Top 3 Messaging Challenges for Strategic Marketers

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Messaging rarely gets credit or wins awards, but behind most top-performing B2B programs is a messaging platform that was thoughtfully developed, carefully vetted and begrudgingly embraced. Three challenges come up again and again.

“I’ll never get my whole team to agree.” Like the blind men and the elephant, every stakeholder — sales, marketing, product, executive, IT, support — describes the part they touch. An objective third party, armed with market and competitive research, can attribute what did and didn’t make the cut, and why.

“Our messaging doesn’t resonate across all our audiences.” It won’t, and it shouldn’t. Internal messaging keeps everyone singing from the same songbook; externally, different decision makers need benefit-oriented messages tailored to them — CIOs worry about integration and staff burden, CFOs about financial impact and scope creep, department owners about downtime. Segmentation and personas get you there.

“I’m not sure how to validate it.” Take proposed messaging directly to targets — keyword testing, email surveys, one-on-one interviews. You should be able to draw a straight line from a top-performing subject line or landing page conversion back to researched, developed and vetted messages.