How do you come up with messaging and content ideas?

Understanding your audience can mean a few different things. I’d recommend looking at your current engaged users (using tools like similar web, SEMrush, GA4 and hotjar) to understand how they’re engaging with your content. As well as what they’re not interested in. Then, I’d look to your competitors (social listening and similar web) to understand what people are engaging with. As well as how your successful competitors get their traffic. Only then would I start looking at personas (to test and iterate).

Creating customer personas are key to understanding your audience. If you don't know their interests, day-to-day responsibilities, and challenges, how can you create messaging that resonates with them? While you can start compiling personas by looking at job descriptions and other research, the best way to find out what your audience is thinking is to ask them! Audience interviews can be very enlightening and uncover surprising insights. It's important to balance straightforward questions (e.g. What's your biggest challenge) with broader questions (e.g. How do you think the industry will evolve in the next year?). These kinds of questions can open up a more interesting conversation that can give you a competitive edge.

One either has it, or they don’t. Hire pros, branding is not as easy as one thinks. Know your audience, look for unique elements in your story.

For me the best source for messaging and coming up with content ideas is: Talk to customers and prospects. As often as you can. My weekly podcast and weekly B2B SaaS CEO mastermind have proven magical - just for that. And from there: Write. Write every day. Once I switched writing (and publishing) every day, things sharpenend and sharpened and sharpended. Can't recommend this often enough

Always keep the end goals in mind. What do you want the reader to do? Keep those CTAs clear and don't assume the reader knows what to do. Customers care about what your product or brand can do for them. Those are the value propositions you want to highlight here. Don't tell them you have a unified inbox. Tell them they'll never miss another email again. Don't talk about features, talk about the value they bring.

When planning a campaign, figure out which stage of the buyer's journey you want to focus on: Awareness, Consideration or Decision. Then create a strategy that achieves that. Too many times, companies string together tactics (a video here, an ebook there) and wonder why their marketing isn't doing what they want it do. Your value proposition(s) should be the North Star of your marketing efforts. Select 1-3 values that tell the market *why* someone should do business with you and not the competition. Value props should be easy to understand and resonate quickly with your target audience. You can back up your value propositions with benefits that share what your customer can expect to gain from purchasing from you.

Understand your buyers’ channel preferences and how they interact with those channels. Use your buyer persona research and relevant channel performance data to derive these insights. In addition, research and advisory firms like Gartner publish annual benchmarks to help tech marketers gauge the effectiveness of the most commonly used channels and determine how these channels fit within their marketing mix strategy.

Holding a productive brainstorming session requires preparation. Ideally, the moderator will write up a brief that outlines a specific objective about what you're trying to achieve. This brief should be distributed ahead of the meeting and participants should be instructed to bring a few ideas to the session to get things going. One idea-generating method is the SCAMPER technique. It's an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate and Reverse. When there's a particularly interesting idea, you can apply this method to stretch that one idea into several more ideas. Be sure to save all the ideas -- even the discarded ones! An idea that doesn't work today may prove to be useful tomorrow.

Going on a walk around the neighborhood can help. Don't actively think about looking for ideas; just keep them in the back of your mind. As you see things on your walk, keep a small note of things that you find interesting, even if they seem unrelated to the topic. After that, take a short rest to fully reset your mind. Once you're back on your desk, check your note again and try to link the things listed on the note to the topic at hand. For example, maybe you saw a person carrying a bag with the zipper accidentally left open on your walk and you're writing about home security products. There's a connection between "left open", "accidentally", and the elements of human error to form some ideas.

I agree with you there, always look for inspiration from your competitors, industry trends, customer feedback, and social media conversations. Analyze what works well for others and adapt those ideas to fit your unique brand and audiences.

It's so important to work closely with the sales team at every stage of the messaging and positioning process. They are in-market every single day and absorbing feedback. Once you have internal buy-in on a narrative and a set a sales materials, the sales team can start using them and testing them out. Product marketers must continue to work with sales to work out the kinks. It requires thick skin! Ask them what's working and what's not working. Find out the areas where people lean in or tune out. Better yet, try to attend some prospect meetings so you can see for yourself. You'll be able to find out where there are opportunities for more education, which can influence your entire content strategy.

You're absolutely right. Testing and customization are essential when it comes to content ideas. What works for one brand or industry might not yield the same results for another. Each brand has its unique identity, target audience, and goals, making it crucial to create tailored content that aligns with your brand's values and resonates with your specific audience. This approach not only helps increase brand salience but also fosters authenticity and a stronger connection with your customers.

Keep tabs on when messaging needs a refresh. Internal signs you need to change your messaging strategy: ?? You're hearing things from Sales and CS ?? Your marketing team is getting more one-off collateral requests ?? You hear new objections coming up on Gong recordings ?? More late stage deals are falling through at the 11th hour External signs you need to change your messaging strategy: ?? Ad fatigue ?? You're seeing things pop up in content surveys ?? You see chatter in your company's CAB (customer advisory board) ?? You see chatter in your company's community (shout out DEMAND Community) If you've got a hunch, come up with a hypothesis and dig into the data.

Co-create with the gatekeepers to clients, and domain experts: Sales, Account Management, Product and Tech teams. Bring their diverse perspectives together to craft messaging that resonates with the market. Given their proximity to Product and the market, Product Marketers have a unique vista on how to connect the product back to solving real-world problems. Latent also within these gatekeepers are powerful product evangelists who can amplify your product brand. Authoritative speakers on their particular vertical or area of expertise, their collective voice has untapped might and weight with the market. But the greatest testimony of your product messaging comes from delighted customers - get them on board for a spinning flywheel.

When you're facing the dreaded blank page, put your laptop or PC to sleep, grab a small note and a pen, and go outside. "Go touch grass", as the youngsters would say these days. See the people around your neighborhood, or hop on a cab and visit a random place, and do not forget to interact with them. You are writing for other people to read, so it makes sense to get a feel for how you can write for them by getting first-hand insight and experience from the audience. The random things you see along the way can also be a source of inspiration when seasoned with a bit of ingenuity.

There are many ways to get content ideas, but for me the simplest are: - See what people are searching for on Google. - What topics of conversation they are suggesting on social media. - Ideas that come to me on a daily basis and that I write down to use later.