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How to Create Compelling B2B SaaS Messaging
129 Plays2 years ago
For all the focus on data, messaging (and positioning) is crucial for companies looking to connect with prospects and customers.
If you cannot talk about your product and why it matters clearly, it's like operating with one hand tied behind your back.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Diane Wiredu talks about how to develop messaging, the deliverables (more than a document or guide) and how to quantify the success of messaging engagements.
We also talk about the difference between messaging and position
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Transcript
The Importance of Words in Marketing
00:00:07
Speaker
In a world teeming with TikTok and YouTube videos, words still matter. The ability to leverage words to clearly, coherently, and effectively communicate matters in a fast-moving multitasking world.
00:00:21
Speaker
In the B2B and B2B SaaS landscapes, words can be used for content marketing, copywriting, advertising, sales deck, and websites.
Interview with Diane Wiridoo
00:00:31
Speaker
And they also play a key role in messaging, which is a focus of today's podcast with Diane Wiridoo, a messaging strategist and the founder of Lion Words. Welcome to Marketing Spark. Thanks for having me Mark, really excited to be here.
00:00:46
Speaker
Let's start with a big, broad, juicy question.
Adapting to Economic Changes
00:00:50
Speaker
Given the economic landscape, which has changed or shifted gears abruptly in the last month or so, what's your take on how companies are approaching marketing? What do you see as their priorities? I know you're focused on messaging. You and I are aligned on the importance of messaging.
00:01:07
Speaker
Can you give me some perspective on how you see the landscape changing? What's important? What's going to be deprioritized as much as you can stare into your crystal ball?
00:01:19
Speaker
This is a really tough one because I do think there's a little bit of fear in the air, right? There's a bit of fear. There's a bit of the sense of not wanting to take a risk, wanting to kind of bet on the safe options, budgets being reduced. So I do see this impacting marketing straight away, right? Because obviously people want
00:01:42
Speaker
To get results and marketing is not always about getting results is about testing and eventually getting there and playing a bit of the long game as well so yeah i mean i'm not really sure on how.
00:01:57
Speaker
priorities are changing across the board. But what I do know, and obviously, from my perspective, slight bias, but the companies who are really going to ride this economic downturn out are those who do play the long term game and who play the long game and focus on those big strategic questions around positioning messaging. Have you nailed those? Because, you know, we tend to forget we're talking about the economic landscape, but really,
00:02:23
Speaker
the whole landscape is a lot of noise, right? So, you know, even in an economic downturn, you're still fighting, right? You're fighting against all of the noise out there. And the way to really cut through that noise is by having really targeted positioning, knowing your audience,
00:02:41
Speaker
cutting through with messaging and kind of rising to the top.
Avoiding Panic in Marketing
00:02:44
Speaker
So I do see I don't know if everyone will prioritize that. I think some companies will actually deprioritize messaging because those are the ones who are going to get it wrong. But the companies that will kind of ride this out and come out on top of those that they're done. Before we dive into a favorite topic of yours and mine, which is which is messaging, I did want to get your thoughts on some of the panic that we're seeing in the marketplace. Companies are
00:03:11
Speaker
hitting the brakes hard when it comes to marketing and a lot of marketers and marketing consultants think that the world is going to end. And it's the same thing that happened two years ago when COVID emerged is that companies, the gut reaction, the easy thing to do is to cut back on marketing and to cut back on marketers. Are you surprised that you're seeing panic in the marketplace right now or a lot of trepidation?
00:03:37
Speaker
I mean, I think it's normal. It's normal to panic. But it's what do you do after that, right? I feel like panic is this instinctive reaction. And so when you see charts going down, well, obviously, it's our instinctive reaction to panic and to make kind of rash decisions. And that's where strategic thinkers, CEOs who get marketing, that's where that's where that kind of really comes into into play. You know, there's
00:04:04
Speaker
this kind of ongoing conversation and the Internet world of like, you want to work for a CEO who gets marketing. And that's never been more important than it is now, because those who have a strategic vision and really understand the core role of marketing within a company won't make those rusticisms and make huge budget cuts because they'll realize that this is how they're actually going to get through this downturn.
00:04:25
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, for consultants, I think the landscape is a little bit different than for employees. Employees, it's a lot tougher. It's a lot tougher to change your situation. But those companies that are invested in people and growing the company, I think we'll see less drastic measures.
