A Huddle Play: Our Messaging Stinks – Help!

Michele Hudnall December 22, 2018 0 Marketing, Messaging & Positioning, Plays, Roles, The Huddle

S Y N O P S I S

The title is a polite statement that is often heard when speaking with sales and marketing organizations. The most often heard statement from sales and customer facing roles is, “Our messaging SUCKS”. That’s harsh and that’s right, I said it. Marketing teams are under fire to fix it but are in a vicious whirlpool with others rolling their own messages and then demanding matching collateral and the cycle continues.

As an analyst, prior to a call with a supplier it was common to surf the website, the blogs, Google searches, press releases, etc. to garner an impression before the briefing. I feel many of you cringing already …

What story do your assets tell?

Will it match what you are about to present in the briefing? To your customer?

Who owns it? Where is Product Marketing? Why are so many rolling their own messaging?

Customers are doing their homework before engaging a supplier. It’s important that you are found, found for what differentiates you and you provide the content that illustrates your confidence in solving the challenges your prospect is facing. This is not an easy task in organizations that pride themselves on their products and their engineering prowess.

Standing out out and being different is uncomfortable and let’s face it, everyone with a Twitter account in the organization has an opinion and is a marketing expert. Positioning and messaging and it’s digital activation is important and needs to not look haphazard. Consistency and repetition are keys to success.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat.

– Sun Tzu

I’ve worked with organizations to aid in the development of positioning and content for websites, blogs, campaigns, etc. and before I can say anything the Senior Product Marketing leader will often state, “Don’t ask, we don’t have a positioning document or a market requirements document … we have a pitch deck”. Given the immediate defense, I sense their frustration.

Without the foundational definitions and positions, everyone who interacts with a prospect, customer or influencer begins rolling their own and then starts scrambling for collateral to back it up afterwards. Campaign content becomes just in time and one offs too. Does this sound familiar?

The next request I’m often handed is a plea to come help us with our messaging … to which I start to inquire:

Are we talking about go-to-market campaign messages?

What is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) or persona definitions?

What is your solution and/or product positioning?

What does your market definition, segmentation and competitive landscape look like?

Or are we talking about company brand?

Yes and No. Yes, we need messaging help to execute today, but no, we do not have market or customer definitions, market trends, segmentation or competitive intel. The next thing I might hear, “We don’t have time for that foundation stuff, just get us something to execute now!”.

Any and/or all this sounding familiar? Setting a foundational position is hard work, but drives repetition and consistency in activation and worth the up front effort.

Growth Narrative

Today’s organizations are under tremendous pressure to compete and grow in mature and highly saturated markets, while also fending off the disrupters. Strategy has gone stale and those responsible for the foundation have been stretched and pulled to execute. All of this could not have happened at a worse time with customers seeking partners to solve their challenges and performing research on their own. The perfect storm:

Competitive and Saturated Markets

Customers Seeking Partners and Inundated with Content

Stale and Inconsistent Content

Marketing and sales need to come together when messaging isn’t working in sales conversations. Sales and marketing need to work together to freshen up the messages and content to stay relevant. When others begin rolling their own, it signals to the market and competition that there might be confusion inside your organization.

Getting Started

A vicious cycle, but all is not lost. It’s that time of year to reassess and plan for: 1) Tactical Execution and 2) Strategic Planning to shore up the foundation, while in flight. Getting the foundation shored up and relevant will elevate your organization in the eyes of your customers as the thought leader, trusted advisor and who they would choose to do business with.

The foundational marketing elements are:

Positioning Research: Market and Customer Definition
Positioning Development: Solution and Product Positioning
Messaging Activation Plan: Go-to-Market Messaging and Plan
Messaging Activation: Campaign Plans (a big topic for another post)
Brand (see brand post)

Before we progress, there is one other decision to keep in mind. Positioning can be approached in one of two ways by playing either:

Defense: By positioning and messaging against your competitors
Offense: By positioning outcomes in the minds of your target customers

Playing defense is the most natural for most organizations as it tends to align itself to product speak. Playing offense feels uncomfortable as the focus is the customer outcome, not the product or how to reach the outcome. Offense requires understanding the two emotions of your target customer too: 1) Value in achieving the outcome and how it positions the buyer personally and their organization and 2) Risk of not achieving the outcome and how it positions the buyer personally and their organization.

