We could talk about positioning for the whole course. And that's still only really the tip of the iceberg.

But by this point, you've hopefully got a pretty solid understanding of what positioning is why you need it and how to go about building yours out.

To dive into more detail behind positioning, check out our positioning master's course.

So let's turn our attention to messaging Your messaging is critical before, during, and after launch, and is really your place to articulate the relevance and value of your product to your market.

Establish a foundation of trust and help you stand out in the market.

To be truly effective, your messaging must be simple, clear, and consistent.

As well as being a key document to inspire the words used in external marketing and sales assets.

Your messaging ensures internal consistency and that everyone within your business is on the same page when it comes to your product's value.

Here are just a handful of the benefits of messaging.

One, they save time Without rolled out messaging, tons of people within your organization will be one hundred percent wasting their time trying to recreate messaging that someone has already done by having a strong and well communicated messaging document Everyone will have something they can easily copy and paste wording from saving them time.

Number two, you'll be ensuring consistency because if people are creating their own messaging, the message will inevitably shift and change each time and after a while, it might not even remotely represent what it was supposed to.

Number three, You'll be able to provide new starters with something that enables them to instantly understand the fundamentals of your product.

As well as guessing them off on the right foot. This will save you time during their onboarding.

And finally, number four, It'll save you and senior members time signing off and amending inaccurate messaging and that can only make everyone's lives an awful lot easier.

So let's take a look at our messaging template And before we do, remember, the positioning work we just went through should feed directly into your messaging.

Your messaging is an extension of your positioning.

Another couple of things worth bearing in mind before we dive in that your messaging isn't a blanket roller.

If you have two, three, four or more personas, who have a wide gap in how they need to be framed to, you're gonna need different messaging documents for each.

Otherwise you're not going to be speaking to them in a way that makes them tick, relate, and act on what you're saying.

The final thing is that the template we're about to show you isn't prescriptive.

If you're managing multiple products, you might have a portfolio message that sits at the top of your document, for example, or if you restart up but things tend to be a bit more blurry to begin with, you might want to include corporate messaging at the top to make sure your corporate and product messaging don't get mingled because that's easily done in those early stages.

So the first field is your core value proposition.

And this is what often shows up on the homepage headlines and is a clear six-six statement of the unique value you offer customers.

This should be closely tied to your positioning and have one clear focal point length wise, you're looking at around ten to fifteen words. Here are some examples.

Digit analyzes your spending and automatically saves the perfect amount every day so you don't have to think about it.

And Slack replaces email inside your company.

Keep conversations organized in Slack. The smart alternative to email.

Now these might not be their value prop's word for word, but they are almost certainly a flavor of it.

Next is your audience.

This is a brief background on the profile of the personas you are targeting.

Note the emphasis on brief. This isn't a place for you to repeat all the detail of your personas.

You can link out to those documents to provide people with further reading.

When you're filling this field in, Think about things like their personality, responsibilities, title, and role in the buying process.

And don't forget this is a person, not a company or a group of people.

After that, is your elevator pitch. And this should be around one to two sentences and incorporate your value proposition.

Within this bit, you want to touch on what you bring to the table that your competitors don't and you can get this information by pulling the top one to two value points you decided on during a positioning work and that's why it's so important to start with the positioning exercise first.

Then you've got the long description.

This should be in the region of one hundred to two hundred words. Give or take.

In terms of use cases, this might be used in a boilerplate, sales, email, or web page intro, for example, Again, this should include the value points uncovered in your positioning work. And then because you have more words to play around with, you should think about things like product details, headline benefits, an indication of who your target market is and then some social proof points. Like the names of current customers, or brag with the awards, product usage, or customer satisfaction stats.

Here are a few tips to help make this bit as impactful as possible.

Tip number one, keep it super simple.

Stay away from industry jargon and express your pitch as simply and purely as you can.

They say in marketing copywriting, you should write as if you were writing for a nine to ten year old child, and that's the same for your messaging.

So write like you'd speak, and imagine you're writing from one person, not masses.

Tip number two, run your pin through the readability and or Hemingway apps to make sure they are easily understood.

This is kind of the same as tip number one, but it's just another way to sense check you're on the right track.

