How do you manage messaging across various platforms and audiences so that all points of communication are consistent?

This really depends on the size of your org. For a fairly small start-up, this might be an easier process since you likely have very few marketing channels you focus on. But as you get to larger sized orgs, this will be more difficult and has to happen over time. 

You want to make sure that you involve all the marketing leads across various channels in your messaging development and rollout. Not only will this help in getting you buy-in from them, but it will ensure that they incorporate this messaging across their channels.

It is very important to work on a rollout plan that accounts for all the places you want this messaging to show up. Communication is key. Treat this like an internal campaign - you need influencers and you need champions to help you get there.

This starts far before the content is shared across various platforms or to different audiences. To begin, if the product you are selling has multiple decision-makers or potential buyers you should create a priority matrix. In other words, which persona is the most important and which channels do they prioritize. This matrix can exist in a simple spreadsheet and should help you, and any other teams internally quickly understand who the primary buyer is and which channels work best for them. Once you have the matrix then you need to actually divide up your content and go to market plan and which messaging you’ll be sending to specific audiences. For example, should existing customers receive the same message as prospects? Once we have the content being created for a launch, and our matrix we’ll optimize the messaging for those folks — like a specific message to existing marketers within our install base, and a separate message to Marketing Ops professionals who are prospects. On some channels, like social, this message has to be shorter which may mean a ~15-30 second video instead of a full-length sizzle reel. In my experience, you should optimize for that core buyer/audience here and ensure you are segmenting and targeting secondary audiences with specific messages using channels where you can reach them directly.

Consistency is super critical and the modern agile/”move fast and break stuff” ethos does nothing but make that effort feel Sisyphean at times. If you’re in tech (particularly in an engineering-driven culture), you will fight this battle every day since, as the saying goes, everyone wants to build but no one wants to maintain. Two keys to staying ahead are 1) have as few core messages as possible and repeat them over and over again and 2) be vigilant about policing their usage in places over which you have more control/influence (website, videos, sales decks, keynotes, collateral, enablement, analyst decks, 10-Q’s/K’s, etc). Get really crisp on roles/responsibilities and work processes with folks who create copy and content (content marketing, demand gen, docs, sales enablement, etc.) so that they’re adapting messaging, not creating their own. That’s where problems start. Good luck, it's weeding a garden unfortunately - you can't set it and forget it.

I recommend creating a messaging document which can serve as a source of truth for internal teams. That document can include things like your positioning, key messages / value props, a glossary of key terms, and even a “do” and “don’t” section (e.g. do talk about X in this way, don’t talk about it in this way). 

If you work on a self-serve product, it’s critical that you share this document with your Product and Design team, so that a given user is seeing the same verbiage / language across the entire user journey — whether that’s an email, an ad, a conversation with a Seller, or your product.