What are the best practices that you have employed to create a closed-loop product messaging?

The best messaging needs to be closed-loop, meaning that it is used throughout all of the areas of business and receives regular feedback. Product marketing needs to be the owners and drivers of this messaging.

• It starts with a solid messaging framework. Make sure your cross-functional teams have buy in to this messaging and are aligned. This will make it easier to carry it throughout the company.

• Another sure bet way to get your messaging used throughout various teams is to craft the sales assets and supporting tools, or be a strong contributor to this work stream. In my experience, a product marketer is successful at creating closed-loop product messaging when they are the crafters of the messaging and enablement material that is used by other teams.

• Finally, create feedback loops with these various teams. Create regular cadences for when you will check in to learn if the messaging is resonating with the intended audience. These feedback loops are most successful when they are easy to access. My favorite is a dedicated slack channel or monthly office hours. Make sure you're asking cross-functional team members exactly what is working and what is not working. Did they close a high value deal this month? Great! Which messaging points or benefits resonated the most with that particular customer?

I've always found it best just to go straight to sales teams to get messaging feedback -- you need a depth of feedback that you can't get through tools like Salesforce.

We have a couple of products in market right now where we're fine tuning the value prop. Given that we didn't do any user research or message testing ahead of time, we need to be hearing directly from the market on how we're positioning the product. So of course we're a/b testing different messages, but there's no substitute for a close operating rhythm with the sales team to keep the depth of feedback coming and to allow us to adjust on the fly as we learn.

Creating a closed-loop messaging program / projects largely sits in how you set these programs and projects up. When I've done Company / Platform messaging creation or updates I like to kick the project off with aligning on the goals of messaging, ensuring my internal stakeholders know:
1. What a messaging house is
2. How it should be used, and by who
3. What goes into creating good messaging (ie. this is not a silo'd writing project that is quickly whipped up)

Here is an example from one of my former messaging houses:

This guide exists to ensure consistency in our messaging across our activities and channels, and reduces re-creation of messaging. Use this messaging guide: 

• As a foundation of any content you create about company and our products (both internal and external). See the grid below for different message levels, and when to use each. 

• Messaging is not copy, it is OK to change working to suit specific contexts and formats, but the core message and intent should stay the same. 

• Whenever you are creating content, you should also take into account our brand voice [insert from brand team]. 

• You can ask Product Marketing to review any content created or have any questions. 

We have different messaging depending on whether you’re describing the company, our platform or a specific product/solution:

Messaging Levels

COMPANY

To use when describing the company - why we exist, our vision and mission, etc

Examples: About us page, Profiles on sites like Wikipedia, Crunchbase, GR profiles, candidate content like job description, Investor, press or analyst content.

PLATFORM

To use when describing the product/ platform as a whole. 

Examples: Sales pitches, Homepage / What is ThoughtSpot pages, Thought leadership content, Brand campaigns

PRODUCTS

To use when you’re describing one of our specific products / solutions. 

Examples: Product level landing pages and content offers, product / solution campaigns, Pitch deck slides, etc 

When updating or creating company, platform or product messaging which is likely updated less often, you should consider doing an internal roadshow to educate stakeholders on how these updates impact their functions and an inventory of assets that should be updated.

For feature messaging, this should be included in your launch kickoffs so teams know how to incorporate it in their work streams appropriately .

The answer here is going to have to be it depends for your unique situation and company what will work best.

Here are a couple of things that I have set up at various companies I have worked at that have helped ensure consistency, alignment and ROI on messaging in market:

1. PMM gives examples

   • PMM creates a positioning and messaging doc with the written language and shares a GTM strategy BUT also gives examples of how this messaging can/should come to life on a landing page, in ads and tests this with users and shares these learnings with partner teams

Process requires partner teams to get approval from PMM on assets

• Marketing leadership establishes a process that PMM briefs in partner teams and shares the positioning and messaging asset to creative and execution teams but then asks for a plan back from these teams that PMM is able to weigh in on wrt suggested edits

• This process can be combined with #1

If it isn't possible to do either of these approaches at first, sometimes a poor performing campaign and/or other data can help drive alignment and process discussions to achieve closed loop processes. At the end of the day everyone in the company benefits to reaching the right customer at the right time with the right message!

• Work closely with your product team to understand the messaging that performed best

• Don't just look at immediate engagement on messaging; which messaging led to the most engagement, highest retention, and highest number of subscriptions

• Customize the messaging! Different cohorts will react differently; don't use a one-size-fits-all approach