing concretely how users have used your solution, their goals, and the impact they achieved is among the most impactful way to build confidence. 2. When targeting data scientists/developers, in addition to anchoring to the value and impact a given capability will have, being explicit about how the capability works technically and what the experience is like to use it are just as important. This doesn't need to mean your content is overly long or dense; you can rely on visuals and workflows heavily. 3. When crafting messaging for less technical business stakeholders or economic buyers, we anchor to the big-picture business impact they'll achieve, things like accelerating time to value. To build trust in that promise, we speak directly to the pain the currently experience and how we resolve it. We also empower our technical champions to connect the dots betwen the technology and the value as their endorsement is the most powerful evidence!

As a product marketer, our most important role is setting the core messaging strategy and positioning. This means having a clear and intentional view of who you're targeting, what you need to convey, and how they should feel / what they should do after encountering your message. From a cross-channel or integrated marketing standpoint, the "roots" of the tree are here, and are critical to achieve the consistency required for messaging to make an impact. As content branches out across channels, the form will shift, but the core strategy is linked to the roots. At Snorkel AI, we craft a lot of the channel messaging directly, but certainly on the expertise of our teammates across events, web, email, social, and more for best practices, feedback, and experiements to run. They often take lead on measuring effectiveness (there's so much expertise bespoke to each channel!) and we'll partner to decide how to evolve based on the learnings. 

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 or as a product line) to the market; it's the storytelling strategy. Any given campaign or piece of content needs to be laser-focused on a single persona, main point, and genuine proof points or reasons to believe the main point. To sum up, core product or platform positioning (context setting) is going to be a long-term true-north that informs your messaging (storytelling) for feature launches; if the feature launch messaging isn't rooted in your positioning, it'll undermine the market's ability to understand where you fit in their context. That's not to say you can't be creative with feature launch messaging, of course—often with launch messaging you're able to be more specific/nuanced in terms of your target persona, their jobs to be done, and the competitive alternatives they have to choose from. Just consider closely if you find your messaging feels significantly disjointed from your positioning.

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 outside the metaphorical building to really pressure test what can often be strongly-held internal opinions. Measuring sales messaging is also best done as a mix of qual and quant. I'm fortunate to work with a team of thoughtful, strategic sellers who are generous in bringing back feedback from the field. We'll often trade insights from mini-experiments over slack or in team meetings, or, when we have a larger rollout (like a new pitch deck), we build in dedicated feedback sessions. I also carve out time to listen to gong calls to see directly a) how messaging is delivered and b) how it's received. The questions that prospects ask and where they lean in vs. tune out speak volumes in terms of what's resonating, what's clear, and whether it feels differentiated. These qual efforts help provide real-time insight. Ultimately, of course, we measure the impact new messaging has on sales stage progression. We have longer, enterprise sales cycles, so this takes time, and of course there are always multiple factors playing into win rate. That said, it's the most important metric we're all looking to impact, so it has to be central.

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 brand or as a product line) to the market; it's the storytelling strategy. Any given campaign or piece of content needs to be laser-focused on a single persona, main point, and genuine proof points or reasons to believe the main point. In my experience, it's likely that you (and your stakeholders) will tire of both your positioning and your message strategy before your ideal target market does... When you have the urge to evolve, make sure you're challenging this impulse and have a strategic reason to do so, such as clear message testing insights or a big shift in the competitive landscape/category, your differentiated capabilities, or the value you bring to customers.

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 outside the metaphorical building to really pressure test what can often be strongly-held internal opinions. Measuring sales messaging is also best done as a mix of qual and quant. I'm fortunate to work with a team of thoughtful, strategic sellers who are generous in bringing back feedback from the field. We'll often trade insights from mini-experiments over slack or in team meetings, or, when we have a larger rollout (like a new pitch deck), we build in dedicated feedback sessions. I also carve out time to listen to gong calls to see directly a) how messaging is delivered and b) how it's received. The questions that prospects ask and where they lean in vs. tune out speak volumes in terms of what's resonating, what's clear, and whether it feels differentiated. These qual efforts help provide real-time insight. Ultimately, of course, we measure the impact new messaging has on sales stage progression. We have longer, enterprise sales cycles, so this takes time, and of course there are always multiple factors playing into win rate. That said, it's the most important metric we're all looking to impact, so it has to be central.

Curious to see if others have had great experiences they'd like to share in the comments, as I haven't explored many bespoke message testing SaaS offerings! I've largely relied on simple survey tools like SurveyMonkey and solutions like Intercom or HotJar to gather data. I am really curious about more tailored solutions, largely for the efficiency they offer by being focused messaging tests. Having a single solution that measures how prospects enage with content and has proven strategies for when and how to surface prompts would be valuable.

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 yourself why your persona will care about a given value prop. Then ask why again. While things like "faster" or "more performant" matter, they aren't the root motivation. What does your developer want to achieve both for their company and customers as well for themselves.

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 yourself why your persona will care about a given value prop. Then ask why again. While things like "faster" or "more performant" matter, they aren't the root motivation. What does your developer want to achieve both for their company and customers as well for themselves.

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 most value from their breadth of experience? In terms of insights guiding the product roadmap for PMs, I've found segmentation studies to be an incredibly powerful tool to align the organization on strategy. It sizes the market, identifies what personas to prioritize, provides rationale for what pain points to solve for first, and creates a lock-step experience from product development to messaging and launch planning to sales enablement. For smaller-scale, more acute decisions, working with PMs to identify specific questions they need to answer at a regular cadence (say, top questions for a given program increment) to drive product strategy is also a great way to bring value to the table.