Messaging vs. Copywriting
00:04:42
Speaker
Okay. So let's dive into messaging. But before we do that, before we get into the nitty gritty of messaging and how to do it, can you define messaging? Because a lot of people hear the term messaging and positioning for that matter. And they don't really know what it means because it can be applied in lots of different ways. So let's start with marketing one on one. How do you define messaging?
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a great place to start. It's really important. So messaging, for me, it's what you say about your product or your service or your solution. That's it in a nutshell. In one sentence, messaging is what you say. Many people confuse messaging with copywriting, right? So I think that's the big elephant in the room that a lot of the time people are talking about messaging and really they're talking about the copy and the words on the page.
00:05:32
Speaker
but copywriting is then how you say that messaging, how you say that message. So that's the way that I look at it really simply, messaging is what you say in copywriting is kind of how you say it. So messaging, you know, is really the foundation for strong, effective copywriting and messaging is really based on
00:05:52
Speaker
and informed by your positioning, your unique positioning in the market. It's informed by your mission as a company, who you stand for, what you do, what you're all about, your values. So, you know, the way that I approach messaging, it's identifying and putting out the most authentic things, the key things about your product that people need to know about and why that matters to the audience.
Positioning and Messaging
00:06:16
Speaker
Great answer. Another question for you from a basics point of view. What's the difference between messaging and positioning? Because a lot of the times they get, people think they're the same. In simple terms, how are they different?
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. And I know you're the positioning expert, right? So you should also be answering this, and you're going to be judging me hard on this one. So, so for me, the way that I the way that I look at things is, if we imagine this kind of a triangle, right at the base, and we have copy on the top,
00:06:51
Speaker
Below this, we have messaging. And below this, we have positioning. And then below this, we right at the bottom, we have like the whole business strategy. So everything kind of sits on top of each other. So that's the way that I look at it for me. Because, you know, when I come in and help companies with messaging, I can't help them get it right if they don't have a clue about their positioning. And the way that I break down positioning is,
00:07:14
Speaker
What do you do? Who for? Which little corner of the market? Which group of people do you help and are you dedicated to? So it's really about your positioning, your unique positioning in the market, where you sit and why anyone should care about you, what you can own.
00:07:33
Speaker
So that's the way that I look at it. I know there's not a clean and crisp definition because I don't know a dictionary definition of positioning. But I know that it informs all of the work that I do. And if you don't have any clarity on who your customers are, why you're different than everybody else, then the work that we do around your messaging is really
Differentiation in Branding
00:07:51
Speaker
hard.
00:07:51
Speaker
You and I are aligned in many, many ways. And I will note that when I start working with new clients, I always start with positioning because no matter how good they think their positioning is, there's two things that happen. One is that they've got a very biased view of the world. They operate in the eye of the hurricane. So sometimes they lack perspective.
00:08:14
Speaker
And the second thing when it comes to positioning and messaging for that matter is that the market changes, economics landscape changes, consumers' interests change, the competitive landscape changes, and that positioning and messaging constantly have to be updated. They're very fluid, dammit creatures. And it's not one of these things where you, you know, you set it and forget it. You're always looking at your positioning, exploring it and figuring out whether it's still relevant. So that's the one thing I did want to point out.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I want to throw this back to you. How do you define positioning?
00:08:49
Speaker
That's a great question and thank you for putting me on the spot. I gave the long winded answer and my answer for messaging was like short and snappy because I talk about it all the time. So I'd love to know because I know you do a lot more work on positioning than I do. So how do you define it? If I had to boil down positioning to its essence, it really comes down to what do you do?
00:09:14
Speaker
Who do you serve? Why what you do matters to the people that you serve. So what are the benefits? You know, why do they care? And the last one is how are you unique or different? Those are the four pillars. And the one thing I will emphasize when it comes to positioning is that your uniqueness, how you differentiate yourself doesn't have to be a major thing. It can be very, very small.
00:09:42
Speaker
But if that small thing matters to the people that matter to you and it's important to them, then you can separate yourself from your competitors simply by being slightly different. And a lot of companies struggle with positioning and messaging because they think that it has to be something dramatic. That's why a lot of companies embrace category creation because they believe that that's the way that they stand out from the crowd. And it's very tough to do that, but
00:10:09
Speaker
If you can outflank the competition in a small way, then you've got positioning that can be very, very effective.
Tight Market Conditions
00:10:16
Speaker
So that's my definition of positioning. How do you think I love that? Yeah, I love that. I love it and I love.
00:10:22
Speaker
The point you've made about differentiation not having to be huge is incredibly important. And this feeds into your messaging as well. And it's so funny because I was having this conversation an hour ago with another marketer or CMO. We were talking about this idea of like radical, radical point of view, radical differentiation as well as a kind of a topic and a concept is huge.
00:10:43
Speaker
And I said, your differentiation doesn't have to be radical. What it does have to be is relevant. And that comes down to, again, knowing what you do and who for and knowing your customers inside and out. Because if what you do is super relevant to me, that's enough to differentiate you from everyone else. So yeah, I love that. You passed the test. We both did, hopefully. Flying colors.
00:11:03
Speaker
I might steal that your messaging doesn't have to be radically different. It just has to be relevant. That is a great tagline. I mean, I think it's awesome advice for any CEO, any CMO out there. It really puts things in context. You look at what's going on right now. How do you see companies approaching position in messaging? My take, and I am biased because this is what I do for a living, is that
00:11:26
Speaker
Position and messaging are going to become increasingly important because the rising tide is no longer going to lift all ships. For the last two years, a lot of B2B, a lot of B2B SAS companies have exploded in terms of their growth because there's been so much demand.
00:11:43
Speaker
maybe their messaging hasn't been that important because everybody's doing well but. As people pull back on purchases or take longer to do them unless you stand up in the crowd unless you're your position and messaging is very distinct and on point you may struggle and i have a funny feeling.
00:12:04
Speaker
I know what the answer is to your question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do you, how do you think companies are thinking about messaging these days? Is it, do you see it as a priority for, for some of them, all of them, many of them?
Struggles with Clear Messaging
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. So the funny thing is.
00:12:19
Speaker
There are two sides to this. There are what companies actually think and then there is what they should think. So I don't know if I have the same answer as you or not. What companies are actually doing like really varies. I would be out of a job if everyone was doing this well, right? So there are a lot of companies out there doing it really badly. What I can say for sure and for certain that in this current landscape, positioning and messaging is a battle.
00:12:45
Speaker
Like it is it's a huge battle. It's a fight. And I always use this analogy. I think I like to use quite aggressive analogies, but I think it's important because messaging, you know, it's a fight. You're fighting against so much noise, so much noise now. You know, there have never been more brands and companies than there are today. I work with B2B, but if, you know,
00:13:03
Speaker
across every single industry and kind of use case, you know, in marketing, tech alone. According to the latest like MarTech report, I think it was issued in like March this year, there were like 9000
00:13:19
Speaker
marketing technology tools and products on the market like this is nuts you know just email service providers we're talking about 700 plus and when you ask anyone they can name 10 20 um i've done this in in workshops and webinars before ask people you know pick a tool that all marketers use a category and they can only name a few
00:13:42
Speaker
And they're not, you know, putting, let's put funding, huge funding aside, right? Because obviously, that's how you also rise to the top. But of everyone else, the ones that, you know, you can name and remember, are not necessarily the best tools on the market. But they're the ones who have really prioritized on brand, right? So brand is a huge, very, like, umbrella term to cover so many things. But brand,
00:14:08
Speaker
Nailed their positioning, shifted it many times, right? These companies either they've started pretty small, they've had a strong point of view.
00:14:19
Speaker
And they've shifted, they've owned their messaging, they've built a kind of either a strong messaging framework or strong brand voice as well, because I think in B2B we're often quite scared to talk about brand voice, but this is also very important. And that's how they've come out on top. So really, I think that it's going to be a huge
00:14:39
Speaker
I mean, it already is. Let's be honest, it's not like it's going to be important. It already is.
Gaining Messaging Clarity
00:14:44
Speaker
Now, whether companies are prioritising this enough or not, I can't say. I'm only working with the ones who are, luckily.
