Here is the harsh reality…

Messaging and positioning are the most under-rated tasks in marketing. Worse, crafting messaging is just not as much fun as creative development, story-telling, or content creation. 

Yet, messaging is a crucial and vital foundation for external communications and internal sales training. 

So, if messaging is done right, it provides strategic guidance and consistency to PR, external marketing communications, sales, and can even be used for internal sales and employee training.  

What is a Messaging Framework?

A messaging framework is a logical and structured representation of your products’ and services’ unique promises and differentiation. 

It’s an essential document to guide the creation of creative briefs, content, and sales training.

What Are the Benefits of a Messaging Framework?

  • PR persons have key points to use in writing their PR releases
  • Content creators can compose blogs, podcasts, and video scripts
  • Sales know what to highlight as key differentiators
  • Most importantly, customers know how you are different from the companies who offer similar products or services

So, if messaging is done right, it provides strategic guidance and consistency to PR, external marketing communications, sales, and can even be used for internal sales and employee training.  

As boring as it may sound, I absolutely LOVE creating messaging frameworks for clients! 

How to Create a B2B messaging framework

The process of developing a strategic messaging framework is time-consuming and lengthy. You need to start early if you have new product launches ahead.

Engage with your product team

You need to engage your product team and subject matter experts to explain the key features of new and existing products to you. Most of the time, product managers or engineers can explain the technical features well, but it’s a marketers’ job to “translate” them to the benefits that end-users can relate.

Draft messaging using templates and vet it with your product team

Once you create a draft of the messaging framework, you need to vet it with the product team to make sure that features and benefits are presented ACCURATELY. Please bear in mind: Messaging is NOT copywriting.

Essentially, messaging is the prelude to content creation and copywriting. The messaging framework provides guidance for content creators, copywriters, and designers.

Therefore, the B2B messaging framework needs to present features and benefits accurately so that writers can sprinkle their magic on it to create the final content. This is especially true in B2B marketing, given key content pieces may also need Legal’s approval.

Test with your sales and customers

After several rounds of revisions working with the product team and subject matter experts, you’ll need to test the latest messaging framework with your sales team and get their feedback.

If you have the budget, you can also test the messaging with select customers or using AB testing online. Bringing your sales and customer feedback into the conversation will validate what messaging pillars or statements work better and further refine your messaging. 

Finalize and approval by the product team and Legal

The last step is to finalize your messaging framework based on data from testing, sales, and product team. In B2B marketing and technology sales, you many use benchmark and performance data to support your claims. Therefore, Legal review is essential, in some cases, before you publish the messaging framework.

Additional benefits of a marketing messaging framework

Working through the messaging framework process of reading product materials, interviewing subject matter experts and researching keywords will help you:

  • Connect the dots with key business objectives and buyers’ personas
  • Help you understand your products more deeply
  • Identify optimal words to use for product differentiation
  • Expand your ability to position products in the context of sales and marketing communications
  • Pave the way for content strategy and editorial planning

Through years of working with clients, I’ve created several easy-to-follow and simple messaging templates that my clients love to use to brief their sales teams, marketing teams, and agencies, including content creators, copywriters, media and search agencies. 

Here are the two popular templates my clients rave about. Download the templates

One is product-specific, the other one focuses on thought-leadership. The messaging hierarchy is structured in a logical manner from one to another. 

Product-specific B2B messaging Framework Template

Product-specific Template

Tips to complete the messaging template:

Product Name 

In general, a messaging framework is product-specific, not company-specific. Think about it, we buy “things” to solve our needs. 

People may think that they want a drink, but we need to use our messaging to convince them they need our specific drink, like ‘Coke.’ 

Therefore, when you craft your messaging framework, focus on the product or services that you offer, not the specific brand family. Your position needs to be specific to products or services to engage your customers’ interest.

Target Audience

Only fill out ONE audience segment in this blank. You can pick 2 or more, if these personas’ challenges, pain points, and talking points are very similar, but the rule of thumb is ONE! This needs to tie back to the company’s primary buyer’s personas. Your company may have many buyers’ personas. Select the one which is the primary focus for sales and marketing teams.

Value Proposition 

Craft one statement to explain your product’s differentiation in the marketplace. In other words, how do you compare your product with that of your competitors? I usually write several value proposition statements and have discussions with my clients. If we have a budget, we will even test the proposed value positions with our target audience. 

On a side note: Check out how I went about creating my own value propositions when I relaunched my new website when I published my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement

Customer Challenges 

I love following “The Rule of Three.” List 3 key customer challenges. Write 1-2 statements per challenge and use the first person: “I need to….” or “I have this challenge of….” It’s important for everyone that reads this framework to identify with the challenges. 

Messaging Positioning

This should connect directly to customer challenges. You need to write one statement to describe your product’s promise to solve the specific challenges you listed. That one statement can also be a talking point or a product-specific differentiator.

