Cyber PMM Functions: Messaging

Introduction

As product marketers, our most important function in the business is messaging. We are messengers. What we say, to which audiences, and at which venues is the foundational part of the role. This is why your most important asset as a Cyber PMM will be the ability to communicate by creating messaging that resonates with our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

And messaging is not easy. The corny joke I use is, "mess" is the root word for messaging. Everyone thinks it's easy, but if you ask someone to create a tagline or to summarize their product's value in a simple paragraph, they quickly realize that it's not as easy as it seems. And the larger a company gets, the harder messaging gets. More input comes in from different groups, Legal has more problems with it, and more distance is created between you and your users. So don't discount the difficult task of messaging and write it off as, "easy".

Creating and Managing the Product Messaging Brief (PMB)

Ultimately, messaging manifests itself in the form of a Product Messaging Brief (PMB) document, or whatever you call it. It's the place where the official message for our product lives. This is the "source code". We are 100% responsible for creating this as the single-threaded owner. We maintain it, circulate it for input, and stand behind the message.

We are also responsible for ensuring it is used cross-functionally. If you have marketing teams that are running events and campaigns, and they come to you and ask for something to say, it's a quick reply – "here's a link to the latest messaging. Feel free to pull out what you need." Stop hand-holding and writing for your peers – just send them to the PMB. Enable them to succeed and resist the temptation to own every single "write up" for every activity.