Being different in a crowded, mature market can often be achieved by speaking to your target customers in their language and helping them achieve the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

Market and Customer Definition

This is the foundational piece for the other elements. Knowing your market and your customers will keep you relevant. This should be revisited annually but may not change dramatically in mature markets. The exception being the entrance of new competitors disrupting the market. This is where you objectively identify and define the market, trends, competition, customer segments and routes to market. This document could apply to anyone in your market, it is not unique to your organization.

Once the analysis of the market is complete, what does make it unique are the recommendations for application to your solutions, services and products. It will manifest in how you position and message your solutions, products and services to the market and your customers. The analysis helps you discover how to position your organization, solutions and services uniquely and target space that is less saturated to maximize your returns on your go-to-market efforts.

This analysis and document should cover the following topics:

Market Definition, Size and Growth – by regions and verticals

Market Trends

Target Market Segmentation – demographic and psychographic definitions

Routes to Market

Competitive Landscape

Key Competitive Summary Map

Competitor A

Market Share

Value Propositions

Packaging, Pricing and License Models

Routes to Market

SWOT Analysis

Market Situation – your market summary

Recommendations

This document will become your guiding point of reference as you develop your positioning and campaign messaging. Consistency and repetition will be tied to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and the segment you outline here. While I previously stated playing offense is the preferred go-to-market, understanding you competition is also key in putting them on the defense.

Solution and Product Positioning

In some organizations, product marketing has been renamed, solution marketing, to represent more of a customer voice regarding positioning to customer outcomes and value. Merely changing the name does not facilitate the shift in the positioning from a product focus to a customer focus and does not ensure you have the skill set required to make the shift in content successfully.

I am an advocate of solution marketing; however, it does not necessarily ensure the shift required with today’s customers. For purposes of this post, I will use solution marketing to better align the conversation with that of the customer’s desired outcomes.

Solution positioning is how you speak of one or many products and services as a solution to a customer challenge in their terms of challenge and outcome – not in terms of a product, features and how it works. This will be the elevator sentence to start a conversation and your market moniker, what you want your solutions to be known for. This is not to be confused with brand.

This is often when customer facing roles criticize marketing for writing market facing positioning and not customer facing, conversation messaging. Positioning is the foundation to messaging and conversational stories solving specific challenges. Layers of an onion, so to speak.

This document should cover the following:

Market Trends

Target Market Segmentation – demographic and psychographic definitions

Customer Challenges – 3 – 4 typical challenges, use the 80/20 rule here, target your heavy hitters

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Buyer Persona

Influencer Persona(s) – the committee of roles in the agreement network of the buyer

Solution Definition

Products and Services in the Solution

Capabilities – 3 – 4 capabilities, not features, use customer vernacular

Positioning Statement – 25 – 50 – 100-word versions

Value Proposition

Differentiators

Target Use Cases – 3 – 4 Use Cases (this is a taxonomy of Case – Value – Diff – Proof Points – Products) these become sales plays and campaigns

Use Case 1 – Customer Challenge, Solution Capability

Challenge Definition

Buyer, Influencer Identification (full persona definitions and sales plays should be in a separate document)

Value Propositions – Customer Outcomes, Value Requirements

Positioning

Differentiators

Proof Points – Case Stories and Metrics

Products & Services – Supporting the Use Case – Primary and Complimentary

Key Strategic Partners

Appendices

A – Elevator Messages (from positioning section)

B – Starter Conversations

C – Key Customers and Proof Points

D – META Data

Keywords

Titles

META Descriptions

Paid Search Terms

E – Competitive Messaging and Differentiators

F – Existing Collateral and Content Matrix – by stage, persona and program

G – Industry Groups, Publications, Influencers, Analysts

H – Industry Conferences, Events

WOW! I understand the staff might push back creating this document and keeping it current and why the leadership staff might too see it as a distraction from execution. Deep breathes, I’ll remind the naysayers that the reason your messaging stinks and is inconsistent is that no one defines and gains alignment to the target and their values.

Organizations that take the time to perform this analysis, gain alignment and define their positioning, targets and outcomes execute with speed, consistently and grow at a faster rate. As you look at this index, you should see the content required for all of the supporting functions ensuring consistency in:

Web Content, Pages and Structure

Sales Playcards

Demand Gen Campaigns

Paid, Owned, Earned and Syndicated Content

Execution will become a matter of piecing together the content for the proper channel as the base positioning has been developed and aligned. This is also a training document for field facing roles and partners and the input into smaller training and campaign assets.

