Inconsistent messaging is a killer for B2B companies. 

Leading with different messages in your go-to-market strategy is one surefire way to confuse prospects, frustrate your customers, and diminish your bottom line.

The inverse is also true.

According to one study, you can increase your revenue by 23% by consistently presenting your company. 

And this makes complete sense. 

Think about it. 

If your marketing team emphasizes cost-effectiveness and automation, yet your sales team promises personalized onboarding, it will lead to frustrated prospects, dissatisfaction, and a huge hurdle to overcome in winning new business.

Or, what if your product launch's messaging differs between your website, social media, and sales presentations? This type of inconsistent messaging will result in a lower conversion in your marketing campaigns and a reduced Win-Loss rate with your sales team, as potential customers receive mixed signals about your product's benefits and features. 

These are just two hypothetical situations, but you catch the drift. 

Here's the deal:

The messaging in our go-to-market strategy needs to be consistent everywhere and in everything you do. If not, you're sending your go-to-market plans down a busted railway that will derail your efforts. 

Thankfully, you can easily fix B2B product messaging problems with a messaging guide. 

In this post, I will focus primarily on why and how to create a messaging guide and less on how to develop your product positioning and messaging. That's for another time and day.

Here, I'll walk through:

• What is a messaging guide
• 3 reasons why you need to create a messaging guide
• What's included in a messaging guide
• 6 steps to creating a Messaging Guide

Let's dig in.

What is a messaging guide?

A messaging guide is an internal document your company uses to standardize your messaging. In general, it includes the positioning and messaging of your product and acts as a standard for your internal and external communications.

These guides help everyone in your go-to-market team stay on the same page. They're used by all departments, including marketing, sales, customer success, product, and support, to ensure consistency in how your product is presented and discussed. They are helpful for product launches, major product updates, or new marketing campaigns. 

Below, I'll detail what to include in your messaging guide.  

But first, let's explore why creating a messaging guide is crucial.

3 reasons why you need to create a messaging guide

Creating a messaging guide is essential for your company.

Here are three essential reasons why:

1. Improves customer engagement and revenue
2. Brand integrity and recognition
3. Go-to-market alignment

1. Improves customer engagement and revenue

"If you confuse, you lose," is a quip attributed to Donald Miller, the founder of Storybrand. 

And he's spot on, too, 

You can develop compelling and clear messaging. 

However, if you inconsistently implement your messaging, you'll confuse your prospects and customers. 

It takes an average of seven interactions with your brand before someone makes a purchase. 

Prospects will:

• Read your website
• Review software listings
• Discuss your brand in online communities 
• See your social media posts
• Observe your paid media
• Interact with your customer support
• Talk with your sales team
• Have conversations with your customer success team

In essence, a prospect will have a variety of interactions with your company through a host of outlets you can control or influence. 

So, what will a prospect experience in these interactions? 

Is everything you share about your company consistent? 

Are your go-to-market teams on the same page saying the same thing? 

If the answer is "no" to any of these questions, you have a big problem—a messaging problem costing your company new leads, opportunities, customers, and revenue. 

With a messaging guide, you can ensure your product positioning and messaging are consistent throughout your organization. As they say in politics, this will ensure your teams "stay on message" in everything they do. 

If not, you run into another big problem, leading us to the next point. 

2. Brand integrity and recognition

Sharing consistent messages in the marketplace will ensure the integrity of your brand is maintained. 

By sharing inconsistent messaging in the marketplace, you will dilute your company's brand by undermining who you are and what you do.

According to a study of brand consistency by Demand Metric, a consistently presented brand is 3.5 times more visible to customers. The results of this study are simple—yet powerful. 

If a prospect knows who you are and the value you offer, they will be more likely to purchase from you than your competitors. 

This is a straightforward reason why you should create a messaging guide. 

3. Go-to-market alignment

A messaging guide will laser-focus your B2B go-to-market strategy.

A messaging guide will ensure your team members know the position and messaging of your latest product launch, updates, and marketing campaign. 

This way, errors are reduced, everyone is in the know, and you clearly and consistently share your messaging. 

What's included in a messaging guide

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a messaging guide. 

What works for one company may not work for another company. 

This is especially true when comparing a startup with an SMB, mid-market company, or enterprise-level business. The complexity and requirements differ vastly on this scale because the number of people, systems, and the overall complexity of the organizations are different. 

Learn from others. 

But don't worry about copying and pasting their efforts. 

