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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nLots of rights to get right, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately it\u2019s not as easy as conducting a couple of customer interviews to understand their pain points and motivations. Although not understanding your customers is a big part of it, there are other culprits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peep Laja, founder of Wynter, a B2B SaaS market insights platform, ran a survey<\/a> to identify the top 3 challenges for these companies when it comes to their GTM strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At number 3, we find \u201cLack of alignment and internal understanding\u201d. As Peep states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is a clear correlation between the challenges of internal alignment and ineffective marketing and sales efforts. Need better internal communication.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When your marketing, sales, product and leadership teams are not on the same page about what you do, who you do it for and how, your marketing suffers. And the people who could benefit from it, aka your customers, can\u2019t see what’s in it for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, when everyone is crystal clear on the value your product provides, for whom, in what unique way\u2014and you can communicate it effectively:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Better and more consistent messaging throughout your customer lifecycle means clearer expectations and easier-to-extract value from your product. This is how you get the nice side benefit of more organic word of mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make sure everyone on your team is on the same page on messaging and keep this as a key priority in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A big part of it is managing projects and internal communication efficiently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A message-market fit project can feel daunting. And if not managed properly, can spiral into a massively painful and never-ending slog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your teams are already busy doing their job, so before you ask everyone to help you with something they\u2019re not directly responsible for, make sure you have your goals and KPIs in place.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s your purpose for embarking on a messaging project? And where are you starting from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Depending on any previous work you might have done, you could set several goals, for example: To make it easier, platforms like ClickUp give you everything you need in one place for everyone in your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want to collect specific market data such as “Customer Pain Points,” “Feedback Sources,” and “Market Segments”? With Custom Fields<\/a>, sales teams could log information directly from customer interactions, while marketing teams could input data from their customer research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or if your goal is to “Increase trial sign ups by 10% in Q2”, with the Goals<\/a> feature, you can break it down into measurable targets for each team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, the content team could set a target based on conversion metrics from campaign responses, while the product team could focus on user activity within the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when it comes to collaborating on research data and contributing insights, you could use Docs<\/a> to create a live document called “Customer insight repository,”. Team members would be able to add insights from social media, customer interviews, or support tickets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then you could use it as reference to identify common themes or gaps in your current messaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving to drafting your message and to validating it? Create a “Message-market fit strategy” document to include different message versions, outlining the narrative for customer personas, or creating your brand voice and tone guidelines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When your marketing, sales, product development, and customer support teams use different tools and processes for communication, that’s when all your hard work goes out the window.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The feedback your support team collects is trapped in a ticketing system, out of your product team\u2019s reach. The golden nuggets your sales department gathers from the frontlines, are buried in spreadsheets or emails that marketing rarely checks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And marketing launches campaigns based on last year\u2019s data\u2014while the product team prioritizes features based on guesswork rather than real user pain points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order for your messaging project to succeed and for you to keep everyone on the same page, you need to create a single communication channel.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With tools like ClickUp it\u2019s easy to build that into your workflows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine a customer mentions a feature they\u2019re begging for, on a support call. The support team could quickly spin up a Chat<\/a> view in ClickUp, tagging someone on the product team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019d check the chat, understand it\u2019s needed now, not tomorrow, and follow up with a comment on that specific task to ask for more details. The time from feedback to implementation is cut in half. And everyone is magically in-the-know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another example: let\u2019s assume your marketing team has been working on a new campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They could use Assigned Comments<\/a> to delegate tasks directly within the project\u2019s context. Someone else could be in charge of refining a value proposition, and once done, they could mark the comment as resolved and ready for review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that you know your goal and have ways to communicate across departments when it matters, let\u2019s see how you can collaborate on messaging more effectively, too. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019re launching a new feature. It\u2019s Marketing\u2019s job to share the big news across channels\u2014email campaigns, social media, and maybe your blog. A great way of doing it is to create Templates<\/a> and standardize the communication format. