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Messaging shouldn't feel this hard.
If you’re staring at a complex product, an oversaturated market, and a mountain of conflicting opinions from stakeholders, you aren’t alone. Whether you’re a founder trying to find your voice or a marketer struggling to align multiple buyers, the "messy middle" of messaging is where most brands get stuck.
On Better Messaging, Emma Stratton, author and B2B messaging expert, is pulling back the curtain on how to turn technical complexity into clarity. Drawing from a decade of experience partnering with hundreds of tech companies, from seed-stage startups to global household names, Emma shares the practical frameworks and real-world lessons needed to make people actually care about what you’re building.
[00:00:00] Emma Stratton: I’m Emma Stratton and this is Better Messaging. If you want to stop second guessing yourself and start writing better messaging today, you’re in the right place. Through my company Punchy, I have trained close to 3000 marketers in messaging, 3000 marketers from all around the globe from all the continents across all sorts of industries. And I discovered a really amazing thing. Not one of those marketers was bad at writing messaging. Not one. You’d think out of 3000 there might be a few, but no, every single marketer that I have taught has been at least decent at messaging if not good or great. So why are there so many people taking messaging training to begin with if they’re all pretty decent at messaging? Well, that’s because out of those 3000 marketers, I would say probably 70% of them would say that they weren’t that great at messaging, that they could be better that they didn’t think they were that good.
[00:01:02] Emma Stratton: And that’s really what I tackle with my training, giving people the frameworks and the techniques so that they can feel more confident in their own natural abilities. It really speaks volumes the fact that so many marketers are good at messaging, at least in my estimation. And that’s because marketers are smart, creative people. We get into this game because we’re good at communicating, we’re creative, we have ideas. And so it makes sense that we would all be at least pretty darn decent at writing messaging and yet we doubt ourselves. We doubt our abilities. Part of the reason we doubt is because messaging is hard. It’s challenging. It’s not an easy thing and so it’s not a surprise to kind of go through a tough messaging exercise and just think, “Ugh, I’m not that good.” But trust me, you are good at messaging and you are better at messaging that you think.
[00:02:01] Emma Stratton: And I know this because I’ve seen it in thousands of marketers as well. So why do we doubt ourselves? Why do we think that we’re not as good as we are? Well, one, I think we can be tough critics on ourselves. I think the more that you understand a craft, the more you criticize yourself and see how much better it could be. I think that’s definitely part of it. But the other part of it, which I think is probably the more common reason is that we tend to get into ruts and sort of reflexive or habitual ways of writing messaging that maybe aren’t what we would love. So maybe our writing is a bit full of jargon or it’s kind of stiff or maybe a bit dry and corporate sounding or a little boring or too technical and we don’t like it because we feel like we’re in a bit of a rut.
[00:02:55] Emma Stratton: Well, it’s no surprise that we get into ruts when it comes to writing messaging. Part of the reason is because we are asked to write so much to produce such a large volume of assets and content and we’re asked to do it really, really quickly and creativity and new ideas take time. And when you’re not given time and the deadlines are looming and you’re expected to pump out loads of content, you’re going to fall back on your habitual ways of doing things and you’re going to stay in whatever rut you have created writing the same old, same old and that can feel boring over time. The human brain loves variety. We get bored really quickly and you can internalize all of that and think, “Ugh, I’m not that good at messaging.” But it’s not true and I just want to remind you that you are better at messaging than you think you are.
[00:03:50] Emma Stratton: And another reason why I know this is whenever I’m working with a marketer and they put forward some messaging that is a bit dry or a bit unclear, maybe a bit over technical and I ask them, “Hey, what do you mean by that? Explain to me what you’re trying to say here.” They go ahead and they explain it so simply and so beautifully that I always say to them, “Hey, whatever you just said, write that down. That is so much more clear and more effective than what you had before.” It’s like the voice that we use in our mind is clearer than some of the words that we end up typing out when we’re writing messaging. And when I say this to marketers, “Hey, just write what you said. That was great.” They’re like, “Really? That’s good enough?” They kind of felt like if it came naturally in their mind, then it wasn’t enough, that it had to be crafted, that it had to be more complicated or a little bit more, I don’t know, have a bit more razzle dazzle, but that’s not true.
