What documents do you create for messaging of a new product and or feature. What are ways in which you differentiate the messaging? Do you create a matrix of messages via vertical, persona etc?

For new products and major features, I find it invaluable to go through a complete messaging exercise. This is an iterative process that involves collaboration with Product, Marketing, and Sales. I've developed a template for this over the years that combines the things I liked most from the past messaging exercises. While this list is not exhaustive, these are the things I have found are most valuable to building messaging that resonates not only externally, but also internally with the teams that need to market and sell the product:

• Define worldview - What is the problem we are seeing in the market that necessitated the creation of this product/feature?
• Define solution - What have we built that helps solve the problems defined in our worldview definition?
• Positioning statement - How are we differentiated from similar players in the market?
• Competitive value - A deeper dive into the competitive landscape, how we compare at the feature level, and our differentiated value.
• Messaging matrix - This is the holy grail of how to message to various personas. This includes a mapping of value props, key messages, and features/use cases to the challenges faced by different personas. I often abstract this out into its own asset (which I call the Value Framework) that acts as a kind of cheat sheet on how to message to various personas.

For a new product or feature I always start out with a simple messaging framework (there are a ton of great ones out there for you to leverage)! At the very least, your product messaging framework should include your value proposition, target audience, and a statement about what differentiates you from the competition. To dive deeper into the differentiation, I always pick 3 market trends and 3 pain points our target buyer has and then describe how our product uniquely solves these pain points or addresses these trends.

This can be a rather in-depth document that I'll use to help create our comms from content, PR, SDR outreach etc. I then also have a simplified exec version that provides a more high-level view of our messaging so a sales rep, executive, or anyone at the company wanted to quickly read our messaging they would have access to this presentation.

I try to keep to one single messaging artifact -- this can contain the following:

Section A- overarching messages, true to all:

• master value prop

• technical capabilities/product features

• value pillars (can can contain further point of substantiation on why and how)

Section B-

• Persona based: feature/functionality value delivered based on jobs to be done by this audience

• Vertical based: feature/functionality value delivered to business outcomes

Including a competitive lens for differentiation can be of use for large/Tier 1 launches.