This article covers the essentials of strategic communication. The goal is to explain why it is critical that companies understand strategic messaging and positioning. In addition, we will discuss some practical and actionable approaches to help you design strategic messaging and product positioning.
Classic marketing concepts and strategies that often get forgotten and seem impractical today are very relevant when it comes to tech companies and software products. It’s a totally different world now, but the basic principles of positioning and marketing apply to software companies today just as much as they did 50 years ago to companies selling things such as bars of soap. As the number of products in every SaaS category continues to grow ever more rapidly, positioning and strategic messaging are becoming more important than ever before.
What exactly is strategic communication, strategic messaging, and positioning? With so many related buzzwords, it’s often not clear how each specific term is used, how it is defined, and what it stands for. The terms “strategic communication” and “strategic messaging” are used interchangeably throughout this article. Feel free to use the term you identify with most.
A few years ago when I started looking into the world of messaging, I was desperate to find a place to start my research journey on this topic. I hope this article acts as a starting point for anyone wanting to learn about strategic communication and positioning.
While my previous two articles on lead scoring and on tracking customer acquisition will probably be outdated in couple of years, if not as early as next year, I strongly believe that the processes and strategy for messaging and communication will be resistant to the ever changing landscape.
Please feel free to share your experiences and any helpful resources you have on this topic.
PART 1: Why care about strategic messaging and positioning
PART 2: Is your messaging effective?
PART 3: What is strategic messaging?
PART 4: What is positioning?
PART 5: How to design strategic messaging
PART 6: How to implement new messaging in organizations
Summary
Strategic messaging and positioning are often overlooked by tech companies. It’s difficult to quantify the impact of bad messaging. And it’s just as difficult to present any accurate ROI for implementing or changing the approach of how we talk about a company or product. Think about Gary Vaynerchuk’s response to a client who wanted to know the ROI of social media. He asked her, “What’s the ROI of your mother?” (check out the video). And in some respects ROI on messaging and positioning is as difficult to quantify.
Messaging is a key part of building any great company. Every business organization has a purpose and vision which leads it to develop products that solve the pain of specific types of customers (or create such customers). As Peter Drucker pointed out — “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer”. The process of creating a customer is a process of communicating your vision and values to the right set of customers in the market. Strategic messaging facilitates this communication. Customers never buy just a product, they evaluate its value/utility and buy your vision.
If an organization exists — it communicates. Every company uses messaging and positioning. Whether or not it’s effective is another question. But all organizations communicate their vision and product value in one way or another.