"That's all fine and dandy, but what does a messaging guide look like?"

Now, this isn't for everyone, but the key elements I found helpful include working with pre-seed startups to companies up to $75M ARR for product launches, significant product updates, or new marketing campaigns:

• Product Name
• Product Tagline
• Product Value Proposition
• Product Features
• Product Benefits
• Examples
• FAQ

Remember, this is a messaging guide. It will inform you how to create specific resources, such as ad copy, battle cards, sales decks, social media content, and blog posts. Whatever you make, you should keep this in mind. 

6 steps to creating a Messaging Guide

I’ll spare you any potential SEO fluff, and let’s cut right to the chase:

Step 1: Clarify the problem, people, and product

The first step you need to take is research. 

Since I like to think in alliterations, this includes three Ps:

• Problem
• People
• Product

Here's what I mean. 

Problem

Identify the problem you're solving.

Depending upon the size and complexity of your launch or campaign will influence how much you need to do here.

In my experience, I've found starting with these initial questions is enough to get the creative juices flowing:

• What is the main problem we are trying to solve? Why? 
• What task or tasks are they trying to make easier or better?
• What are the specific (3–5) pain points this product solves?

Whatever you do, be sure you know the problem you're solving. 

This way, you'll be able to speak to the felt needs of your customers.

People

What people (think ICP) are you solving this problem for?

Regarding product launches and marketing campaigns, now is the time to clarify who you're targeting. For instance, is there a specific segment within your ICP you're targeting? 

Make sure the people you're targeting are clear as mud.

Product

What product are you developing, updating, or promoting to solve the problem for the people you're targeting? 

Here's the deal:

You have to know the ins and outs of your product. 

Knowing your product is the only way to market it well. This way, you'll best understand how to position it in the marketplace and share it with others (messaging).

This point was driven home to me during my time in the publishing industry. My VP of Marketing at the time required us to read whatever book we were creating a marketing plan for ahead of time. Even though I wasn't the biggest fan of some of the books we published or found this step cumbersome at times, in hindsight, she was spot on in her requirements. 

Know your product. 

Connect with your product team. 

Ask questions.

Give your product a test drive. 

Whatever you do, know what you're taking to the market. 

Step 2: Connect with customers and your GTM team

After taking step 1, you've developed a hypothesis about the positioning and messaging you want to create. Now is the time to test your idea with customers and your go-to-market (GTM) team. 

Here, there are three helpful things you can do:

1. Build a Customer Advisory Board
2. Speak with your customers and prospects
3. Connect with your GTM team
   

Let me explain.

Build a Customer Advisory Board

A Customer Advisory Board is a group of customers who best match your ICP and make themselves available to provide feedback. The nature of these groups depends upon how you set them up. And like many things in business, there's no one way to put these groups together. 

For the sake of this post, Customer Advisory Boards will give you early feedback on your messaging. 

This group can be an early indicator of whether you're on the right track. 

I understand this may be too much for many organizations and teams, and that's okay.

If this is the case for you, then you should definitley take the next step.

Speak with your customers and prospects

If building a Customer Advisory Board doesn't make sense, then no sweat.

Aim to meet with customers or prospects, present what you have, and get their feedback. Like a Customer Advisory Board, showing what you have to select a group of customers and prospects ahead of time is a great way to secure early feedback and make changes. 

Connect with our GTM team

A great source of messaging inspiration is your GTM team. 

Whether you meet with these team members individually or in a group setting, get their feedback on what you have. Be sure to include everyone in your marketing team and speak with your sales and customer success teams. 

Now is a great time to ask how they think customers or prospects will respond to your messaging. This group will be like a newly paved road, setting your messaging on the right path.  

Step 3: Create your messaging

Since I'm focusing on creating a messaging guide, I want to avoid getting into how to create product positioning and messaging. Thankfully, there are several tremendous resources available, including:

• 98 of the Best Marketing Books in 15 Categories
• Product positioning: What is it and how to create a moat at Wynter
• How to Write a Product Positioning Statement by Reforge
• Product Launch Plan by Kevan Lee
• 9 Steps to Build a Go-to-Market Strategy by Plan.io 
• A Product Positioning Exercise by April Dunford

However, I do want to emphasize one point:

Differentiate yourself at all costs. 

How is what you're launching into the market different from what's already available? Whatever that point is, please find it and prepare to share it repeatedly until you're blue in the face. 

Now that you have your messaging ready, or at least the first draft, it's time to move one step forward. 