[00:04:48] Emma Stratton: Often the way that you think about it in your mind is a great way to write it. I think that a lot of the kind of long, jargony, dry, corporatey sounding B2B messaging that’s out there is a product of like it’s bypassing a different part of our brain. Okay, this is clearly not based in any kind of science whatsoever, but I think something happens when we’re typing and we’re writing messaging, typing. I swear our thoughts kind of go in a certain path and it skips a critical part of the brain and goes straight to your fingertips and you start typing out words like foster continuous engagement among team members, which is something you would never ever say out loud in real life, but for some reason you type it and it seems, yep, that seems right. Why does this happen? I think it happens because it’s peer pressure, it’s osmosis.
[00:05:45] Emma Stratton: Everyone’s writing this way. Everyone’s trying to sound like the smartest provider. They have the most robust, innovative solution, that they’re the most serious provider that you can trust. We have years of experience. And I think that makes people write in this way with the big words that are hard to understand and the jargon and the sentences that go on and on forever. We feel like we should write this way when really, if you stop for a second and look at it, do we really need to write this way? Who is it serving? It’s not serving anyone. So this sort of reflexive way of writing B2B messaging with the big words and the corporate sounding jargon and all that, it’s because we’re missing a part of our brain. The thought process is skipping something and it’s just going straight to our fingers and we’re kind of writing out what’s expected of us.
[00:06:35] Emma Stratton: We’re in that rut. It’s a reflex. Now the moment you interrupt that automatic thought process and pause and question what you’ve written, now you have an opportunity to really improve it and you can do that with my favorite exercise of all time. This is the one and you may know it already if you’ve read my book. It is say it like you would at the barbecue. Say it like you would at the barbecue is both an exercise and a prompt. And the idea here is that if you write something, some messaging that seems a bit stiff, a bit jargony, full of long words and long sentences and it’s kind of hard to get through, pause and ask yourself, how would I say this if I were at a barbecue? Or how would my audience, my customer say this if they were at a barbecue with some smart friends?
[00:07:29] Emma Stratton: How would they say it? And this is a prompt for you to say something in more plain English, plain speak, to use simpler, more conversational phrasing and it will help you get more concrete with the imagery itself. It forces you to kind of be more specific rather than using big broad generalizations that happen a lot in B2B messaging. So say it like they would at the barbecue. Now, who’s at this barbecue? When I talk about this exercise, people sometimes jump to the conclusion that I mean, how would you explain cybersecurity to your great-grandmother or your grandma? This is not a explain it to my grandma’s situation, because that I think is taking a little bit too far. What I’m saying is this is a barbecue where you’re relaxed, where you’re not wearing a tie or restrictive work clothing, you’re relaxed and you’re talking to other people like you, they don’t work on your team, but they’re smart people and you’re relaxed and this is what I want you to think about when I say say it like you with the barbecue.
[00:08:35] Emma Stratton: How would you say it if you were relaxed? How would you say it in conversation? Can you make it more conversational? This prompt automatically turns your message into something more concrete, more clear and more down to earth and it’s a really good prompt for that and I love using it all the time. So you write something and you’re like, “Hmm, that’s a bit darkening. What am I actually trying to say here?” To say, “Okay, how would I say this at the barbecue?” So let me give you some examples of pre-barbecue and post-barbecue language. So this is the one that I already just said and I say this one because I took it from a customer and it was just one of those phrases where I’m like, “I can’t believe they wrote it this way. Foster continuous engagement among team members.” First of all, what a mouthful.