Tip number three, focus on what you want the recipient to remember after seeing the elevator pitch, I e, which outcomes and emotions should they have and feel.

If you don't write with the end outcome in mind, you won't achieve it. It's on you to pull those emotions out of people with your choice of words.

Next up is your tone of voice field.

This one's important because if someone from within the business modifies some of your messaging, or just start their own from scratch, it needs to be consistent with everything else you've got out there.

If you've covered all bases in your persona research, you should, in theory, have this information handy from there. And it doesn't have to go with heaps of detail here. Just a top line overview of which three to four objectives describe your ideal voice. For example, formal, informal, conversational, punchy, and depth, friendly, approachable, etcetera.

It's also a good idea to include some before and after examples of what the voice sounds like so everyone's super clear on what they're aiming for.

Up next are your outcomes.

So what can your customers achieve is a direct result of using your product or service?

There are so many possibilities for this one depending on your product, but some examples might be that customers can manage all their integrations and one place.

Or they can collaborate with external companies, or they can book a holiday without putting any deposit down, and so on.

These outcomes should be listed in order of importance to your customers.

So the most important outcomes should be higher up than the less critical ones.

Don't guess with this. Speak to your customers to get a feel for what the hierarchy should be.

Following on from that are your customer's requirements.

And these are basically the things that are essential for your persona to convert.

For example, this could be the ability for slack to integrate with intercom, or to be able to take high quality videos on their phone.

These are super important because it ensures other business areas, particularly sales, aren't neglecting crucial conversation points.

Next, you move on to your own value points and this is your approved wording for your top three to five points on value. Which again follows straight on through your positioning work.

We've got three pillars on our template here. But if you have more, that's fine. Just add them in. We wouldn't recommend going over five though.

So the first thing you're going to do for each pillar is outline the pain points this pillar solves.

Next, is your product or features and benefits.

So how well does your product resolve those pain points?

Stick to three to five bullet points and focus these around your value and supporting benefits.

Using our membership plans, here's an example of what these two sections might look like filled in.

So for our outcome pillars, we have a central product marketing repository.

For the pain points, we have that PMMs no longer have to troll the internet or flick between tabs, they have all the resources they need in one place.

And for the product and feature benefits, We have learned from some of the world's biggest brands, instant access to everyday tools and templates and one on one support from experienced and vetted PMMs.

The pin ultimate row is for your products or features and details So this is the parts of your product that are responsible for the benefits we just listed.

In our case, That would be hundreds of hours of product marketing presentations from senior level product marketers.

A hub packed with templates and frameworks and access to products marketing mentors.

In theory, you should have the same number of bullets for this row as the row above as your product details should align with your product benefits.

And finally, you have your proof points.

These are so important in terms of validating everything else you've done in this exercise because at the end of the day your word alone isn't always enough to persuade people to buy.

Most people want some sort of evidence that you can deliver on what you're promising them, whether that be in the form of a testimonial case study, or award, for example.

Once you've completed this template and you, your team and key stakeholders have approved all the wording, it's time to turn your attention to the communication side of things again. Because all of this work is only any good if people actually use it.

To save going through the communication ropes twice, it might be a good idea to communicate your positioning and messaging work together.

Here are a few tips when it comes to nailing your communication.

Tip number one, split your meetings by department so you can tailor the agenda to meet your audience.

Your sales team will use your positioning and messaging differently to your product team, for example.

And if you make people sit through stuff that isn't relevant to them, you run the risk of them tuning out.

Tip number two, going hard with the benefits Everyone has their own objectives and KPIs, and that can mean helping you hit yours falls off their agenda.

So help them and you by letting them know how your positioning and messaging will help them do their job better and make their life easier.

Tip number three, the same way you provide your customers with use cases, provide your colleagues with them too.

For example, for sales, that might be in the form of you can use our elevator pitch in follow v mails to help reiterate their value the product brings.

Tip number four, Circulate uneditable versions of your templates to all relevant departments so they have it to hand whenever they want to use them.

Zip number five, check-in down the line to see how people have found them. Ms. Will a provide you with feedback that can be used in future iterations, and B prompt people who aren't already making the most of your templates to start.

Okay.

So that's all from us on messaging.

For anyone who's interested in learning more about messaging, here's an extra video around survey monkeys seven step process.

