In 8 years of working with early-stage startups on go-to-market, I've noticed a consistent, very painful trend.
Many innovative products never take off because NOBODY gets their messaging.
• Convoluted landing pages
• Puzzling ads, emails, and blog headlines
• And positioning only founders understand!
The problem is simple.
Complexity doesn’t sell.
People just won't buy what they can’t grasp.
So why does this keep happening?
Because some founders conflate jargon with credibility and think fancy terms will make them more credible in the eyes of their prospects.
But that just gets you ignored when you sell software — especially when it's not self-serve.
The key tenet I use is:
"If you have to think about it, it's not good messaging."
Simple messaging is not just a nice-to-have; it's the foundation of your distribution.
• It's why people give your product a try in the first place
• And what makes it easy to share with others
Because people understand it.
Good messaging answers questions upfront.
1) Who is it for?
2) What problems does it help me solve?
3) What outcome does it help me achieve?
4) What are the benefits on top of the outcome?
But also:
5) Why is it better than existing alternatives?
6) How much is it? What am I paying for/getting exactly?
7) How much time/effort does it take to achieve my outcome?
8) How do I convince my boss/team this is the right choice?
If your landing page answers these questions upfront, then you're already ahead of most people.
But here's how you know your messaging is truly effective.
When your customer calls focus on questions 1-4, your messaging is not good enough.
And you need to go back to the basics.
When the focus is on questions 5-8, your messaging is above average.
If they focus only on implementation and negotiation, you're nailing it.
The more bottom-of-the-funnel questions you get, the more you know you're top-of-the-funnel messaging is working!
If you have a self-serve product, then you should translate those questions into key outcomes of your NUX (new user experience).
Messaging plays a key role even in product — that's where PMs and product marketers make the dream team!
But in short:
• Avoid jargon: learn their language, don't make them learn your own
• Clarity leads to conversion: remove questions, and give answers upfront
• Check customer calls: their focus reveals where you need to improve
What's your situation?
What questions do your customers' calls revolve mostly on?