Effective B2B messaging is a critical component of successful marketing in today's landscape. On a recent LinkedIn Live AMA, Peep Laja, Raechel Lambert, and Arielle Shnaidman shared their views and insights on content marketing strategies and sales alignment for B2B companies. Here are some of the highlights from the session.

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The role of messaging in B2B content marketing

To create effective content marketing, start with themes or topics that resonate with the company's target audience. Messaging presents how the company presents itself and therefore should be informed by the target audience's key topics and their point of view on what they want to hear from the company.

It's important to ensure that the created content is focused and caters to the target audience's needs since it's easy to create content that isn't aimed at the intended audience.

Understanding customer journeys for product marketers

There are alternative methods to direct customer interviews, such as engaging with online communities or using survey platforms.

For customer interviews, ask basic questions about the problem, solutions tried, and what brought them to the product or company.

It’s important to align with brand marketing teams, emphasizing the need to prioritize product-first messaging over brand messaging in the early stages. While there may be disagreements, the team should "disagree and commit" with someone ultimately making a decision.

Navigating sales calls: concentrating on diagnosis and research

Conducting effective sales calls while gathering valuable market research, spending a significant amount of time on the diagnosis phase of the sales call, which involves asking open-ended questions to understand the prospect's background, challenges, and goals, and confirming the diagnosis before presenting the product.

When doing surveys with customers before sales calls, the speakers emphasized the importance of ensuring that they collect data on challenges, goals, and information sources to gather valuable data in addition to issues directly related to the product.

Understanding the differences between positioning, messaging, and copy

The speakers discussed the differences between positioning, messaging, and copy in marketing. Positioning refers to where a company is in the market, messaging is how the company conveys that positioning, and copy is the specific language used to communicate those ideas.

Positioning should focus on the target audience and the problem that the company solves. Messaging should emphasize the key ideas that the company wants to communicate. Finally, copy should use the specific language used to convey those ideas.

Having clear positioning and messaging is crucial for effective marketing.

Utilizing product-led growth for product marketers

Product-led growth is a critical strategy for product marketers. PLG involves making a product easy to be used and so compelling; it almost sells itself since it aims to make the user successful, ultimately leading to growth for the company.

It’s important to take a product-led approach in B2B, where the decision-making process involves multiple stakeholders. They also recommend working closely between PMMs and product development teams to create a product that addresses the target audience's needs as well as hitting key metrics such as product usage, activation rate, and retention rate.

Tips for effective messaging and positioning workshops

Having a clear agenda and goals for the workshop, including a shared understanding of the target audience, the competitive landscape, and the problem the product solves.

It is essential to involve key stakeholders in the workshop, including sales, customer success, and product teams. This ensures alignment and buy-in. Setting clear expectations for the workshop outcomes and following up with action items and next steps.

Measuring the success of your messaging and positioning efforts

Measuring metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, and customer feedback can help gauge the effectiveness of messaging and positioning. They caution against focusing solely on vanity metrics such as social media likes and shares and instead emphasize the importance of measuring impact on the business, such as revenue and customer acquisition.

A/B testing can help identify what messaging resonates best with the target audience.

Tips for managing messaging and positioning across multiple products

Creating a messaging and positioning framework that can be applied across products while considering the needs of various groups can help with consistency. Involving key stakeholders from each product team in the messaging framework development helps with alignment while maintaining a consistent brand voice and message.

Allowing for customization and flexibility where necessary is important.

Launching a new product

Understanding the target audience and the competitive landscape is essential when launching a new product. PMMs should create a messaging matrix outlining the key messaging for each target audience and the channels through which to reach them.

Timing also plays an essential role in launching a new product- a soft launch or beta test allows the gathering of feedback and making improvements before the full launch

Improving messaging skills and navigating first product marketing role

To improve messaging skills, the speakers suggest taking free courses, using Wynter's free feature to bring your audience, posting on anonymous channels like Reddit, and seeking feedback from friends. However, they caution that brand purpose is separate from messaging and positioning, and while it is useful, it should not be the focus for early-stage companies. Instead, the speakers recommend focusing on product positioning and messaging, while being aware of when to apply brand mission and purpose.

For those navigating their first product marketing role, the speakers suggest outlining goals with your manager, understanding the job description and expectations, and building relationships across teams. They advise not to tackle nitty-gritty issues, like pricing and messaging until you have a flavor of the company and are more senior in your role. The speakers recommend identifying quick wins and small rocks to start with and gradually building up to more significant tasks.

Building expertise for a career in PMM consulting: content marketing tips

The best ways to demonstrate expertise in PMM consulting. They suggest that creating content, such as blog posts, articles, podcasts, and social media engagement, is an effective strategy to showcase your knowledge and experience. Peep emphasizes the importance of consistency and a long-term perspective when it comes to content marketing. Raechel advises prioritizing engagement over vanity metrics, such as follower count, while Arielle suggests focusing on quality rather than quantity when it comes to building a reputation as a PMM consultant.

By following these tips from Peep, Raechel, and Arielle, product marketers can effectively navigate the competitive business environment, build long-term strategies, and successfully demonstrate their expertise as PMMs. Effective communication strategies, such as messaging and positioning, are critical components of any successful marketing strategy.

Messaging is the foundation of every marketing strategy. The B2B Messaging course will help you get it right.

B2B Messaging AMA: LinkedIn Live