[00:09:24] Emma Stratton: It’s hard because we’ve got lots of long words in that sentence. I mean, we’ve got five long words in that sentence. Okay. Long words, are they bad? No, long words aren’t bad, but when you have long word after long word after long word after long word in a sentence, that sentence is now going to be very hard to get through. I know your customers are smart. I know you’re smart, everyone’s smart. You can figure out what that means, but it’s going to take a bit of time. You’re going to have to read it once, maybe read it again and think, okay, what does that mean? Oh, okay. I think I know what that means. Now that’s maybe taken 10 seconds, 20 seconds of thought just to digest a sentence and let’s face it, people do not have that kind of patience or that time to spare on figuring out what your sentence means.
[00:10:15] Emma Stratton: So you want to make it easy on them. So foster continuous engagement among team members. How would I say that if I were at a barbecue? I sure as heck wouldn’t say that to a friend at the barbecue. They’d look at me like, “What are you talking about? “ Instead, I would say, “Oh, it helps you keep everyone on the team involved. Keep everyone on the team involved. Everyone knows what that means. It is easy to understand. We’re using shorter words, less words, and the comprehension goes up. Let’s do another one. Drive team collaboration. Okay. Not terrible, but have you noticed in tech we do a lot of driving and we’re not in a car. We’re driving revenue, we’re driving results, we’re driving outcomes, we’re driving collaboration. What aren’t we driving?” So we’re overusing driving. So drive team collaboration. It’s like, okay, I know what that means, but it feels very removed.
[00:11:10] Emma Stratton: It’s this thing happening way over there. Collaboration is being driven in this corner and it’s the way that that sentence is phrased, drive team collaboration. It just sounds like a thing that’s happening outside of me, which makes me care about it less. I don’t relate to it as much. So how would we say that at the barbecue it helps teams work better together? Ah, I understand what that means. Not only do I understand what it means, I can relate to that a lot better than just drive team collaboration. Another example, streamline communication. Okay, not terrible, but streamlined communication could mean lots of things. It’s a bit high level. Do we mean that we’re making it faster, more productive? Is it more efficient? What types of communication? Streamlined communication is just very vague. So barbecue version might be like, oh, it helps you handle all your calls and texts in one place.
[00:12:11] Emma Stratton: And you can see where I explain what I mean by that. I’m getting more concrete. I’m getting more specific talking about managing texts and calls in one place rather than streamline communications, which is quite vague and I don’t really know what it means or what problem it’s solving. I can guess my problem is in there, but I don’t fully see it because I don’t think of my problems as my communications need to be streamlined. So those are a couple examples of before and after the barbecue. So say like they would the barbecue is just a really good prompt to stop you if you’ve got written something and you know it’s just a bit techy, a bit stiff. How can you make it more clear, relatable and human, run it through the barbecue tests. Now, some of you might be marketing to very technical folks and you might be thinking, “Emma, are you wanting me to dumb down all of my technical aspects of my messaging if what you say is true?
[00:13:10] Emma Stratton: I don’t know if that’s going to be a good thing.” No, I am not telling you to kind of get rid of any necessary industry jargon or lingo or technical terms that are important to your audience. So this is not about getting rid of important terms. Say it like you would at the barbecue is about simplifying the words around any necessary technical terms or lingo that needs to be in there. So for example, I would never tell you to spell out API in messaging for a developer. That would be ridiculous. They know what it means. So any acronym that your audience understands and knows, you can keep those in, but you want to barbecue all the other words around those technical terms in the sentence to make the whole sentence conversational. So let me give you an example here and okay, here’s an example talking about like supply chain security.
[00:14:10] Emma Stratton: So the sentence, lock down your supply chain from dependencies to deployment. Now I’m talking to a developer and that’s why I have the words dependencies and deployment.
[00:14:22] Emma Stratton: That’s like industry jargon for developers. If I were talking about this to an account manager, they wouldn’t understand necessarily what I mean by dependencies or maybe deployment but not dependencies, but that doesn’t matter because this message is for a developer and they totally know what that means. So it makes sense that I would use that in my messaging, but you can see how I’ve written lock down your supply chain in front of it very simple, very conversational. So the words around dependency and deployment are casual plain English and that’s what I want you to do. When you have lots of technical terms, that is a lot to get through. So if you can soften and loosen up those other words in the sentence to make them more conversational and clear, the whole message will be understood a bit more. Here’s another example of a message for a technical audience that is barbecued, attract the best devs with the freedom to create in a secure, automated environment without all the mundane tasks to slow them down.
