This article comes from Kasey Stinson’s insightful talk, ‘Mastering the art of positioning, messaging, and storytelling’, at our #GTM24 event, check out her full presentation here.
Ever feel like you're building great products, but struggling to get the market as excited about them as you are? You're not alone – in today’s market, this has never been more challenging, nor more crucial.
I'm Kasey Stinson, VP of Product Marketing and Sales Enablement at PSCU/Co-op Solutions, and I want to share some insights on how we've tackled this challenge by mastering the art of positioning, messaging, and storytelling in our go-to-market strategy.
In this article, we'll explore everything from our four-step process and how to prepare market-facing tools, to the importance of cross-functional collaboration and focusing on outcomes, not features.
So, are you ready to up your go-to-market game? Let's get started.
The four-step process for effective go-to-market
Let's dive right into the nitty-gritty. We've developed a four-step process that helps us nail our positioning, messaging, and storytelling every time. I'm not expecting you to lift and shift this exact process into your organizations, but I hope you'll find some elements that you can adapt and use in your own teams!
Step 1: Creating the “Fact Pack”
The first step in our process is creating what we call the "Fact Pack." This document contains all the essential facts about the product and its positioning. It's a collaborative effort involving product marketing (that's us!), the product owner, and the sales team.
The purpose of the Fact Pack is to document the facts as early as possible in the product development process. We use it to understand the market landscape, the industry context, and the specific problem we're solving.
It's our way of channeling our inner investigative journalist or attorney in discovery mode – we ask tons of questions to get all the information we need.
Our Fact Pack is divided into two main sections:
- Facts: This covers all the essential product details.
- Positioning: This is where we document how we'll position the product to demonstrate the outcomes it can achieve.
We've created a comprehensive questionnaire that guides us through gathering all the necessary information. This becomes our single source of truth throughout the product development lifecycle.
If anything changes (and let's face it, things always change), we revisit the Fact Pack to ensure our messaging and positioning stay aligned.
Sandeep John
Step 2: Developing the go-to-market plan
Once we have our Fact Pack in place, we move on to creating our go-to-market plan.
This is where all our marketing stakeholders come together – product marketing, demand generation, content marketing, integrated marketing, PR, and anyone else who plays a role in bringing our product to market.
The goal here is to create an integrated plan that warms up and informs the market. Depending on how early we start communicating, we might begin with high-level stories about the subject matter.
In this phase, we're really activating the team and creating a plan to bring the product to life. We determine the best timing to go to market, considering industry trends, organizational factors, and competitive landscape. It's all about creating powerful buzz around our story.
We use a go-to-market worksheet that outlines specific information related to the product launch. This tool helps ensure that each team member knows their role and how they contribute to bringing the product to market in a powerful way.
Alex Walton
Step 3: Testing the message
Now comes a crucial step that many organizations overlook: testing the message. We test our positioning and messaging with a small, trusted audience. This might be through a beta process, a pilot program, or simply a select group of clients or prospects.
We present this as an elevated, honorary position for our clients or prospects – they get the first look and the first opportunity to provide feedback. Not only does this help us refine our messaging, but it also increases engagement and buy-in from these early adopters.
During this phase, we're checking if our positioning resonates, if people understand the problem we're solving, and if the outcome we're promising is clear. We're also testing our sales tools and materials, getting feedback, and making necessary tweaks.
Lawrence Chapman
Step 4: Preparing market-facing tools, collateral, and training
The final step in our process is creating the "final" (I use that term loosely because we're always refining) market-facing tools, collateral, and training materials. This is where we train our client-facing and prospect teams on the new product or feature.
We conduct sales enablement webinars and use various channels to train our teams.
They become our champions and can speak to their peers in a way that resonates much better than if it were coming directly from product or marketing.
We create a comprehensive set of tools, including both outcome-based sales materials and more granular, feature-specific content. This allows our sales team to tailor their approach based on where a prospect is in their buyer's journey.
Kompyte
The importance of continuous improvement and collaboration
One of the biggest changes in go-to-market strategy over the years is the shift from a "launch and forget" mentality to a continuous improvement model. We're constantly gathering feedback and refining our approach.
We've implemented a sales enablement task force that brings together a cross-section of prospecting reps, client reps, and product team members.
This group helps us understand how our messaging is resonating in the market and what kind of feedback we're getting. Based on their insights, we can then go back to our Fact Pack and sales tools to tweak our positioning as needed.
We also measure our success through product sales and pipeline metrics, client feedback, and engagement metrics. Plus, we're always listening to our sales team – they're usually the first to know if something isn't working!
Throughout this entire process, cross-functional collaboration is also absolutely critical to remember. In product marketing, we see ourselves as the glue between the product team and the sales team. We need input from both sides to get not only the facts right but also the positioning.
Building strong relationships across functions is so important. The product team has the deep knowledge of what we're building, while the sales team has invaluable insights into what customers are actually asking for.
As product marketers, we need to balance these perspectives and create a cohesive message that serves everyone's needs.
Key takeaways
As we wrap up, I want to leave you with some key takeaways:
2. Develop a singular process and set of tools, especially if you're dealing with a high volume of products or frequent enhancements.
3. Understand and work toward key milestones in your go-to-market process.
4. Always test your positioning and messaging.
5. Focus on outcomes, not just features and benefits.
6. Measure your success and be prepared to iterate.
Remember, the days of one-and-done messaging or singularly focused market approaches are over. Today's successful go-to-market strategies are built on partnership, continuous testing and refinement, and a deep understanding of our audience's needs.
After all, we're all in this together, constantly learning and refining our approach to create the best possible go-to-market strategies. Here's to your success!
