Our approach to messaging for startups
James Hannon and I have helped create positioning and messaging for hundreds of companies, including more than 80 that were acquired or went public. If a company’s positioning and messaging are sharp, it’s much easier to do marketing, sell things and raise money from investors. If positioning and messaging aren’t sharp, then all those things will be much harder.
Messaging is a set of specific statements used to support a company’s positioning, and communicate important information about the company and its activities to customers, employees, investors, partners and other stakeholders.
I covered our approach to Positioning in a separate post. Check it out here.
5 steps for creating messaging for startups.
1. Get the right people involved
Different people make the company what it is, and various individuals will need solid messaging for different purposes - sales, marketing, fundraising, recruiting, business development, thought leadership, etc. We recommend startups create a 5-6 person working team of senior representatives from different core functions to collaborate on input and rough drafting of messaging–founders, CTO, engineering, CFO, sales, marketing, recruiting. It’s not a huge time commitment - three 2-hour sessions is usually enough. But it’s important to create that team. From long experience, we’ve found that this kind of working team guarantees that the input and messaging will be informed by the perspectives of all the key stakeholders, and participating in collaborative working sessions delivers a depth and a collective understanding of the content that’s impossible to get without it. It makes the approval process much more efficient, as everyone’s viewpoints are baked-in along the way, and the messaging never misses at the end - like it often can with other, non-collaborative approaches. If the people who will regularly need messaging for their work have a hand in creating it, it will be much easier for them to remember the content and deliver it in a consistent way. It’s not that this team should actually write the final messaging as a group. Really good pro writers should do that, but there’s magic in having the team involved. A good facilitator is also key for making the work sessions flow efficiently. Note: when a company decides to work with us, we provide the facilitation, and the writing polish.
2. Work with an organized messaging framework: here’s ours
Working with a messaging framework helps keep things organized. Our own startup messaging framework organizes around 7 key topic areas and 25 questions. We organize topics this way because these are the core things that prospective customers, employees, investors, analysts, journalists and other stakeholders are likely to be interested in, and ask about. Plus it makes it easy for company spokespeople and content creators to remember talk tracks and learn how to navigate conversations while supporting the company’s positioning.
3. Sample questions for each core topic
Here are the standard questions we start with. The goal of the messaging workshops is to create short, memorable answers to each one.
What big customer problems does the company solve
Customers care a lot more about solving their problems than they do about diving straight into a company’s story, and the features and benefits of its products. This is a topic to spend a fair bit of time getting crisp on, as it sets the foundation for messaging about almost everything else.
What big problem does the company solve
What are the impacts of the problems?
Competition & differentiation
Being different and interesting is a lot more important than being a little bit better than leaders and competitors. Being different is virtually the only way for a startup to get the kind of attention needed to break through the noise.
Who are the other leading companies the company competes with?
How is the company’s approach different and interesting?
Customers
Who are the company’s customers?
Why do they choose the company?
What big benefits does the company bring to its customers?
Products/services details
What products/services does the company offer?
How do they work?
Technology & innovation
What technologies has the company developed?
How do they work?
Are they patented?
How else is the company innovative?
Market dynamics
What category is the company in?
How big is the market? What are the market’s key drivers?
What is the market outlook?
About the company
What does the company do?
Why/how/when did the company get started?
Who are your investors?
Why did they invest?
How does the company make money?
How big is the company?
What are the company’s values?
Who are the key executives?
What’s the company’s vision for the future?
4. How to build good messages
Keep them short.
Aim for high clarity first. Cleverness is wasted if the other person doesn’t get it fast.
Start with the direct answer, then offer 3-4 supporting points. Don’t build up to a conclusion.
In the first draft, just get into the ballpark. Don’t worry too much about wordsmithing yet.
Once you have clear messages, then iterate and wordsmith for ring and memorability.
Many messages are connected, so capturing context is important. For example, when building a message around your executive team, don’t just say who they are and where they came from. Make sure that each exec and their skill set and experience represents a key puzzle piece that contributes to the overall picture of the company’s positioning.
5. Running messaging creation workshops
Messaging sessions can be conducted in person or remotely. There should be an experienced facilitator to kick things off, direct the participants, and keep things moving. Three sessions of 2-hours each, and a final review session of 1 hour should be enough - with really good writers doing the edits and sharpening between sessions.
We typically share a Google Doc Questionnaire of our questions with each participant in advance so they can give the topics some thought and make notes to bring to the work session. It also allows us to check in on progress and send reminders
Each participant should have a set of large as well as small sticky notes to organize their main thoughts about each topic, and each individual supporting point
The facilitator should kick off the meeting, state the goal, share the agenda and display the draft answers to each topic, as they’re built. If the meeting is face to face, it’s best to have a dedicated note taker to capture side comments. If sessions are remote, then record them. We often record meetings and send the videos to Rev.com for As the meeting unfolds, the facilitator calls on teammates to share their thoughts, and keeps time, making sure the session covers all the intended questions. The goal is to get through all the topics assigned to the session. It’s important to hear people voice their thoughts - that’s often where the breakthrough insights come from, teammates bouncing ideas off each other.
In Session 1, we typically tackle The Big Customer Problem the Company Solves, Customers and The Benefits the Company offers them, and Competition & Differentiators. These are the topics that largely define the description of the company and the core of the company’s value proposition. Some answers are super short and obvious, so in practice the more complex messages get more time. After the session wraps, the team’s best writers go through the material, and add wordsmithing, polish and any notes. Then the results should be circulated among the team for review and additional comments - we like Google docs for this.
In Session 2, in the first 30-40 minutes, we go over the messages from the last session and gather further input. Then we cover the remaining questions. After the session wraps, again, the team’s best writers go through the material, and add wordsmithing, some polish and any notes. Again, the results should be circulated among the team for review and additional comments.
In Session 3, we start by going over the topics and messages from Session 2 and gather further input. Then we go over edits to topics and messages from Session 1 and see if we can get to consensus. As before, after the session wraps, the team’s best writers go through the material, add more wordsmithing, more polish and any further notes. Then the results are circulated among the team for review and additional comments
Session 4 is a one hour session to finalize and get to consensus on “final” messages, and most of the time, we’re done. In rare cases, a few things might still need tweaking, but the core work is now finished (at least for now) and follow-up can be done without more sessions.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found this helpful. Please get in touch with any comments, questions or additional thoughts.