I’m a big fan of one effort to be used in many channels over and over again with consistency. It will take executive support and alignment to ensure consistent use. Without consistent use and repetition, the effort loses value.

Go-to-Market Plan and Messaging

Now that you know your market, your ICP and sweet spot of use cases, it’s time for an execution plan. The key to the development of the previous analysis and definition is ALIGNMENT for the utmost of consistency, repetition and execution.There is far more to be gained from consistent use than there will be for rogue efforts. I’m purposely being repetitive – it’s important.

All too often organizations agree these three target use cases and this ICP is our sweet spot and then immediately go off the rails for execution to chase the one deal in a non-priority region that does not fit the aligned to use cases. Chasing that out of scope customer must be done judiciously and with acknowledgement of the entire team and supporting cast as it diverts attention from the defined growth target objectives to create the assets to support the one off.

I will mention that this is the most difficult to execute, especially in larger organizations with many solutions in many geographies. Allocating go-to-market execution across sales and marketing does not treat all solutions and geographies as equal, they have been prioritized and will be supported accordingly to meet the company objectives. This often causes conflict in the product management and engineering ranks but is not an insurmountable challenge to overcome.

Now that you have the core of your positioning defined, a go-to-market plan and messaging plan would contain:

Summary Marketing Objectives – map to company objectives

Company Objectives

Go-to-Market Measures & Outcomes

Solution Launches

Target Customer & Routes to Market

Target Customer Definition – your ICP

Target Routes to Market

Programs – select your focus, not all, addressing those not covered and why makes for a good point of reference

New Customer Acquisition Focus

Target Use Cases

Targeted Acquisition

Existing Customer Retention

Upgrade Currency

Renewal

Existing Customer Expansion

Expansion Opportunities

Cross Sell Opportunities

Competitive Launches, Events, Acquisitions, Partnerships

Awareness

PR and Earned Media Opportunities

Analyst Relations Opportunities

Field Execution

By Region Focus and Allocation

Enablement Plan and Objectives

Events

Corporate Events

Industry Events

Partner Marketing Plan and Objectives

Go-to-Market Plan Allocation & Outcomes Summary

This is the Go-to-Market plan that summarizes the allocation of resources and funds as it makes sense in your organization by solution, topic and region. This is where the rubber meets the road in alignment to company objectives and requires executive sponsorship and support execute.

As you notice, this is the fuel for your campaign plans of tactics. This is the suggested allocation of resources to the programs by which the detailed tactical campaigns will be constructed. The positioning and messaging has been set and ready for use in field level tactics and activities.

Brand

I’ve written about developing brand in another post and will refer to it here. The relevant component that is shared across these posts is the definition of the market and customer in developing brand, positioning and go-to-market.

Let’s Wrap This Up

The art of positioning and messaging is alive and well and living with solution (product) marketers. Leading organizations polish their market, customer and positioning definitions annually and adhere to alliance of a common set of company objectives. Challenges arise when one region steps off the track or a sales executive chases a non-ideal customer, or a field marketing team executes a one-off tactic … you see how this starts to snowball leading to inconsistency in message, content and execution in the market.

Focusing messaging on the customer and job they are trying to accomplish is an uncomfortable approach that will lead to profitable results. Customers are not trying to buy a tool to do a job, they are trying to do a job to reach an outcome. Help them achieve the outcome and with the emotion of success and the urgency from the risk of not achieving the outcome.

Solution marketers get stretched too thin to start supporting each veer off the tracks of alignment. There are times when it is the right thing to do, however, it needs to be done thoughtfully and with alignment from the entire supporting and leadership team. Keep your solution marketers focused on customer outcomes and producing the fuel for the supporting sales supply chain. There is nothing more magical than working with a team that is firing on all cylinders, crushing it in the market!

Take Aways

End the cycle of inconsistent content and align your teams and take the disdain out of the teams regarding your messaging. Your customers and prospects are watching, and they want a partner to advise them and help them find a solution to their challenges. Nothing turns a customer away faster than disconnected and stale content and messages. It is far better to have less content that is accurate and consistent than a mass volume of content that is all over the board and stale.

It is one team, not bad marketing messaging or poor sales execution. It is a team sport and requires alignment and support. Take the time to: