How do you create targeted messaging for your product?

Avoid starting with hard demographics. Start with behavior. Cluster your audience in groups on how they act, think, interact with your brand and product and later, add some demographic to connect with your KPIs.

Creating targeted messaging for a product is a nuanced process that demands a blend of research, empathy, creativity, and strategy. The goal is to communicate a product’s value in a way that resonates deeply with a specific audience segment. Understanding the audience is paramount; this means diving into the intricacies of their behaviors, needs, challenges, and aspirations. For instance, when Nike wants to target their running shoes, they aren’t just looking at people who run. They delve deeper into understanding segments like professional athletes versus casual joggers, each with distinct motivations and needs. The former might be influenced by performance and precision, while the latter might be swayed by comfort and style.

In my opinion, there is a shift in decision making and even selecting your target audience. Tools like marketing mix modelling and CDP, help segment customers and give you different customer cohorts to zero down on your target segments in a more data oriented way.

Building tools to ensure that an individual marketing a product is knowledgeable and informed and also ensuring that other marketers across the enterprise understand the target and can effectively enable sales professionals to identify and understand targets is critical. Identifying those audiences starts with research (primary and secondary), should move into persona development, and conclude with determining where the audience is in their customer journey by defining specific segments.

Creating a buyer persona is always a great tool, but the challenge continues, how to create that buyer persona? we go back to other factors such as demographics, etc., but must importantly is to really identify the value of the product and then which problem or challenge or what value is bringing to the potential customer, and just then we can start identifying better our buyer persona, how our buyer persona is going to benefit or solve its problem with our product. It is never useful to set the target audience based on pure segmentation, we must include the target value of the product to understand how it will make our buyer′s life better.

This should focus on identifying and highlighting unique features, benefits, and value propositions that differentiate the product from competitors and cater to the target audience's needs and preferences. Effective product positioning helps create a clear and memorable image of the product, making it more appealing and relevant to potential customers.

Your best customers can often create better positioning and messaging than you. I've encountered customers who describe the problem and solution in words I would never find on my own. Here are some of the customer interview questions I've found most helpful for validating existing positioning hypotheses and fueling future bets: - What does our product do for you? How would you describe the “job” we do for you? - How were you doing that job before using our product? - Why did you choose us over your other options? - Is there anything you consider us the “best” or “only” at? - What would you say to someone else considering our product? - Do you have a story that illustrates the value—what has (or hasn't) happened because of our product?

Your positioning statement should ultimately be why you're doing things the way you do, who you're doing it for and can be a powerful lever to differentiate yourself. Product positioning in a competitive market can support your growth and how you're going to market by focusing on a specific target and doubling down on it instead of trying to sell to everyone. When your positioning statement is ready, you can define 3-5 elements that are crucial for your target market to know to be part of your messaging. Keep in mind that positioning is the foundation of your GTM strategy—positioning supports your messaging which supports your copy.

What makes your product stand out from competitors and what problem will it solve for your target audience? Think about your product and what problem will it solve for your target audience that your competitor's products can’t. Focus on why you make or sell this product, what are the benefits and how can it help your audience. Make sure you use market research or visually see (via feedback) how consumers interact with your product. This might differ from your why and then you need to decide how to adjust to the marketplace needs.

I find Jobs-To-Be-Done the best way to see how your product differs. Every product serves many needs and finding the most important differences can be really difficult without a good approach.

If your value proposition statement (VPS) is like an elevator pitch, it's how you land an impression and trust from the first go. Here's the template for you to keep it short, relevant, informative: - For (target users) - who need (needs, desires), - (product name) helps achieve (outcomes, solutions) - by offering (product benefits). - Unlike others, our product has (unique selling points). One product has multiple value propositions depending on different customer personas. Build your battlecards with all relevant value propositions applicable to different user groups, that's how you keep your message consistent. Good luck writing your value proposition statement.

If you’ve properly created a Jobs-To-Be-Done analysis, most of these steps will already be complete. Once you understand the underserved jobs, crafting your value proposition is as easy as just telling people what it does differently.

