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How to Create Product Messaging for a B2B Marketing Launch
As someone who has worked in product marketing for many years, the same interview questions come up again and again. For example: “What are the elements of a go-to-market plan?” Or, in recent years, “How do you use AI to be more efficient as a product marketer?”
One time-honored question is “How do you go about building out product messaging for a marketing launch?” That’s the topic of this blog entry, in which I outline my method for developing product messaging. If you are a product marketing practitioner, you can use this to compare notes and possibly refine your own method. If you are a marketing leader, you might consider pushing this down to your team for consideration. At the end of this blog entry, I’ll also point you to a couple of valuable resources related to product messaging.
Where Product Messaging Fits in the Product Marketing Function
Let’s start at the beginning—what exactly is product messaging? Here’s a working definition: product messaging is the collection of words and phrases we use to describe the product and the value it provides to the customer, serving as the basis for all communication activities.
Any missteps in developing messaging are amplified in subsequent activities, so it’s critical to get the messaging right. Most organizations use a formal messaging document to document product messaging. The messaging document is not for external consumption. It is an internal document that should be signed off by an extended group of stakeholders beyond those who would review every collateral piece. This would include not only product management, but also executive management and possibly others (sales, channel partners, brand marketing), depending on the norms of the organization.
By getting messaging approved up front by an extended set of stakeholders, you can reduce the number of reviewers for collateral. This allows greater agility in executing a product launch or any communication activity related to the product.
Product Messaging Must Start with Customer Needs and Challenges
I’ve said this before, and coming from a B2B product marketer, it’s no surprise: it all starts with the customer.
Product messaging is no exception. In developing a product, the product management team relies on having deep insights into customer challenges and pain points. They create design specifications for engineering that map directly to these pain points, solving real customer problems. The best product marketers work closely with product management to understand these dynamics, because they are at the crux of the value that the product provides.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to engage with product management early and often about this. These customer challenges are the starting point for the product messaging.
Summary Descriptions are a Key Element in B2B Product Messaging
The most fundamental thing we must do as product marketers is to explain what the product is and does. It’s a lot harder to do this in fewer words than in many words. As part of my product messaging, I like to create product descriptions in lengths of 25, 50, and 100 words early in the messaging development process. In many ways, these are the cornerstone of a full-blown messaging document. These descriptions are informed by the features and benefits of the product, and developing these core elements is an iterative and concurrent process. You may take a first pass at the word descriptions and need to refine them after you put more thought into the way you articulate features and benefits. The messaging does not have to be perfect at every stage of its development.
Product Features is at the Core of B2B Product Messaging
All of the goodness that flows from a product comes from its features. These should be articulated in the messaging document as short phrases that can be used as sub-headers in collateral or in a bulleted list. Think of them in terms of a short summary statement with a few to up to ten or so words.
Any technology product has dozens of features that could be listed in a collateral piece, but your audience does not have time for them. Focus on five features, or feature groupings, to emphasize what matters most. Why five? A bulleted list should have an odd number of items. It’s just a truism of marketing. Three is too few, although for some communications you could reduce it to three. Seven is too many. Other features can be listed on the technical specifications and described in technical documents.
Phrase features in language that the industry uses to talk about your product category; don’t try to get too clever and coin a lot of new terms that the target audience must learn. Maybe once in a while, a technology rises to the level of having a fanciful name, but do this only sparingly (e.g., a human name for a virtual assistant embedded in the product). Features should begin with nouns or adjective-noun combinations. That’s because each feature is a thing. If you adhere to this convention, you also ensure parallel construction when stating them as a bulleted list. “AI-powered malware analytics—from the endpoint to the cloud” is a realistic (though made-up) way to phrase a feature.
At the top level—the short-form feature statements—you should work hard to get the wording just right. I recommend expanding on the summary feature statements with extensive supporting detail, because at some point in your collateral development process you are going to need it. For the drill down, the language does not always need to be quite so refined. The feature details will likely take up a substantial portion of your word count. This will be a valuable resource when you are creating longer-form content.
Benefits—the “So What” of the B2B Marketing Message
Benefits speak to the product’s ability to solve customer challenges. I like to call them the “so what” for your target audience. Product benefits are what the customer really cares about—not features. I did a little research to discover where this marketing truism comes from. This blog entry on that topic is especially well researched.
As with product features, think of product benefits as a bulleted list of short statements with around six to ten words or so each. You should begin benefit statements with a strong verb or adverb-verb combination. That’s because the product does something for the customer. Also, as with benefits, this ensures parallel construction.
I sometimes see companies phrase benefits in a way that makes it sound like the customer is the one who does the work: “Increase product development efficiency for faster time-to-market.” I don’t favor that approach. Rather, I would say “Increases product development efficiency for faster time-to-market.” It’s about what the product does for the customer. As with features, I suggest focusing on five. The benefit statements stand on their own. I usually don’t feel the need to add a lot of detail to this part of the messaging, but you can if you want to.
Additional Themes to Support the Product
You might also include a variety of supporting themes related to the product in your messaging documents. These are statements that support the value of your product, and can be used to help convince the target audience that it’s a viable offering. For example, you might want to have a messaging theme that says “from a proven market leader in cybersecurity,” or “trusted by 80% of the Fortune 500,” or “powered by advanced artificial intelligence.” This section can also have a lot of drill-down to back up the high-level statement.
Competitive Differentiation—Separating the Product from the Pack
When they created the specifications for the product, product management probably had attributes in mind that set the product apart from its competitors. These are ideally uniquely tailored to solving specific customer problems. These attributes should serve as the basis for the competitive differentiation of your product relative to major competitors. For example, you might say your product, “unlike competitor X’s product, is optimized for quick and easy deployment”. This is a great section to have in your messaging document.
Conclusion
This isn’t the only way to build out product messaging. You or your team should give careful thought to what this will look like in your organization. This blog entry can serve as a starting point for that discussion.
There are also a couple of valuable resources on the Aventi Group website (registration required): Product Marketing Messaging Framework and 4 Steps for Developing Great Messaging. I looked at these after I wrote this blog entry, and there is some overlap with the approach I outlined above. These are good references for developing your own approach as well.