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This makes sure the people in charge of spreading the message convey the key points. Also, it\u2019s how you keep your brand voice consistent across all platforms. Try to prevent different teams misinterpreting and fragmenting your message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anytime you plan new product updates, it\u2019s also important to integrate any customer feedback (from the Support team for instance) directly into the product roadmap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The more this happens in real-time,<\/em> the better for the Product team, so they can prioritize releases based on actual user needs. It\u2019s this alignment that makes your messaging accurate and highly relevant for your customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A great way to do this is to integrate customer feedback into your roadmap with ClickApps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s not forget about your Sales team. They\u2019re on the front-lines, getting first-hand customer feedback, and they need to be able to route it to the relevant teams. With a quick ClickUp Automation<\/a> in place you could make sure the whole process is streamlined and everyone can adapt on-the-go if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether it\u2019s fixing a bug or adjusting any marketing messages, and no matter if you\u2019re remote, hybrid or distributed, your teams should be able to work together and keep messaging aligned\u2014at all times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Being aligned internally doesn\u2019t guarantee your messaging will be effective. It\u2019s not enough to be able to get on the same page about what you do, who you do it for and how. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You also need to have a consistent flow of insights coming in – from your market – if you want to keep speaking in a way that resonates. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A great way to make sure you\u2019re always actively listening to your potential customers, is to create feedback forms<\/a> and \u201cinject\u201d them at strategic milestones in your customer and user journey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, after releasing a new feature, you could create a form with specific questions about usability, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. Then, share it with your audience through your email newsletter, social media, or in-app notifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Clickup for instance, you can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can get started in seconds using this handy template<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Information is great, but what matters is that you and the rest of your team take action on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Use the insights from your feedback forms to actually make changes in your business. Things like improving your products, services, or upgrading your customer support systems. With ClickUp, you can easily create tasks related to any of these changes and assign them to relevant team members to implement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like that, you went full circle: from real customer feedback to launching a new feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s recap: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last step before deciding what messages you\u2019ll need to align on, is testing and validation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even with your research and plan in place, it\u2019s easy to let confirmation bias cloud your judgment. And maybe you decide you need to focus on a particular Job To Be Done, or feature to highlight, when in reality it\u2019s not what resonates the most, or you\u2019re using the wrong language to describe it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what do we do? We sit quiet and let more data – and our customers – tell us<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this stage what matters is to gauge the clarity and impact of our new messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few ideas for using project management tools like ClickUp, to gauge the performance of your messaging:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also a couple of more \u201cindirect\u201d ways to understand if you\u2019re hitting the spot. For example you might use ClickUp\u2019s real-time Dashboards<\/a> to track the time spent on customer support inquiries and identify which features generate the most requests for help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These would be clear signals you need to do a better job at either communicating and setting expectations through your messaging, and\/or go back to the drawing board with product development. Or you could use reports to look at the response rates to your marketing campaigns. This will let you pinpoint which messages resonate best with your target personas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A few others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a SaaS company you have a lot of touchpoints with your audience. Let\u2019s try and list the most common:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is not even a comprehensive list! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does this matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because with every touchpoint comes a chance to communicate your positioning and value proposition. Read: get more customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Studies have shown that aligning teams in an organization can significantly impact sales and conversions. Organizations with aligned sales and marketing processes have been found to have at least 17.9% higher win rates and 11.8% better quota attainment<\/a>. What about generating up to 208% more marketing revenue. or improving customer retention by 36%<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You get the gist. Unless your messaging is consistent throughout the entire customer journey, across all channels – you can\u2019t be as effective as you could at speaking your audience\u2019s language. And the lowest hanging fruit you can go after, is aligning your teams internally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When everyone across your departments knows where you stand and how to talk to or write about what you do, who you do it for and how\u2014that\u2019s when the rest gets easier.![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/lh7-us.googleusercontent.com\/5_cNgGmsxM0I2ICDRyQG341XugEjZ28X7fV_MwG4LZUghAsfVCU5sbRytIvShNnK6jnBZn8xCuvwvKoyYzluLF6OqTK5fwA3BnrDGlsw8T5g-BYBEV4PeMnefSfjivwJMpeCnA6QNNTEEcoSxV_bZ2M\")
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Where to Start: Setting and Tracking Objectives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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![\"ClickUp](\"https:\/\/clickup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/image-166.png\")
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![\"Rich](\"https:\/\/clickup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rich-Formatting-and-slash-commands-in-clickup-docs-Gif.gif\")
Communicate Better, Faster<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"ClickUp](\"https:\/\/clickup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/ClickUp-Comments.gif\")
Plus with the Proofing feature<\/a>, you could solicit and manage feedback on any creative assets like wireframes, sketches or mockups. Each piece of feedback would be tracked and assignable, so nothing slips through the cracks.
That\u2019s how you keep your messaging work consistent and always evolving as you iterate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWork together more efficiently<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"ClickUp](\"https:\/\/clickup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/ClickUp-Template-Center.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nKeep in touch with and learn from your customers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Test, Validate, Repeat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Bridging the Gap Between Your Teams and Your Customers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Guest Author<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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