Get answers from product marketing leaders
Nisha Goklaney
HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, American Express, Sage • November 9
This is a great question! Given messaging is such a subjective topic - it's super important to quantifiably test and iterate on it to ensure it lands well in the market. Here's a few strategies and tactics you can use to quantifably test it: 1. During the process of creating the messaging, work with your market research team to test aspects of the messaging with prospects and customers. This can be both qualitative tests where you test specific aspects of your pitch and differentiated value or quantitative tests of words or descriptors you use. 2. Solicit early feedback from Sales and Customer support teams - We’ve recently done this super effectively at Hubspot, by essentially recording a Loom video of our pitch (keep it under 5-7 minutes) and following that up with a Google form with specific questions to solicit sales and customer success feedback on the pitch, differentiated value, use cases, imagery used etc. 3. Leverage platforms and tools such as Wynter - This has been another effective platform we’ve used to test messaging effectiveness and gain specific feedback on what resonates and doesnt with your prospective buyers. Wynter allows you to crowdsource and get real-time feedback from your target customers. 4. A/B test on your website, ad copy, social copy, search copy - these are simple and effective ways to test a couple of different messaging options with your prospects in real-time to see what resonates most. 5. Email test your messaging to prospects - This is a tactic you can easily use to test different subject lines, body copy, CTA’s to see what resonates most.
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Kevin Zentmeyer
Jobber Senior Director, Product Marketing • April 26
One tactical way to get better at interviews is practice using the following method: 1) Search Glassdoor for product marketing interview questions. 2) Google "product marketing interview questions. 3) Copy paste all of them into one document. 4) Scan the document for any questions that you could answer in your sleep and delete them. 5) De-duplicated the remaining questions. 6) Write answers for each of those questions. 7) For repetitions, you can either re-read your answers to these questions or delete your answers and write fresh ones to take yourself through the thought process with a fresh pass at it. This method takes a long time, but getting better at most things requires a significant time investment in deliberate practice. So if you want to get better, this will help.
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Priya Kotak
Figma Product Marketing • February 23
I’m a big advocate of getting messaging in front of customers and potential customers directly. Here are a few ways I’ve done that recently: * Test messaging in product betas: At Figma we often launch features to a subset of customers in beta before making them generally available. I like to use this as an opportunity to test some messaging ideas. Not only can you test messaging in recruitment comms and onboarding decks you can join feedback calls to hear use cases and benefits in the customers’ own words * Test landing pages with target audience: When we launched FigJam we created 3 versions of our landing page, each leaning into slightly different messaging, and partnered with our research team to test them with customers in our target audience. We had them react to each page as well as answer various questions to gauge which messaging was easiest to understand and most compelling. I feel comfortable knowing messaging won’t be 100% perfect at launch and that it will evolve as we learn how users actually use the feature/product. If you’re already sending surveys and talking to customers you’re on the right track — from there you can iterate post launch. Here are some things you can do to learn whether you need to tweak your messaging: * Review performance: Look at metrics for your landing page, blog post, etc. How are they performing compared to benchmarks? Are you seeing the traffic and conversions you expected? If not, this might be a sign that the product messaging isn’t resonating — a good next step would be talking to some customers and your Sales team. * Learn from Sales: Check-in with your Sales team to learn from their experience. How has the messaging and pitch for the new product been landing? Are they using the materials you created or have they changed them? Joining or listening to calls is a great way to understand this first hand. You can also look through data in your CRM to learn who’s buying so you know whether your messaging is targeting the right personas
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I've worked at Series B startups all the way up to F500 companies. The theory behind product launches is the same - you want to align your launch to business goals. But, the HOW (the tactics and resources) and the WHO (the team) behind executing a product launch are really where there are differences. At a F500 company, you've got dedicated teams for naming, brand, sales enablement, web, social, and more. PMMs might focus only on launch messaging at a larger company, and spend a lot of time on stakeholder management and alignment. At a smaller company, you've got fewer stakeholders to get in a room, so you can move very quickly, but PMMs will often end up wearing those hats worn by other teams (e.g. writing email copy, landing page copy, thinking about naming and branding, etc.)