Product Features

This is connected to customer challenges and messaging positioning. You need to provide a list of product features which will substantiate your positioning statements. This is especially important in B2B and technology selling. Make sure to call out specific features.

User Benefit 

Product features may be technical, such as Toyota’s Safety Sense (TSS). The User Benefit is to keep Toyota owners and their loved ones safe on the road. You need to be able to explain technical product features in plain English so that it resonates with your target audience.

Keywords for Content Creation

This is optional. Since I do so much research, I always add a list of keywords that relate to my clients’ products. Agencies and content creators love it because they know what keywords to use when they start creating content. It saves them time!

Thought Leadership B2B messaging framework Template 

Brands love to be perceived as thought leaders. To create a thought-leadership story, you also need a messaging framework. 

As you can see, the template below is different from the product-specific one. The key difference is to identify the narrative and explain “why” your company is a thought-leader.

Thought Leadership Messaging Framework Template 

Here are additional tips on how to fill out the thought-leadership B2B messaging framework templates:

Target Audience

Again, let’s focus on ONE target audience. For whom are we creating this thought-leadership story? This also needs to tie back to the company’s primary buyer’s personas. 

Overall Narrative

The key difference in thought-leadership messaging development is to explain “Why.” You need to identify your product or technology category and explain why it is critical for your target audience. This section needs to be written in paragraphs, not bullet points.

Company-Specific Narrative 

Once you explain why the product or technology category is important, you can proceed to describe why your company has the best answers to the challenges in this product or technology category. Again, you need to write 3-4 short paragraphs to explain the ‘WHY’.

Value Proposition of [Company Product Portfolio]

Now the spotlight is on the ‘thought’ leadership value proposition. Rather than focusing on product-specific value propositions, you need to elevate the company and create one statement that showcases the overarching benefits of your company to target audiences.

I usually create several statements and let clients choose. Clients love to analyze my proposals for the one statement they should use. We go through each one and determine the pros and cons.

Benefits of [Company Product Portfolio] 

Once you identify the value proposition, it’s important to talk about the benefits of your company’s product portfolio. How does the company’s product portfolio help the target audience reduce cost, maximize value and increase revenue?

Messaging Positioning

I use the ‘Rule of Three!’ It’s important to identify three key trend-based or strategic pillars that you want to talk about as a thought-leader. In the written example that follows, I use Connectivity, Artificial Intelligence, and Automation as 3 key pillars. Tie your narrative to your key leading trends to showcase your leadership position.

Impact of Messaging Positioning

Once you have the strategic pillars, you can explain the impact of your company’s product portfolio in each pillar. Again, this can be bullet points and can be product-specific, if necessary.

Messaging Narrative 

It’s important to write 2-3 paragraphs to further depict the stories in each pillar. Having short paragraph-driven statements helps guide content creators on what to write to tell a coherent and focused story.

Proposed Thought-Leadership Content Topics 

As part of the messaging framework, I always come up with suggestions for thought-leadership titles to help senior management visualizes the type of content that will be created.

Again, I ask them which titles they like to gauge their preferences and help content creators determine the final titles. 

Keywords for Content Creation

Again, I add a list of keywords that relate to my clients’ thought-leadership story. Agencies and content creators appreciate the keyword list because they can pick and choose from these keywords when they write the stories.

B2B Messaging Framework Templates – Examples  

Product-specific messaging framework example:

Product-specific messaging framework example 1

Product-specific framework example 2

Product-specific messaging framework example 3

Thought leadership B2B Messaging Framework Templates – Example:

Thought leadership messaging framework example 1, B2B messaging framework with templates

Thought leadership messaging framework example 2

Messaging framework is the foundation of all sales marketing communications

These are two easy-to-follow templates. You can DIY and modify the templates as you see fit. 

As you can see, I treat product-specific and thought-leadership messaging differently:

  • Product-specific messaging emphasizes the customers’ challenges, associated product features, and user benefits. It’s more bullet-point driven. 
  • Thought-leadership messaging stresses the narratives and stories that a client wants to tell. It’s more paragraph-driven. 

Once you have the messaging frameworks in a structured manner, sales, marketing, PR or senior managers can use the framework freely for different purposes of communications. 

Conclusion

Having a solid and structured messaging framework is crucial for everything sales and marketing! This allows everyone inside and outside the company to have the same talking points. 

Crafting the optimal messaging is not something that can wait until the last minute. You need to plan as part of product development and prior to product launches. It takes time and effort to do the research and fill in the blanks that showcase a company’s uniqueness.  

Feel free to download the templates and reach out if you need help with building your messaging frameworks.

What can Pam Didner do for you?

Being in the corporate world for 20+ years and having held various positions from accounting and supply chain management, and marketing to sales enablement, she knows how corporations work. She can make you and your team a rock star by identifying areas to shine and do better. She does that through private coaching, keynote speaking, workshop training, and hands-on consulting. Contact her or find her on LinkedIn and Twitter. A quick note: Check out her new 90-Day Revenue Reboot, if you are struggling with marketing.