Session led at Silicon Valley ProductCamp 2011.

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 April 2, 2011

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Exercise Copyright 2011 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

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