Create a messaging architecture

[lsmous (Laura L Smous)]

Business benefits

Prioritize and communicate your product’s value by turning your positioning into messaging that is relevant to your audience.

Define the What, Who, Why, and How of your product, and its unique attributes and value.

• What is your product, and what space does it play in?
• What is the strategic narrative, context, or story that communicates your why?
• Who is your audience?
• How do you want to be perceived within the competitive landscape?
• What are your product’s unique attributes and value?

Develop your messaging strategy, including business needs, human appeal, promise, relevance, delivery, and insights.

Identify expectations from stakeholders who will need to approve your messaging, like executives, investors, and approvers.

This will help you to establish buy-in for your messaging architecture.

Gather supporting information and background that anyone working on your messaging will need to know.

For example:

• Product deep dives.
• Roadmaps.
• Any previous positioning and messaging stances.
• Past learnings about issues to avoid or nuances to be aware of.

List all capabilities and features of the product.

List all customer opportunities, including how your product solves customer issues, requirements, and desires.

List your core audience segments along with their goals as these relate to your product.

Map your customer opportunities to your audience segments, noting any overlaps.

Group customer opportunities by theme, and prioritize 2-3 themes.

Put together a message relevancy map that documents the opportunities included in the 2-3 top themes, their audience segment coverage, features that they use, and benefits and value to users.