A nightmarish scenario for product management/product marketing is to hear a multitude of different messages communicated to the market about your product. Executive management says one thing, the sales team has a variety of messages and marketing is communicating yet another message. This results in significant marketplace confusion, impacts revenue generation and reflects poorly on your product. We like to blame others for this, but the likely reality is that we are at fault. As PMs, we must own the message and then enable the organization to take this message to the market. This is an interactive session discussing six steps to guide you in the process of creating a compelling market message.

1. Copyright 2011- LÛCRUM MARKETING From Message Nightmare to Message Delight: Six Steps to Create a Compelling Market Message Presented by: Tom Evans Lûcrum Marketing January 15, 2011

3. Question 1 Does your company use a structured approach to creating market messages for your products/services? Yes: No: Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

4. Question 2 Who in your organization owns the market messages, i.e., is responsible for defining them? Marketing Communications: Executive Management: Product Management: Product Marketing: Everyone: Other: Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

5. Six Steps to a Compelling Message Who is our audience? What are we selling? Why should our customers care? What we can do for our customers? Why us? Create your message(s) Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

6. Who is Our Audience? The message must resonate with your target audience Corollary: it will not (& shouldn’t) resonate with all market segments Target market segments Key Personas – Buyers, Influencers, Users What do they care about What language do they use Typical profile/characteristics Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

7. What Are We Selling? Relate to a known category or class of products What it does Problems your product solves best for that persona. Identify features that solve their problem. Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

8. Why Should Our Customers Care? What are the buyers motivations (per buyer persona)? Need, pain, goal, challenge, ideals Personal & business Articulated & unarticulated What do they need to know to make a decision How will they evaluate & use your product? Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

9. What We Can Do For Our Customers? Value proposition In terms of the customer Benefits & value your customer will realize from purchase and use of your product Relative to customer’s other viable alternatives Sources of value: Reference customers, industry expertise, internal processes, partnerships, innovation, IP, delivery methods, geography, social, business model, personnel, features, guarantees, brand promise, core competencies, etc. Speaking to your customers Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

10. Why Us? Differentiation What makes your product stand out (differentiation) Meaningful value to the customer Sources of differentiation: Reference customers, industry expertise, internal processes, partnerships, innovation, IP, delivery methods, geography, social, business model, personnel, features, guarantees, brand promise, core competencies, etc. Speaking to your customers Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

11. Create Your Message(s) Per target buyer persona In your customer’s language / Avoid meaningless words Clear value to your customer / Clear differentiation that is valued by customers 2 to 4 messages per persona Compare with competitors Validate with customer’s Support with evidence Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

12. Exercise Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

13. Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING Thank You Tom Evans Lûcrum Marketing tevans@lucrum-marketing.com +1-512-961-5267