00:14:52
Speaker
I want to pick up on something you said that a lot of companies struggle with terrible positioning and awful messaging. And you can see it as B2B marketers. You look at a website, you look at copy, and it's obvious that they haven't paid much attention to it. In many cases, the problem is they're very product-centric.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, so my question to you is, how do you know if your messaging isn't working? What are the telltale signs that you have a messaging problem, and that you better fix your messaging as soon as possible? Otherwise, it's almost like you're, you're gonna operate with one hand tied behind your back is that your sales and marketing won't be as effective because your message and your story isn't clear. So what are the signs that you're messaging hell, right? You're going to have a messaging problem.
00:15:44
Speaker
Number one telltale sign is people do not get what you do. This is seems so obvious, but you will be surprised the number of intro calls, the number of leads, those first conversations that I have with founders, CEOs, CMOs.
00:16:04
Speaker
that say, oh, man, our product is brilliant. It's awesome. But people don't get what we do. It's a real, it's a critical problem. Like, so coming back to the beginning of, why can't you explain what it is that you do clearly? And really, you know, that's a telltale sign of a lack of clarity, right? A lack of clarity and clarity is like the golden, the golden star for messaging, like the North Star. Prospects being
00:16:30
Speaker
confused as well. And this often comes down to too many messages. So too many messages confusing the main thing. Not being memorable and people being confused by landing on a website.
00:16:46
Speaker
After 10, 20 seconds, if I shut that down and you ask me, what was this product about? What did they do? Tell me something key. If you have strong messaging, core messaging pillars, things that you own, I should remember something key that is relevant. And I know that a lot of, particularly in B2B, feature, people lead with features, feature led, and they're trying to throw features down your throat, and then you walk away with nothing because you don't remember anything. So trying to really ram too many messages,
00:17:16
Speaker
um, is, you know, kind of the outcome of that, that confusion. And I mean, the telltale, telltale signs are, you know, also, you know, we're marketers. So also this trickles down to your KPIs or so not kidding, hitting certain KPIs is obviously, or a dip in this, you know, if you're not getting the, the, the signups, you're not getting the demos, you're not getting the leads, you're not getting the conversions. This is usually, usually an indicative, indicative sign of something wrong with your messaging. I find it.
00:17:45
Speaker
Interesting, troubling, fascinating that many companies struggle with messaging and positioning because it seems so simple. The idea that you should be able to explain to anybody what you do and why it matters, and they should immediately get what you do, get why it's relevant, even if they're not a customer.
00:18:09
Speaker
related to going to a cocktail party. So if you meet somebody new at a cocktail party and you tell them, and they ask what you do and you give them a very complicated obtuse,
00:18:19
Speaker
answer filled with industry vernacular. They're gonna look at you and they're gonna probably move on. They're gonna probably say, okay, it's nice to meet you. But if you, this is the wrong phrase completely, but if you dumb it down or if you simplify it and say, this is what I do, I do it for these people because this matters to them, very simple story, that's relatable. Anybody can get that.
00:18:43
Speaker
Anybody can understand why it's relevant or why what you do matters. But why do companies struggle with it so much? Because it's so straightforward. It seems so obvious that you just tell a story that people can understand. Yeah, so I think there are a couple of things. One,
00:18:58
Speaker
You know, this example you just called out, just explaining what you do if you use jargon. I mean, if you ask me, Diane, what do you do? There are five, 10, probably 15 different ways that I could say this. One, I could just say I'm a messaging strategist. Simple.
00:19:14
Speaker
if you know what that is, if you know what that involves, this is clear. I could talk about my audience first, and I could say, Hey, well, I help, you know, B2B SaaS founders get clarity on their messaging, etc. And I could talk about the outcomes. And then or I could talk about, well, I'm an agency, I could start with the product, I could say, Hey, I'm a messaging consultancy that does there are so many different ways. And so that's also the first struggle, I think, is that
00:19:39
Speaker
often we're saying the wrong thing in the wrong way to the wrong people and we're not thinking about the audience.
Refreshing Messaging Strategies
00:19:45
Speaker
I can only say that I'm a messaging strategist as someone who knows what that is or in a situation where I know that they can ask me a follow up question. So I wouldn't maybe put that as the only message on a page where people don't know what that is because all marketing is a conversation. It's just like in real life. But instead of asking the questions out loud, people are asking questions in their head while they're reading your marketing material. So you need to answer all of these questions that people might have.
