How to create a powerful product message

🎯 By being specific on use case AND persona

Somewhere along the line of “scalable” software…

We have tricked ourselves into thinking that messaging is “scalable”.

💢 Messaging does not scale like software

Because the segments and personas are all different:

→ Different situations

→ Different problems

→ Different desires

And bad messaging tries to cover all these situations at the same time

❌ The result is broad messaging

So what does good messaging look like?

🔥 The most powerful messaging is PERSONAL.

The person receiving the message should think:

“Wow, they are describing my exact situation!”

There are 2 levers to pull to make your message more personal:

1️⃣ The WHO (Persona & Companies)

Having a persona focus is powerful.

It sets the boundaries of for what you might cover in your message.

(Both for the receiver and the message creator)

💢 But be careful of stacking too many things into persona messages or you run the risk of messaging overload.

Take Loom for example (Persona Message — Green Box)

↳ By only anchoring on persona, multiple use cases start to show up.

2️⃣ The USE CASE

Anchoring to a use case narrows the situation.

It adds context to the problem a customer might have, and starts to highlight the “why” behind the problem.

And the more we understand the situation, the higher chance we have of landing a personalized message that resonates.

💢 But be careful of generic use cases — They are far less powerful.

Take Loom for example (Use Case Message — Orange Box)

↳ You can see how the resulting message is broad and less likely to resonate.

1️⃣*️⃣2️⃣ Persona & Use Case Combo

The best approach is to combine these 2 levers.

💌 Use them to triangulate a specific message for a specific persona who has a specific use case.

And then repeat the exercise to create a whole matrix of highly targeted messages.

The result?

🚀 An arsenal of highly targeted messages ready to deploy in your GTM