Once in a while at a company, you come to a point where the marketing message has taken on a life of its own and it becomes clear that you need a reset.

Maybe the marketing message had been in effect so long while the underlying basis of your company, offerings and related operations has changed. And what happens is a gap between the message and what is actually happening. Now, you would be right to think that Product Marketing should have had an idea and adapted messaging along the way. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen ideally.

As a Product Marketer, you’ve got to keep an eye out for this. Because when the gap becomes large enough, you’ll need to do a reset to bring messaging back into line. And this isn’t going to be an easy task either. Because depending on the size of that gap – and more specifically, the nature and volume of changes across messaging and content you need to make – the work it entails can be substantial. And that work can span anything from simple updates to full rewrites of content across web pages, data sheets, technical briefs, presentation decks, sales enablement materials and much more. The result is that your Product Marketing team may find it has a major unplanned-for project on its hands that will take up to a few months to execute.

If you find yourself in a similar scenario, here are some tips to consider:

Catalog the updates and changes that need to be made. These can include:

  1. Updated corporate-level statistics and “facts”
    • Changes in your offerings such as what is delivered and how it’s delivered
    • Watch for features, functionality and services that you believed were happening but are no longer happening. It’s a good idea to ask questions across Product Management, Engineering and operations to determine if something has changed that you weren’t aware of through no fault of your own.
    • Changes in your personas, topics or “conversations” in the marketplace, and how you want to talk
  2. Get approval. If the volume or impact of changes is substantial, make sure to have Marketing, Product Management and any other pertinent leadership review and approve. Don’t make the changes in a vacuum unless they are small-scale in nature. However, if the changes affect corporate-level messaging or impact how you talk about differentiation, you definitely want approval before rolling out.
  3. Once you have your list of updates and changes, assess where messaging and content lives to get a feel for the extent and complexity of the effort for each update. Be sure to have Product Management, Product Marketing and Sales Enablement engaged here because between these teams, much of the key public-facing messaging locations can be identified. After all, just because you update content on a web page or data sheet or presentation doesn’t mean that that messaging doesn’t still live somewhere else.
  4. You may find that the best approach to making updates across content is to take the approach of looking across content types and making changes asset by asset. For instance, imagine that I have a list of 20 messaging-related changes to make. You wouldn’t want to go looking for each particular messaging change at a time across all your content types, update that content and then go to the next messaging change. You’d end up updating the same content types each time separately. The exception would be if you had a particular change that needed to be made more urgently than others.

Rather, it’s better to consider content types and updating each asset for all the necessary changes at once. And you likely will want to hit the content types that have the most direct visibility and impact to the business. Here’s a way to prioritize this thinking in terms of what to focus on first.

  1. Web Pages (corporate messaging and offering-specific)
  2. Data Sheets
  3. Technical Briefs
  4. Sales Presentations
  5. Sales Enablement training and other materials (this could be moved up in order)
  6. Infographics (some infographics tend to pull company and/or offering-specific messaging in)
  7. Thought Leadership
    1. White Papers
    1. Reports
    1. Articles
    1. Videos (Given the complexity and costs associated with video, you may need to consider scrapping some videos and re-recording)

There are a few content types that are likely okay and best left alone. For instance, press releases, webinars and blog posts. These are time-based assets and you shouldn’t try to change the ‘record’ here.

Last Tips

As you go, be ready to identify when you’re looking at a complete rewrite of a web page, data sheet or other asset when the volume of changes needed demand it. Based on the size of that gap we mentioned earlier, you’ll find you need to rewrite whole portions of content versus just being able to update aspects on the fly. When you do identify assets to be rewritten entirely, itemize these so that you can then prioritize what will be rewritten first.

Be ready to ask other Marketing team members for help. For instance, your Web team may be able to address a number of areas for you on the website. Other marketing teams can help to clean up other areas of content. However, Product Marketing should perform updates to data sheets and technical content, and even web pages, if necessary.

Be sure to tie in Product Management and Sales Enablement for their help in making updates across other customer-facing areas. For instance, if your company is a SaaS provider, it’s likely some messaging may be conveyed within the UI.

Keep the focus on the effort. This is mundane but crucial work. Don’t take your eye off of this project and end up with an incomplete and incorrect message being conveyed. Just get it done and you’ll be in a much better place afterward. That goes the same for keeping other teams in Marketing, Product Management and Sales Enablement (the core ones) on task for following through.

Conclusion

Resetting marketing messaging is one of those projects that is all about keeping your eye for the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the less exciting of Product Marketing projects but no less important.

Follow the guidance above and at least, you’ll have a solid head start and know what “gotchas” to watch out for.