00:20:09
Speaker
So I think that's the first challenge. And then the second challenge is related to being too close to your product, being in the trenches and things becoming really hard to understand.
00:20:28
Speaker
phrase that I have kind of coined and I call I call this like syndrome the founder funk right so I work with a lot of founders and CEOs and heads of marketing but they all suffer from the founder funk and that is you know it's when you're inside the jar it's really hard to see the label right so you get in this funk
00:20:47
Speaker
where you know everything inside and out but you almost know too much to just take a step back and see clearly it's all about perspective and so at that point and you know not everyone sorry not everyone suffers from this but at that point getting an outside perspective can help in so many different ways so that can look like a consultant that can look like
00:21:10
Speaker
messaging, testing, that can look like customer interviews and conversations. So it can take many different forms. But often to kind of step away and get away from that funk, you have to look for outside perspective. What I find is really interesting is that when I talk to entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs, and they tell me I asked, so what do you do? And they go into this very lengthy explanation. And then I reflect and go,
00:21:37
Speaker
Well, so you do these things for these people. And they go, yeah, that's exactly it. Maybe I just see the world from a different angle. Why they struggle with that, I don't know. Yeah, no, because I think you've learned to simplify.
00:21:53
Speaker
Because simplifying things just across the board and in life, I think it's a really strong skill and it's really difficult. Something that I have struggled with, but it's a skill that you hone over time. You know, people are, I don't know if you've heard this concept of kind of maximizers, right? Maximizers or simplifiers. And people who maximize, obviously when it comes to messaging, they maximize it, they add, they want to tell everything and they really need to simplify.
00:22:22
Speaker
And I think that that's you come in with this fresh perspective and you boil it down. But people who are really passionate close to the product know everything. They want to tell you everything. And it's really hard to remove. But that's that's the core. If you have an entrepreneur or founder.
00:22:38
Speaker
who recognizes that their messaging isn't working for whatever reason, whether it's KPIs or when they do presentations to prospects, there's a lot of confusion and a lack of clarity. How do you get started? What are the steps you need to take to refresh or develop your messaging?
00:22:57
Speaker
I mean, whether you're handling this internally or
Creating a Messaging Playbook
00:23:01
Speaker
with an external consultant, I always start messaging work unsurprisingly with a lot of research and discovery. You know, the research and discovery part is 50, maybe 70% of any project for me. And, you know, it's a lot of work. It's not, you can't, people always want to skip to the good part. And right, we walk away with this thing, but no, you're really going to have to go back to the basics.
00:23:27
Speaker
So for me, you know, how that looks like when I'm helping companies is starting with sit-down strategy sessions and discussions, right? So really unpack the challenges. Where are you right now? What's the struggle? What are we not clear on? Because with messaging, I also work on, you know, the brand elements. You know, messaging, brand messaging and messaging are kind of one and all.
00:23:51
Speaker
So really understanding, is your mission still relevant? Are you still, is your positioning clear? Like you said, that's one of the places that you start. But also looking again into the competitive landscape, looking at the whole ecosystem of the company, understanding the product, the current marketing, and where everything is and what's going wrong. And then
00:24:11
Speaker
you know, part of that is really getting clear on the kind of story and the strategic narrative. That's one of the places that I really start, right? So kind of aligning that vision. And then the kind of most important part of that research and discovery phase is
00:24:26
Speaker
customer research. So, you know, interviewing customers, surveys, but interviews are the most important part, I would say, or the place where I get like the most relevant information. Customer interviews, surveys, mining online as well, and looking really for opportunities to kind of validate your assumptions, right? Messaging work often is done internally with that kind of strategy team, but then you need to validate that and look at, okay, well, what are we missing? What could we be talking about?
00:24:54
Speaker
what's resonating, what's not resonating. So those are high level. Obviously, I can break it down further, but I think the high level, that's where companies really need to start. And a lot of that work you can do yourself with the existing team already, or you can get someone in to help you. The one thing that I will note from
00:25:14
Speaker
Your answer is that the competitive audit, looking at the competitive landscape, is so important. On LinkedIn, I'll read posts that essentially say, don't worry about the competition. Ignore the competition. Just focus on yourself when it comes to positioning and messaging. You've got to differentiate yourself. If you have messaging that
00:25:36
Speaker
is the same way as your major competitors, then how do you stand apart? And I think it's important for us as marketing consultants to bring that perspective to the table to show them what's going on. And then that'll influence how we position the company strategically.