[00:15:24] Emma Stratton: So we talk about secure automated environment, we’re talking about devs and the language is conversational. It’s clear. It doesn’t use a lot of big words for the sake of words. So when we think about say like you would at the barbecue, it’s not about dumbing things down. So there’s a little test I have that can help you see if maybe you’re taking it too far with a barbecue test or not. And it is the, is it jargon test? Okay. Is it really jargon test? So if you write something and you’re like, “Do I need to barbecue this or is it fine? You’re not sure? Is this jargon? I’m not sure.” You can use this little rubric of mine and you basically have to answer three questions. Question one, will this message be universally understood by the people it’s intended for or pretty much universally understood?
[00:16:18] Emma Stratton: Okay So if you’re sending a message out to developers, will most developers understand what I mean? That’s question one. Question two, will this phrase or this language have specific important meaning to my audience? Okay. Is it meaningful? Is it specific and very meaningful? And the third is will this give us credibility and prove that we understand their world and we get it? If the answer is yes to all three of those, you are fine to leave it as is no need to barbecue, but if you have at least a no or a couple, not sure to those questions, run it through the barbecue exercise and see what comes out. If it’s more clear and simple, go with that version. And one more note about the barbecue exercise, because I’ve also had this question before. It is not about adding curse words or being unprofessional or adding zany colloquialisms or anything like that.
[00:17:21] Emma Stratton: Just because you might be having a beer at the barbecue doesn’t mean you should write messaging that sounds like you’ve had too many or are drunk. So this is not about being unprofessional. It is not about dumbing anything down. It is simply about casual conversational phrasing, modern phrasing that’s more relatable because some of the grammar rules actually end up sounding super stuffy and I am one of the first people to go out there and kind of break a grammar rule because it matches modern sensibilities and modern phrasing and it will be smoother on the eye. So sometimes you got to break a couple rules in order to make it really easy to understand. My fifth grade English teacher would kill me if she heard me talking about this. She was a real stickler for grammar and I did learn all the rules, but these days sometimes you got to loosen up a little bit to make something more relatable.
[00:18:19] Emma Stratton: I hope you like this exercise. I definitely recommend that you go for it. I will say it’s one of my most popular exercises. I meet marketers all the time who are like, “I love your barbecue exercise. I use it all the time.” And it’s great to use because it’s a way to break out of that runt, to break that habit of writing things a certain way all the time that maybe bores you or maybe ends up being a bit stuffy or dry or corporate. Hey, that stuff becomes behavior. We’ve created those behaviors because we got to pump out tons of work really quickly, but if you can just pause, ask yourself, “Okay, how would I say this at a barbecue?” And I guarantee what you come up with is going to be stronger. It’s going to be nice and clear, something that you would naturally think of, put that down.
[00:19:06] Emma Stratton: It’s going to improve your messaging and it’s going to start pushing you out of that rut. It’s going to start making some of these clearer words and phrases more ready for you to use. It’ll take less thinking and over time with lots of barbecuing, it’ll just become natural. You’ll just naturally barbecue everything that you write. So it’s a really good prompt to kind of help you move out of any habit that you want to break around your messaging and no shame, okay? We all have them. We create them so that we can be productive and get all the work done that we need to do under the time limits that have been put on us, but it doesn’t take long just to ask yourself, how would I say this at the barbecue or how would my audience say it at the barbecue? And trust me that whatever you come up with in your mind is going to be great because I know this to be true after meeting 3000 marketers in your similar situation, they all did a great job and so I know that you can as well.
[00:20:06] Emma Stratton: So really trust in your own intuitive ideas, the language that comes to you, how you would say it because chances are it’s going to be even more clear than your previous draft. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Better Messaging. If you like what you heard, go ahead and subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. Until next time, keep it punchy, my friend.