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Product Messaging Strategy, HiPPOs, and the Reality of Execution
A recent Aventi Group blog post proposed that product messaging is a system. I don’t disagree, but I think it’s more appropriately called a process. Often, people who don’t fully understand what product marketing and product management are all about believe that they are the CEOs of the product. That’s simply not true.
Messaging Is a Collaborative Process (and Usually a HiPPO-Driven One)
When it comes to messaging, it is a collaborative process usually bound by a HiPPO – the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. The HIPPO who cares the most about messaging will have the final say. You’ll write some initial messaging, and it will get completely rewritten by the highest-paid person. It was ever thus.
Moreover, every step up the organizational ladder to approve that messaging will result in changes. The sooner a young product marketer or product manager gets used to this, the better. Your job isn’t to write the messaging; your job is to align and approve it as part of a broader product messaging strategy.
Start With How the Message Will Be Used
Once the messaging is approved, the most valuable part of the process begins: distributing the message. When you develop messaging, you should always start with the end in mind. By this, I mean: how will the messaging be used?
This is where a strong product messaging strategy makes a difference – especially if you have a clear product messaging framework in place.
Why is this important? Because the biggest guarantor of messaging consistency is copy-and-paste. Teams don’t reinterpret messaging at scale; they reuse what’s already available. Once you get the general outlines of messaging approved, make sure that you deliver it in the form it’s going to be used in.
These include:
- 100-word copy blocks for the website
- 30-character headlines for Google Ads
- One-line and extended versions of your value proposition
The easier it is to copy, the more consistently it will be used.
Your Website Is the Canonical Form of Messaging
First, the canonical form of your messaging is your website. The messaging you work on, and the text you create, should appear exactly as it does on your website. Why? Because this is where most people will see your messaging. It’s 2026, and people don’t use collateral the way they used to.
The one- and two-page documents from years past are useful for sales, but they reach a relatively small audience. Your website, on the other hand, may be seen by thousands – or millions. In any effective product marketing strategy, choosing the website as the official messaging channel just makes sense.
Make Messaging Easy to Reuse Across Channels
Second, your messaging will be used in advertising and on social media as part of your broader go-to-market efforts. If you want consistency, make it easy for the people who have to transform your carefully crafted messaging into copy that actually engages customers.
Come up with standard messaging formats that can be easily reused by those teams. This means you’ll need your value proposition in both 35-character and 140-character versions. If people have to reinterpret your messaging, it will change. If they can copy and paste it, it will stay consistent.
Final Thought
In short, understand that as a product manager or product marketer, you don’t necessarily control the message. Your job is to be a convener, bringing together the people who need to collaborate and reach an agreement, while keeping in mind how the message will actually be used.
Because the quickest way to ensure consistency isn’t more alignment. It’s making the message easy to use as part of a well-designed product messaging strategy.
If your product messaging strategy isn’t driving consistent execution, Aventi Group can help. Let’s chat.
