5 Ways to Make Your Internal Messaging Land Every Time
Tips to cut through the slack noise with important information
You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again: Product is a communications job.
The best PMs I know don’t just nail external comms. They’re just as intentional internally. They know how to talk about their work in a way that gets others excited and eager to champion it. People know what they’re working on. They border on showboat but they know how far to go before it gets obnoxious.1
A huge part of your success at any company, regardless of role, isn’t about doing the work. It’s about how you talk about the work you’re doing.
So, let’s break some of the best tactics I’ve seen used by operators seeking to internally communicate impact effectively.
1. Repeat, repeat, repeat some more.
Hot take: saying something once is just as bad as not saying it at all.
If you want your work to land, whether it’s a product update, a strategy shift, or a launch you have to repeat yourself. Across channels. In ways that resonate. For people who are busy, distracted, and juggling 100 other things.
Plus, different people absorb information in different ways.
Because human nature. So:
Use Slack for teams that move fast and
Use email for leaders who want context they can return to and
Try Looms or voice notes to bring warmth and nuance to the topic and
Use 1:1s to reinforce messages and offer support for questions or feedback.
People don’t absorb things after hearing it once.
Lean into saying things more than once in a way that borders on annoying.
If I’m being 100% honest, I need this in my personal life just as much as I need it in my professional life. This is an open invitation to my friends and family to tell me things more than once. I trust that you’ll know when enough is enough.
2. Anchor in people, not features.
Nobody wakes up thinking, “I hope someone tells me about a workflow improvement today!” They do wake up thinking, “I hope my day feels a little easier.”
I had a client who launched a feature for customer service agents. He shared news about the feature launch, but he felt like people didn’t care.
So we reworked the pitch: he opened with a story about Carla, a support lead who was spending 90% of her shift triaging the same 3 requests over and over.
When we rooted the pitch in a person, we were able to communicate that we gave Carla her time back so that she could actually support higher touch customer issues.
Telling Carla’s story was when people started to pay attention.
It was an important reminder that people rally behind people.
When you’re talking about internal work, use humans to drive your message forward.
3. Keep it tight and measurable.
If you want your message to stick, tie it to a simple, customer-centric headline and do your best to make it quantifiable.
Not: “We improved onboarding.”
Try: “500 more customers are now getting their ‘aha’ moment thanks to the shorter onboarding flow.”
That kind of headline is simple, memorable and grounded in who you’re building for.
When you share an update or launch, boil it down to a one-liner that answers:
Who it’s for - try your best to focus on the primary customer
What changed - outline the new thing via a story, think Carla’s triaging time, and why it matters
Extra credit for how you’ll measure it - If you can quantify the change, you’ll win fans
The crisper you can get this headline, the more repeatable and stickier it will be for your team.
4. Zoom Out.
Every small launch is a signal of where you're headed. So paint that bigger bet and the clear “why now.”
Product marketers call this narrative. I call it context is king.
Nest your announcement in the context of the broader vision so you can anchor your work into something aspirational and motivating.
I like using the progress bar analogy.
People don’t need every answer upfront. But, if they know where they’re headed, like when filling out a multi-step form, they’re more likely to stay engaged, even if it takes more time than they’d like.
Frame your announcement as part of a bigger progress bar to build momentum and buy-in.
5. Make it personal
So to recap, when you’re trying to land your internal messaging, focus on these 5 things to do it more effectively:
Repeat
Anchor in people
Keep it tight
Zoom Out
Make Personal
What else do you do to land your internal messaging? Drop a comment below
Hi - I’m Jori and I’m a Product Coach. If you’re Product Leader or on a Product team looking for support - drop me a note.
A true art and science.