Before & After: How we evolved positioning & messaging for our clients
Strong positioning and messaging is rooted in understanding your product and customer. Sounds simple, but it’s easier said than done. At Olivine, we’ve refined our framework over time by crafting effective positioning and messaging for dozens of companies. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at real examples of how we evolved positioning and messaging for our clients:
What makes your product or service unique?
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Sharktank, you know this is *the* question. Without a clear, succinct, and convincing answer, you won’t get very far.
The answer to that question is all about positioning: where your product fits in the market, who you serve, what you’re doing, and how you’re different. Positioning and messaging can be hard to nail because it involves truly understanding what makes you different and how to communicate that differentiation to your audience. We’ll say it again for the people in the back: it’s easier said than done.
When we take on positioning and messaging projects, we spend weeks deeply understanding who you are, what your product does, what problems it solves, and for whom. Our framework has helped dozens of startups, growth-stage companies, and enterprises revamp or develop new positioning and messaging that’s helped them break into saturated markets by telling a clear and compelling product story only they can tell.
In this blog post, I’ll take you through real examples of how Olivine’s product marketing consultants helped our clients across various stages and industries completely transform their positioning and messaging to stand out, drive growth, and close more revenue.
ServiceNow
After acquiring Lightstep, ServiceNow needed to position their newest Incident Response product. But with two distinct brands with their own unique suite of products, where would they nest the new product? Olivine was brought in to advise, guide, and develop the foundational positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy of the product.
We’ve worked with a handful of clients in the DevOps space before, so we knew differentiation would be difficult in a saturated market but super important for success. Through weeks of competitive research, strategic workshops, and navigating feedback across the ServiceNow and Lightstep teams, we aligned on launching the new Incident Response product under the Lightstep brand, while closely integrating elements of the ServiceNow identity into the overall positioning of the product.
The new positioning and messaging served as the backbone of the new website and other launch materials, like emails, ads, and sales enablement collateral, and even helped the team win #3 product of the day on Product Hunt.
Messaging Before
Lightstep Incident Response empowers digital teams with a modern end-to-end solution for incident resolutions, proactive remediations, and optimal change velocity.
Ensure less downtime with an intelligent workspace to take real-time action
Reduce time to remediate utilizing machine learning that recommends the right playbooks
Continually improve using prebuilt dashboards that provide proactive insights
Messaging After
Lightstep Incident Response is the all-in-one incident response platform that enables DevOps & SREs to respond to incidents fast. By combining the right people, processes, and tools in one place, incident response teams can recover quickly and effectively.
Create the right on-call coverage for every incident
Access complete service context to inform your teams
Automate key processes and minimize wasted time
Stellar
Stellar was a product of the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as a platform for artists, producers and venue owners to turn their in-person shows into high-quality, online live-streamed events. But as in person shows slowly started to make a comeback in 2021, Stellar realized their entire positioning strategy hinged on not being able to host in-person shows, which unfortunately was no longer a reality. Stellar ended up bringing on Olivine to reposition their brand and product to remain relevant in a post-COVID world.
Through a series of workshops, interviews, and research, our team of product marketing consultants were able to reposition Stellar as a hybrid, live event platform that helps show organizers ticket and stream shows both online and in-person, maximizing revenue potential and reaching new fans around the world. I mean, who doesn’t like to be entertained from the convenience of their home?
This new positioning and messaging served as the foundational framework to completely revamp the Stellar website and brand, solidifying and strengthening Stellar’s position in the online events space.
Messaging Before
Stellar is the first total show management system for online events. We enable everybody in the live entertainment business to make the leap to online events successfully.
Easy to use, self-serve tools for event creation
Ridiculous quality video and audio
Elegant, smooth viewer experience
Messaging After
Stellar is a first-class, hybrid live event platform. We help event organizers ticket and stream shows online and in-person, delivering premium live experiences customers will love and remember.
Grow your audience and build a strong reputation — both locally and globally
Sell more tickets and optimize revenue with online live streaming
Deliver the best-in-class and premium experience for viewers everywhere
ConductorOne
Earlier this year, ConductorOne was getting ready to announce their latest funding round and head towards GA. It didn't take them long to realize that before they could do that, they needed to tighten up their positioning and messaging to tell a clear and differentiated story to anchor their message in the minds of customers. Knowing this was Olivine’s bread and butter, they hired our product marketing consultants to take over and lead the positioning revamp.
Through a series of workshops with the ConductorOne team, we quickly realized what wasn’t working:
Overall platform messaging was unclear and fragmented
Product messaging was focused on product features, not customer pain points and benefits
Branding was too friendly and didn't convey a professional feel
Over a series of strategic workshops and iterations, Olivine solidified their overarching narrative, honing in on their differentiators and major product features to tell a compelling story only ConductorOne could tell. This fresh positioning and messaging came to life through the launch of a new homepage and stylized product UI images, preparing ConductorOne for their GA.
Messaging Before
Achieve effortless compliance by automating access reviews. Let ConductorOne help your business painlessly configure and run successful access review campaigns.
No-code integrations and fast implementation
Enable your teams for success
Simplify compliance and least coverage
Messaging After
ConductorOne is a user-friendly, cloud-loving identity security platform that makes access reviews and permission management fast, secure, and compliant.
Get started quickly and easily without engineering effort
View & manage identities & permissions for critical apps in one place
Easily run access reviews with a modern, intuitive user experience
Meet compliance deadlines with complete and accurate reports for auditors
Full case study coming soon!
If it isn’t already obvious enough, evolving positioning and messaging for our clients is one of our favorite things to do and what we’re known for (we particularly love the challenge when things aren’t easy or simple). If you’re interested in seeing how we can help you transform your own positioning and messaging, schedule a positioning workshop with us or work with us on a product marketing project.