‍

We could talk about positioning for the whole course. And that's still only really the tip of the iceberg.

But by this point, you've hopefully got a pretty solid understanding of what positioning is why you need it and how to go about building yours out.

To dive into more detail behind positioning, check out our positioning master's course.

So let's turn our attention to messaging Your messaging is critical before, during, and after launch, and is really your place to articulate the relevance and value of your product to your market.

Establish a foundation of trust and help you stand out in the market.

To be truly effective, your messaging must be simple, clear, and consistent.

As well as being a key document to inspire the words used in external marketing and sales assets.

Your messaging ensures internal consistency and that everyone within your business is on the same page when it comes to your product's value.

Here are just a handful of the benefits of messaging.

One, they save time Without rolled out messaging, tons of people within your organization will be one hundred percent wasting their time trying to recreate messaging that someone has already done by having a strong and well communicated messaging document Everyone will have something they can easily copy and paste wording from saving them time.

Number two, you'll be ensuring consistency because if people are creating their own messaging, the message will inevitably shift and change each time and after a while, it might not even remotely represent what it was supposed to.

Number three, You'll be able to provide new starters with something that enables them to instantly understand the fundamentals of your product.

As well as guessing them off on the right foot. This will save you time during their onboarding.

And finally, number four, It'll save you and senior members time signing off and amending inaccurate messaging and that can only make everyone's lives an awful lot easier.

So let's take a look at our messaging template And before we do, remember, the positioning work we just went through should feed directly into your messaging.

Your messaging is an extension of your positioning.

Another couple of things worth bearing in mind before we dive in that your messaging isn't a blanket roller.

If you have two, three, four or more personas, who have a wide gap in how they need to be framed to, you're gonna need different messaging documents for each.

Otherwise you're not going to be speaking to them in a way that makes them tick, relate, and act on what you're saying.

The final thing is that the template we're about to show you isn't prescriptive.

If you're managing multiple products, you might have a portfolio message that sits at the top of your document, for example, or if you restart up but things tend to be a bit more blurry to begin with, you might want to include corporate messaging at the top to make sure your corporate and product messaging don't get mingled because that's easily done in those early stages.

So the first field is your core value proposition.

And this is what often shows up on the homepage headlines and is a clear six-six statement of the unique value you offer customers.

This should be closely tied to your positioning and have one clear focal point length wise, you're looking at around ten to fifteen words. Here are some examples.

Digit analyzes your spending and automatically saves the perfect amount every day so you don't have to think about it.

And Slack replaces email inside your company.

Keep conversations organized in Slack. The smart alternative to email.

Now these might not be their value prop's word for word, but they are almost certainly a flavor of it.

Next is your audience.

This is a brief background on the profile of the personas you are targeting.

Note the emphasis on brief. This isn't a place for you to repeat all the detail of your personas.

You can link out to those documents to provide people with further reading.

When you're filling this field in, Think about things like their personality, responsibilities, title, and role in the buying process.

And don't forget this is a person, not a company or a group of people.

After that, is your elevator pitch. And this should be around one to two sentences and incorporate your value proposition.

Within this bit, you want to touch on what you bring to the table that your competitors don't and you can get this information by pulling the top one to two value points you decided on during a positioning work and that's why it's so important to start with the positioning exercise first.

Then you've got the long description.

This should be in the region of one hundred to two hundred words. Give or take.

In terms of use cases, this might be used in a boilerplate, sales, email, or web page intro, for example, Again, this should include the value points uncovered in your positioning work. And then because you have more words to play around with, you should think about things like product details, headline benefits, an indication of who your target market is and then some social proof points. Like the names of current customers, or brag with the awards, product usage, or customer satisfaction stats.

Here are a few tips to help make this bit as impactful as possible.

Tip number one, keep it super simple.

Stay away from industry jargon and express your pitch as simply and purely as you can.

They say in marketing copywriting, you should write as if you were writing for a nine to ten year old child, and that's the same for your messaging.

So write like you'd speak, and imagine you're writing from one person, not masses.

Tip number two, run your pin through the readability and or Hemingway apps to make sure they are easily understood.

This is kind of the same as tip number one, but it's just another way to sense check you're on the right track.