00:25:54
Speaker
One thing that I didn't want to ask you about, and it goes back to the fundamentals of messaging, is what are the deliverables of messaging? Because it's one of these sort of abstract terms, and I struggle with clients when it comes to positioning in terms of what do I get? And sometimes they don't get a lot, but they get something that's
00:26:12
Speaker
really important, can you walk me through the messaging deliverables and how you position them given the fact that a lot of your work is around research and discovery and a small man at work, relatively small, is really what you're going to give them. Walk me through that package.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really important question because often these things seem fluffy but are transformative for marketing and for companies. So I can only talk about the way that I work and I'm sure that people work in different ways. But that final, if we start right at the end, that final deliverable for me that I deliver is a messaging playbook, right? So a brand messaging playbook. The actual format can depend. We're talking a slide or doc or whatever it is, but it's a document that really is that kind of one
00:27:02
Speaker
source of truth that contains everything that you need to create successful, effective copy and have a clear framework for your messaging. Obviously, it's going to evolve, right? It's not just some deck that you put in a drawer, it's something that you're going to work on actively and shift, but that's that final point.
Evaluating Success in Communication
00:27:20
Speaker
Another really important thing, and I always say this to my clients, is we talk about deliverables, but the process in itself is a deliverable, right? This whole process, the most important, but most intangible deliverable and outcome for me is just seeing that
00:27:39
Speaker
aha moment and then clarity and an entire team being able to rally around something and finally having a consensus around like, yes, this is our strategy and now we have the confidence to go out and go ahead. So I think that's a really important part to not undermine of this work. And I'm always wary when people worry a little bit too much about the deliverable and forget that this whole process, we're going to have these aha moments along the way.
00:28:05
Speaker
And then kind of breaking down that deliverable in a more practical way. Messaging isn't a one-size-fits-all. That final deliverable changes depending on the stage of the company that I'm working with, the product, the growth, and the challenges that they've had, and the work that we need to do, how kind of advanced they are as a company, how developed, and the kind of work that we need to do. But I always split
00:28:29
Speaker
they're deliverable into, I would say, three to four key sections. One, it's always starting with who are we. So that comes down to those brand fundamentals. So we will always touch on
00:28:40
Speaker
What is the mission of the company? What's the strategic vision? We'll always look at the strategic narrative and the story. Often I'm working with B2B SaaS companies who are either going through, have gone through, will be fundraising. This is a really important part to understand the whole narrative. And there are always changes around that because companies still stick with the whole problem solution, but that's not a compelling narrative. So there's always a part about who we are.
00:29:08
Speaker
Then there is what we do and how we say it. Like what we do and what we say. And that's where I touch on value propositions, right? So core value propositions and really then break down key messaging pillars. So a fundamental part of a messaging strategy for me is messaging pillars. So what are the core concepts, the themes,
00:29:29
Speaker
the core messages that you as a company want people to remember that you can rally around and that kind of differentiate you from others, right, as well as kind of unique selling points. And we build out a whole messaging framework or a messaging matrix around that. And then with some companies, the last piece is kind of how we sound. And this is that kind of layer on top when you actually want to build out
00:29:55
Speaker
a messaging strategy and develop that throughout a company is, well, OK, if I give this to my content team, my copy team, cool, but how do we actually sound? And so there we look at, OK, well, what's the brand voice? And giving you some rules and some guidelines, some guidance on style so you can actually differentiate yourself on a kind of word by word level. So that's how I kind of split this. And within that, it will vary. I do have to say that I love the fact that you emphasize process.
00:30:23
Speaker
because I think that exercise gets lost along the way that companies and the people involved forget about the fact that what we're doing is trying to surface what matters to the company or what matters to a company's prospects. And we're trying to, in some respects, do a mindset shift on that. They have a set view of the world. And as we do the work, as we do the research,
00:30:50
Speaker
perceptions change, approaches change, biases change. And I think it's important for you and I to
00:31:00
Speaker
make it clear that that is a key deliverable, is that if you start thinking differently, it's as important as the documentation, the words that we're going
Closing Thoughts on Core Strategies
00:31:08
Speaker
to deliver. Final question for you is, and this could be a hard one, is how do you quantify the success of a messaging exercise? After you've done all the work, after you've built out this playbook, and hopefully what they do is your clients implement it,
00:31:24
Speaker
Three months later, six months later, you know, how do they quantify the the work that you've done so they can say, Diane did awesome work. It's delivering our why. And we're so happy that we can recommend it to other people. What's the criteria for figuring out whether your messaging is any good and whether it's working?
00:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, this is a great question and surprisingly it's tough. I'm going to feel that quantifying the success of something is really difficult and changes depending on each company.
00:31:57
Speaker
I think I touched on one important one that I need to mention again before we move on. And the quantifying the success starts with that aha moment, right? It starts with buy-in. It starts with, you know, once we close off that project, it's because finally, you know, this lack of clarity, this kind of doubt, this people didn't get it. We didn't know how to say it. We had 10 different ways of approaching our messaging. Now we have one clear strategy. So it starts with that.
00:32:25
Speaker
You know, external, I would say external success starts with internal success, right? So internally as a whole team championing a strategy and having one. That's the first KPI for me. That's the first one. And often I actually have founders and CEOs who come to me and they say, that's the KPI. Like, we just want to get on the same team and we want to be able to say something very clearly.
00:32:45
Speaker
So that's really important. Later on, I would say an important kind of KPI for success is using the feedback loops that you have within your company. So say if you're a very sales led company starting to adhere and test messaging on demos and sales calls and getting kind of this feedback and getting confirmation that something resonates and cuts through, that's really important. And then
00:33:13
Speaker
You know, a third way of doing this, apart from obviously noticing whatever KPIs that you had, right, if you're actually implementing this messaging on your website, and then you're looking at conversions, you're looking at signups, all the kind of classic, like, marketing KPIs, you can also then kind of implement a full kind of testing and review. So often messaging, testing, actually going out,
00:33:36
Speaker
with a sample group, with your audience and noticing the change. So if you've done some testing in the beginning with a sample group of people and 10 people didn't get your value proposition or they were on your website and had no idea what you were on about, now we go back and review and retest and we check the results.
00:33:52
Speaker
in comparison to where we've begun. So that's quite a kind of easy, easy way to do this. But, you know, messaging is, it's funny because it's a foundational thing that copy then sits on top of. And so it's actually hard to quantify, but it's a very important qualitative piece, right? So all the feedback that you get is qualitative, and it's really easy to notice when you have strong qualitative feedback.
00:34:15
Speaker
I love the aha moment. For me, that is super exciting when some of the work that you do resonates and people suddenly say, that's it. That's the sea change that we've been looking for. An example of a client recently is they were struggling with generic positioning and messaging. And so after going through the research and discovery process,
00:34:39
Speaker
and thinking about how they could position themselves against the competition i came up with an entirely new way of describing the company and it was like the white lights went on it was incredible the fact that they recognize that what i was bringing to the table actually captured the essence of their product and the reason that the business exists as consultants.
00:35:01
Speaker
There's huge ROI in that if the aha moment is the only thing we deliver, then that could be in itself could be enough to justify the success of a project. If people want to learn more about you and lion words, where do they go?
00:35:16
Speaker
If you want to stay up to date with my musings, I talk a lot about messaging, strategy, positioning, all of that kind of stuff on LinkedIn. I spend way too much time on LinkedIn, so feel free to follow me over there. Or you can contact me directly by heading over to my website, lionwords.com, which gives you a bit more information about how I work and the work that I do with B2B SaaS companies.
00:35:43
Speaker
Well, this has been a great conversation. As you know, I'm a big fan of positioning and messaging, and I love getting into the weeds when it comes to messaging. And personally, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a founder, if you're a CEO, and you're looking at some of the things that you need to focus on as you navigate through some more challenging times, it's easy to look at the marketing that you're doing or not doing. It's easy to look at the people that you're
00:36:09
Speaker
that you're hiring or not hiring, but it's also important to look at the fundamentals and really take a step back and use this as a time to figure out, are we on point? Are we going to the market in the right way with the right story? Do we have the right plan? And I think messaging is a
00:36:25
Speaker
crucial part of that process. Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, send an email to mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you later.