Step 4: Get buy-in and feedback

With the initial draft of your messaging guide in hand, it's time to get feedback and buy-in.

For your messaging, even though this step may feel uncomfortable, it is a must–especially if you're serving as one part of a larger go-to-market team. 

Providing stakeholders with an opportunity helps you get clarity in your messaging and invites them to participate in the process, eventually leading them to buy into what you're creating. 

You don't have to overcomplicate this step, either.

There are two things you need to do:

1. Get it ready to share
2. Limit stakeholders

Let me explain.

Get ready to share

When getting internal feedback, prepare your material to be shared in a relevant context. 

This means presenting it to stakeholders in a way prospects and customers will experience it. 

Yes, you want to create your messaging guide document. That's the final step. But for this step, you want to help people visualize what it will look and feel like when it goes public. 

Practically speaking, create a wireframe of a SaaS landing page, prepare initial social media ads, develop Battle Card concepts, etc. 

As always, there's no right or wrong approach here. 

Depending upon the size and complexity of your organization, you may get away with a handful of concepts (3-5), or you may be required to create a more robust presentation. 

Again, you decided how you'd like to approach this step.

Limit stakeholders

Learning this lesson was a game-changer for me. 

It will save you a tremendous amount of time, stress, and frustration. 

Here's what you need to do:

Before soliciting feedback, clarify who must review your messaging guide and limit this number to as few people as possible. In short, you want to have fewer cooks in the kitchen. 

Be careful to invite people into the process only after it's started, if necessary. Asking someone to participate in the creative process makes them inclined to provide feedback. That's what you invited them for, right? 

Step 5: Prepare your GTM team

Now is the time to prepare your go-to-market team to use your messaging guide. 

There are three things you'll need to do:

1. Make it accessible
2. Train your team
3. Test your team

Make it accessible

Your messaging guide must be easily accessible by your go-to-market team. 

This may be a central location everyone uses, or it may rest in whatever tool teams use to do their daily work. This may need to exist in a few places, such as your: 

• Project Management Software 
• Internal Wiki
• Notion 
• Google Drive
• CRM 

Whatever it is, be sure to add it in a location that's easily accessible and distributed to everyone who needs access. 

Train your team

You will need to train your GTM team to use your messaging guide. 

Before you launch your product, update, or campaign, ensure everyone knows what to expect and how to discuss it. 

In marketing, it's easy to overlook this part since you're not necessarily dealing with customers continuously. However, this is crucial to ensure your teammates are served well and prepared to make a pitch (sales), prepare customers to use your product (success), and answer important questions (support). 

The easiest way to do this is to schedule an internal training session. 

From simply going over the material in a slide deck and opening up a Q&A at the end to creating an interactive presentation, please do whatever you need to to ensure everyone understands, has access to what they need, and feels confident handling the new launch or campaign. 

But don't stop here.

Test your team

Is your training complete? 

Great, now it's time to test your team members.

The goal of this "test" isn't to give people failing grades. 

The goal is to ensure everyone is on the same page and that you and your marketing team have thoroughly prepared everyone. 

You can create a Google Form for these tests and provide multiple-choice or open-ended questions. Again, there's no right or wrong way to approach this step. Do what you think is best to get everyone prepared. 

Whatever you do, be sure to include an opportunity for your team members to provide feedback on how you can improve this process. 

Step 6: Implement your messaging

This last step to implementing your messaging guide is easy to overlook.

And quite honestly, it's not that fun, either. 

But this step is critical to ensure your messaging is consistent everywhere. 

Anytime you work on new product messaging, review every piece of used marketing and sales material (don't worry about unused resources). This way, you can make necessary updates to ensure everything is clear, concise, and consistent. 

For this step, I suggest creating a list of things you may need to update, like:

• Product Pages
• Home page
• Ads
• Marketing automation
• Sales decks
• Social Media
• Software Listings
• Knowledge Base articles
• etc...

What is more, I suggest working on making these updates or creating new material before your launch date. The idea is to ensure you have all this material updated and ready to go live on your launch date. Practically speaking, leave enough time to create, review, and prepare to launch. 

Over to you

The success of your B2B company hinges on the consistency of your messaging across all go-to-market strategies. A well-crafted messaging guide ensures that every team member, from marketing to sales, speaks the same language about your product, reinforcing brand integrity and enhancing customer engagement. 

Remember, in B2B marketing, consistency is not just a nice to have—it's a crucial component of your strategy for sustainable growth and market leadership.