Tip number three, focus on what you want the recipient to remember after seeing the elevator pitch, I e, which outcomes and emotions should they have and feel.

If you don't write with the end outcome in mind, you won't achieve it. It's on you to pull those emotions out of people with your choice of words.

Next up is your tone of voice field.

This one's important because if someone from within the business modifies some of your messaging, or just start their own from scratch, it needs to be consistent with everything else you've got out there.

If you've covered all bases in your persona research, you should, in theory, have this information handy from there. And it doesn't have to go with heaps of detail here. Just a top line overview of which three to four objectives describe your ideal voice. For example, formal, informal, conversational, punchy, and depth, friendly, approachable, etcetera.

It's also a good idea to include some before and after examples of what the voice sounds like so everyone's super clear on what they're aiming for.

Up next are your outcomes.

So what can your customers achieve is a direct result of using your product or service?

There are so many possibilities for this one depending on your product, but some examples might be that customers can manage all their integrations and one place.

Or they can collaborate with external companies, or they can book a holiday without putting any deposit down, and so on.

These outcomes should be listed in order of importance to your customers.

So the most important outcomes should be higher up than the less critical ones.

Don't guess with this. Speak to your customers to get a feel for what the hierarchy should be.

Following on from that are your customer's requirements.

And these are basically the things that are essential for your persona to convert.

For example, this could be the ability for slack to integrate with intercom, or to be able to take high quality videos on their phone.

These are super important because it ensures other business areas, particularly sales, aren't neglecting crucial conversation points.

Next, you move on to your own value points and this is your approved wording for your top three to five points on value. Which again follows straight on through your positioning work.

We've got three pillars on our template here. But if you have more, that's fine. Just add them in. We wouldn't recommend going over five though.

So the first thing you're going to do for each pillar is outline the pain points this pillar solves.

Next, is your product or features and benefits.

So how well does your product resolve those pain points?

Stick to three to five bullet points and focus these around your value and supporting benefits.

Using our membership plans, here's an example of what these two sections might look like filled in.

So for our outcome pillars, we have a central product marketing repository.

For the pain points, we have that PMMs no longer have to troll the internet or flick between tabs, they have all the resources they need in one place.

And for the product and feature benefits, We have learned from some of the world's biggest brands, instant access to everyday tools and templates and one on one support from experienced and vetted PMMs.

The pin ultimate row is for your products or features and details So this is the parts of your product that are responsible for the benefits we just listed.

In our case, That would be hundreds of hours of product marketing presentations from senior level product marketers.

A hub packed with templates and frameworks and access to products marketing mentors.

In theory, you should have the same number of bullets for this row as the row above as your product details should align with your product benefits.

And finally, you have your proof points.

These are so important in terms of validating everything else you've done in this exercise because at the end of the day your word alone isn't always enough to persuade people to buy.

Most people want some sort of evidence that you can deliver on what you're promising them, whether that be in the form of a testimonial case study, or award, for example.

Once you've completed this template and you, your team and key stakeholders have approved all the wording, it's time to turn your attention to the communication side of things again. Because all of this work is only any good if people actually use it.

To save going through the communication ropes twice, it might be a good idea to communicate your positioning and messaging work together.

Here are a few tips when it comes to nailing your communication.

Tip number one, split your meetings by department so you can tailor the agenda to meet your audience.

Your sales team will use your positioning and messaging differently to your product team, for example.

And if you make people sit through stuff that isn't relevant to them, you run the risk of them tuning out.

Tip number two, going hard with the benefits Everyone has their own objectives and KPIs, and that can mean helping you hit yours falls off their agenda.

So help them and you by letting them know how your positioning and messaging will help them do their job better and make their life easier.

Tip number three, the same way you provide your customers with use cases, provide your colleagues with them too.

For example, for sales, that might be in the form of you can use our elevator pitch in follow v mails to help reiterate their value the product brings.

Tip number four, Circulate uneditable versions of your templates to all relevant departments so they have it to hand whenever they want to use them.

Zip number five, check-in down the line to see how people have found them. Ms. Will a provide you with feedback that can be used in future iterations, and B prompt people who aren't already making the most of your templates to start.

Okay.

So that's all from us on messaging.

For anyone who's interested in learning more about messaging, here's an extra video around survey monkeys seven step process.

‍