3 Questions for Zack Messler on Product Messaging

1. What common mistakes do you see B2B SaaS companies making with their messaging, and how can they avoid these pitfalls?

One big mistake I see B2B SaaS companies make with their messaging is leading with their product. When something like 93% of your potential buyers are not ready to buy—a healthy percentage of which are not truly aware they have a problem big enough to invest in solving—when you lead with your product from the get-go, you become noise to them.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to talk about your product. Just make sure you wrap all that in a layer of context. Other major pitfalls:

• Using buzzwords and jargon that sound like everyone else ("Our platform empowers you to...")
  
  
• Broad and loose statements that mean nothing ("The leading provider of...")
  
  
• Making assumptions about what buyers need without truly understanding their world
  
  
• Missing context that shows you get their specific situations
  
  
• Focusing on features right off the bat instead of buyer perspectives

The fix? Flip the message. That means starting with your audience's perspective—their challenges, their desired outcomes, their feelings about all of it. Only then connect it back to your solution.

2. What key steps would you recommend to help B2B SaaS companies achieve clear, concise messaging that resonates with their audience?

To be perfectly understood, first perfectly understand.

Message clarity is not just about being understood. It’s not only tacit understanding we’re going for. It’s being perfectly understood! So much so that potential buyers see our stuff and think, “Oh! This is for me... I gotta learn more!!”

Getting to true message clarity first takes getting clear on five core areas:

1. Clarity of Product
   
2. Clarity of Audience
3. Clarity of Problem
4. Clarity of Outcomes
5. Clarity of Feeling
   
   

Once you have clarity across these five levels, NOW you can tackle the big-rock questions:

WHAT IS IT? Get literal. Think, “What’s in the box?” Nothing more, nothing less. What is it?

WHAT DOES IT DO? At its core, what does this thing do? What’s the ONE thing that cuts to the heart of what your solution does?

WHY DOES IT MATTER? Not why does it matter to you. Why does it matter to the people it should matter to? This becomes your narrative. It needs three parts: Context (perspective of your audience) > Problem (the challenge they face) > Solution (how you address it best)

The key thing to remember? Without the right context, you're just another vendor poking at pain points. Clarity is being perfectly understood by the people you want to help.

3. Positioning vs. Messaging vs. Copy. How should we approach and differentiate between these three concepts?

You can think of it this way:

Positioning is how you show up in the minds of your buyers. It's your stake in the ground—where you want to be perceived in your market.

Messaging is what you say in support of that position: The key ideas and points that connect what you sell with your audience's needs.

Copy is how you say it: The actual words you use in any given situation—website, emails, sales conversations, etc.

Positioning guides messaging > Messaging guides copy > Copy moves people down the path to purchase. Get these three working together, and you create clear lines between what you sell and what your audience wants. And that is when you start attracting more buyers and selling more stuff.