Talia Moyal

Get them on as many research, prospect and customer calls as possible. I really believe the only way to get good at messaging and positioning, is to understand how you best learn your persona. This means obsessing over them. Some great questions for them to start to answer are: * what is this persons biggest pain? * how are they currently solving that pain? * is that working? * if not, what's not working? * what motivates them? * do they have decision making power? Gong actually has a great blog with discovery questions that might be helpful to run through. But I always have people first run through this exercise. The second exercise I would run someone through is a week of cold calling. There is no better way to get someone to understand what makes bad messaging than to try to message it themselves on the fly. From there, there are frameworks you can provide someone that will help guide them in the type of information they need to be able to 'fill out' related to messaging and positioning. A standard messaging house, for example, might include: * company messaging * problem your product solves * purpose * mission * tag lines * ICP * target persona * solutions messaging * value drivers * definitions * why your persona cares * pain points * FAQ

This is definitely a question / problem that most PMMs will face and exactly why we create value pillars to help ground us. I like to think about it this way: you messaging house shouldn't be touched more than once a quarter (and even this is a bit aggressive but if you're at an early stage start-up, you might have a need to make tweaks more often than others). A good template for a messaging house will include: * the problem your product is solving * purpose of the company * mission statement * emotions you want your persona to feel * ideal customer profile information * target persona information * tag lines * boilerplate * power statements / keywords * solutions messaging Within solutions messaging, I like to have a few drop-downs: * value drivers -- sets of three are ideal * definition of value drivers * why your persona cares about those drivers * supporting evidence -- how does your product's feature set enable this * useful content related to each value driver * specific pain points each driver solves for That solutions messaging, should act as a foundation for everything you do. This means, when it's time to run a campaign, that campaign should use this messaging as a foundation to tweak upon. I also find it's helpful to treat each campaign as a time-boxed experiment. And if that experiment does well, you run it again. That way, you will naturally have a deadline on each experiment that will give you the opportunity to iterate and get into a planning cadence that is proactive vs. reactive.

If I had to pick one thing to absolutely get right it's your planning phase. The work you put it won't be as impactful if you haven't aligned across stakeholders on the story your telling and the goals for the launch. And while launches are strategic they are also one of the most logistically-heavy activities you can take on as a PMM. These are my three phases: -planning -creation -execution Planning is about alignment, decision making and timelines. Creation is about creating and reviewing all necessary launch materials. Execution is when materials are finalised, and you start and push things out into the world. This also includes all internal comms that should happen (don't forget internal comms!!!). Here are some things you should align on during planning: Do you actually have a launch in front of you? Any product launch is a marketing moment — a moment in time when you take a new product, feature, group of features to market. This is not the same as a product release, and something I like to make a big distinction on within my companies. * Product launch = a go-to-market (GTM) moment including single or packaged releases intended to make a splash for a given audience in the market; launches are driven by product marketing * Product release = any code deployment to production; releases are driven by product and engineering Once you've decided on a launch, make sure to tier it. * Tier 1 is the largest, involving net new functionality that will be impactful for the top of your funnel (i.e. announcing an entirely new feature set that’s core to your product’s value prop) * Tier 2 usually includes net new functionality or a significant product update, but likely for functionality that will be most impactful to your existing users (i.e. a major update to a current feature or functionality that is very popular across your user base) * Tier 3 is a table stakes improvement that, while important, is only something that will impact and be noticed by existing users, if anyone at all. (i.e a subtle UI change that power users have been asking for) As part of the tiering process, you'll want to understand who your audience is. This will help you decide on prioritisation. At a very high level there are at least three audience buckets you should consider for every product launch: * Existing customers: users who are already paying to use your product * Competitive customers: users who are paying to use a competitive product * Prospective customers: users who are not yet using you or a competitive product, but who are interested in the space Then when it comes to the story, it's your job as a PMM to always bring back to 'what's the value to the customer'. It's really easy to tell stories with your company at the center, but when something goes to market, especially if you're targeting prospects, no one cares about x,y,z improvements to Hooli, they care that they get x,y,z value in their day-to-day. A few years ago I created this launch template! If it's helpful, I can take a pass at revamping it with what i've learned since then but it's a good start for those looking for a template :) https://www.launchnotes.com/blog/the-ultimate-product-launch-plan-for-new-product-marketers

Always always always bring it back to the perspective of the prospect / customer. Your super power as a PMM is reading people to understand what's most important to them. One of my favourite ways to get good at this is tons of research calls. Here's my most successful way to do this: * if accessible, obtain a list of your target accounts -- these are now your target companies * find the title within these companies that you want to learn more about -- this will usually be the buyer vs. end user if you're at a company with an enterprise motion. For PLG, it's most likely the end-user * craft a message introducing yourself, and saying that you are researching a specific topic * make sure to pick your topic in advance and have it be a question you really need an answer to * i'd recommend only picking one thing, and have having other topics be 'extras' if you have time to get to them as often, you'll only have 15 minutes * make sure this message fits within 300 characters of LinkedIn allotment :) * make extra clear that this is NOT a sales call and really respect that * find these people on LinkedIn and send them a connection! More often not, I get people accepting my requests! It's just important to really respect that these people are not people you then put in a funnel.