The 4 Essentials of Killer Product Storytelling | Lanie Schenkelberg, VP of Product Marketing (Inovalon) | LaunchPod
Former PM and current Product Marketing leader, Lanie Schenkelberg, shares her methods and tactics for successful product positioning and messaging.
TL;DR
In this episode of LaunchPod, Lanie Schenkelberg shares how her team revamped Inovalon’s product story for 75+ products that deeply resonated with buyers and unlocked a faster, more effective go-to-market strategy across teams.
You’ll learn:
Lanie’s 4 essential elements of compelling product storytelling (06:14)
How to make your customer the hero and not your product (15:10)
How to spot weak messaging and reframe it with strong positioning (21:44)
A behind-the-scenes look at the AI-powered messaging overhaul that scaled storytelling at Inovalon (26:38)
1. The 4 Essential Elements of Product Storytelling
Lanie breaks her approach to storytelling down into four clear pieces:
Identify the customer’s “big win.” You’re not selling dashboards or analytics, you’re selling the ability for someone to take a day off during peak season. That’s the emotional outcome that drives decisions.
The customer is the hero; the problem is the villain. The customer is the hero, their pain is the villain, and your product is the secret weapon that helps them win.
Focus on value, outside-in messaging. “Inside-out” messaging focuses on features and functions. “Outside-in” messaging leads with what’s important to the customers and emphasizes value.
Use customers’ exact language. Stop using buzzwords and use your customers’ actual words. Lanie’s team even built a jargon blacklist and an AI-based grader to keep messaging clear and human.
2. Customer Obsession > Product Obsession
As a former product manager, Lanie knows how easy it is to fall in love with features. But messaging that drives growth starts with falling in love with your customer’s pain.
Her rules for success:
Stay customer-obsessed. Let real customer insights drive internal alignment.
Highlight the big win. Show the impact, not the interface.
Kill the jargon. Speak plainly. Your customers will thank you.
3. Weak Messaging vs. Strong Positioning
Messaging problems are often just positioning problems in disguise.
To fix that, Lanie points to April Dunford’s positioning framework, Obviously Awesome: Define exactly what your product does, for whom, and why it’s unique.
Validate with customer interviews, not assumptions
Get outside input from analysts like Gartner or IDC
Recheck positioning if downstream efforts (sales, marketing) feel harder than they should
LaunchPod Tip: Use AI to process user interviews and distill themes and insights you may have missed. Having an objective third party like this can help you overcome assumptions about your product or the market. It’s helped me a lot this year already.
4. Behind the Scenes: Inovalon’s Messaging Overhaul at Scale
What does storytelling at scale look like when you have 75+ products?
Lanie walks through how her team at Inovalon tackled this challenge:
Weekly internal book club to teach the “Make It Punchy” messaging model by Emma Stratton.
Cross-functional pods (product marketing, product, content, sales) working together in war rooms.
Custom AI assistant that graded messaging drafts for clarity, tone, and customer-centricity
The results?
Rapid alignment across sales, product, and marketing
Accelerated content development and go-to-market execution
Messaging that finally resonated with buyers
Links
Resources
Chapters
01:48 The Importance of Messaging and Storytelling in Product
15:12 The Role of Positioning and Differentiation in Product Marketing
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