What marketing tools (e.g. personas, buyer journeys, sales playbooks, etc) have you found most effective in getting stakeholders aligned on marketing strategy?

One of the best alignment tools we rolled out in the last two years was a messaging source document. This document includes overview / background on the market, description of the thing we are launching or marketing, details of the audience and related personas, etc. This document can be used by various teams and is owned and kept up to date by product marketing.

A variety of tools can be helpful in getting stakeholders aligned on the marketing strategy – the key to them all is that they are based on data and customer insights. When you are articulating your strategy, provide links to supporting research, personas, shopper journey’s, etc. These should articulate who your target customers are, what they care most about, how to influence them during the purchase or upsell process, and how they interact with your product. By highlighting the key takeaways and linking to deeper dives, you have handy tools right at your fingertips to resolve differences in perspective and answer key stakeholder questions that emerge during the strategy development process.

I find that the development of a Go-to-Market Playbook is a really good exercise. While it may feel antiquated in a digital world, writing down your positioning statement, value proposition, unique selling position, personas, competitors, ideal customer profile, competitors, customer stories, and buyer journey maps allows you to facilitate conversations throughout the business. It's likely that other groups in your business are working on pieces of these things but only Product Marketing has an end-to-end view of the PRODUCT and of the MARKET, and without that context, those teams are likely to develop materials that serve their specific needs, but not the larger set of organization ones. A Playbook is something your stakeholders can react to, so centralizing all of the amazing work your team is doing and creating such an artifact is worth your time and energy. At best, everyone is aligned around it and plays a contributor role in keeping it updated. At worst, everyone rejects it and inserts their point of view, which provides a jumping-off point to reconcile. Either way - you win.

Personas are gold for alignment. Start with the persona, then walk stakeholders through the strategy with real-life examples (think mock ads). Share predicted ROI to solidify the plan.