The "Better, Best, Only" framework is one of the best exercises for uncovering your value proposition. Answer these three questions, and you'll have a great collection of value prop pillars—you can do it yourself or collect your team's input in a workshop. Be brutally honest and realistic about your answers: - Better: What do we do better than our competitors? - Best: What are we the best at? What factors can we beat everyone else on? - Only: What can only we do that is unique to us—and that nobody else in the market is doing? Once you have your value prop pillar hypothesis, validate it with your customers. Do they agree with your claims? Do customer reviews and testimony back up your value props? If not, consider adjusting.

A great tool for tailoring messages to different audiences is the "How/Why Ladder": 1. Choose a seed message—a value proposition, capability, or claim. 2. Ask "why" questions to go up in abstraction. This helps you articulate the benefits & strategic reasoning behind your claim. This is useful for team-, or executive-level messaging. Ask: - Why did we choose to tackle this problem/build this capability? - Why is this problem important for our customers to solve? 3. "How" questions help you go down in abstraction. This helps you clearly articulate the capability, feature, or use case and is useful for user-level messaging. Ask: - How does our product do what we've claimed? - How does this feature/capability actually work?

the tone and voice is related to the target audience. It is true that we must ensure that the tone also represents our brand, but without considering who we are talking to, the communication may not make a real impact.

Once you know your target audience, visually create an avatar for them. What do they look like, do they have a family, where do they live and what do they drive, etc? By drilling down into these details you can use their voice to speak to them about your product. Their voice will then become second nature.

A little cheat code I use is to relate a brand's tone and voice with familiar characters from pop culture. This approach can help you and your team grasp how your brand communicates across various scenarios, drawing on the character's different interactions as a reference point.

The fastest and most effective way to test and refine the messaging is through actual conversations with your ICP. Set up calls, test the messaging, and listen to what’s resonating for them. Get feedback and tweak so your company will go-to-market with messaging that connects to your ICP’s pains and needs. It also doesn’t have to only be you. You should train your team on how to pitch with the messaging, have them test it with customers and collect and share the feedback. Nailing messaging isn’t something you can skip steps on. But if you’re actively speaking with and listening to customers, you’re going to develop messaging that lands with your target.

Write like you talk. Often messaging looks good on screen but fails when it hits the real world. A great way to test and refine messaging is to test it with colleagues, partners and prospects during conversation. If you can clearly explain it verbally, and they are interested and curious, you know you're onto a winner.

In B2B, clear is almost always better than clever. Prospects are usually just trying to educate themselves and find information about your product, what it does, and how it can help them—be careful to avoid complicating things by using complex terminology or getting too abstract or cute with your messaging. Concrete, clear, and specific are always good places to start.

Remember that no one wants to be sold to. Create a clear message that solves a problem for your audience. Your product is meant to fill a need that your customer might not be aware of. In the end, just be personable.

Start with the end in mind. What pain point are you trying to solve for and what information, content, value are you offering that is compelling enough for your end consumers time? By starting with the end goal first, its easy to identify the right content and message and refine from there.

Aptly identifying the message you want to share and with whom you want to share it is a skill that serves us not only at work, but in our personal life too. Practice this skill at any opportunity! That talk with your children's teacher? Make sure you have a vivid image of their needs, interests, and their behaviors - teacher and child. Place yourself in that teacher's shoes. Figure out how is your child seen by that teacher. What is your objective of meeting with them? What makes your child special? How do you share that with the teacher and what tone do you use? Every piece of advice posted here can be practiced in your personal life, helping you improve your professional skills in the never-ending cycle of practicing human communication.

The one constant is our field is constant change, and the only way to stay ahead of the curve is to be flexible and adaptable. We need to be able to tailor messaging to specific audiences and adapt to changing conditions. Being more flexible and adaptable as a marketer means: staying up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies, be willing to experiment, be data-driven, and learning from your mistakes. Remember, marketing is a journey, not a destination. There is no one right way to do things. :)