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Jenna Crane
Triple Whale 🐳 VP of Marketing | Formerly Klaviyo, Drift, Dropbox, Upwork • October 19
Courses, certifications, and books can definitely help transition into product marketing, but the best way to learn is by doing. I would see if there are side projects you can take on with the PMM team, in addition to self-driven learning. For courses and certifications: * I typically recommend the PMA. They have a variety of programs depending on how broad or narrow you want to go, and how much time you have. * I've also had great experience with General Assembly; depending on your location they may have relevant product marketing courses to choose from. * There's also Pragmatic Institute, but I haven't heard any feedback there. And my 3 must-read product marketing books are: * Obviously Awesome, by April Dunford * Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout * Playing to Win, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin Good luck!
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Typing quickly, so excuse any typos! Competitors will always have a common set of features. Every pizza needs a crust and some toppings – what they are, how they manifest, how they taste – that's what's different. So, first, I'd think: 1. What's unique about my set of features? Are they solving for exactly the same use case? How do they play alongside our other products and features, in ways that they unlock a different set of use cases? This relates to a previous question about marketing a group of products instead of just focusing on one. Combinations of ingredients can lead to different solutions. 2. What's unique about how my company approaches the problem set and delivers for customers? Think outside of the set of features for a minute. What are my company's differentiators? What's been different and defensible about our approach? (For example, intuitive design and user-centricity? or tied to a greater platform? or velocity of development and improvements? or administrative oversight? intelligence built into every step? etc). Think about how that unique approach (overall) makes the set of features more differentiated. 3. What are the competitors' weak spots? What have they gotten flak for from users, from the press? How can we show that our solutions are different in just that way? Let's poke them. 4. Some features are going to be tablestakes. If they're complete mirror images, won't lead to any competitive advantages, moats, and more of a reassuring-yeah-we-got-that, then include it and don't fret. You can't focus on every little feature. Hype up what is different, defensible against competitors, desired and beloved by users.
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Kacy Boone
Clockwise Head of Growth Marketing • May 25
This is such a great example about how you can’t necessarily take a standard playbook and apply it to every company. The dynamics of team size, resourcing, stage of company, all factor in to how you approach defining the role of your team. To answer your question, it starts with finding ways to align your quarterly (or ideally bi-annual & annual) goals and getting clear on the unique value each team brings to the table. The last thing you want is to have competing time and resources, so you want both teams to be really proactive about sharing goals, priorities, and roadmaps in order to ensure you’re not duplicating efforts nor have competing priorities. Secondly, I think it’s important that there’s a shared understanding of the unique value each team brings to the table. In growth marketing, you’re going to have experts on channel strategy, performance, and distribution. In product marketing, you’re going to have experts on positioning, voice of customer, competitive differentiation. Get clear on that as a team. One last super tactical idea for you, I love a shared team brainstorm ahead of mapping goals and programs for the quarter. On the product marketing side, you could compile some research on customers, share the product roadmap, or do a competitive deep-dive to inform that brainstorm and help set up your teams to be aligned from the start. Hope this helps!
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Bonnie Chiurazzi
Glassdoor Director of Market Insights • September 27
There are a few different ways to go about creating personas (which may be more closely aligned to “archetypes” or “segments” depending on the terminology your organization uses). The way you source the data largely depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. But the short answer is you can use qualitative data, quantitative data, or a mix of both. Either way, you’ll usually get the best results with primary research data - data you collect as opposed to insights you find in published research. Methodology: 1. Using qualitative data is a good choice if: 1. Your target audience is difficult to reach (e.g. HR professionals or executives of large companies) 2. You don’t have the budget or tools to conduct quantitative research 3. You already have a strong sense of who your user/buyers are and are looking for a deeper, richer understanding of these folks 4. You need to complete the research on a short timeline 2. Using quantitative data is a good choice if: 1. You want to better understand the total addressable market (TAM), which kinds of attitudes, wants and needs make each segment unique, and which segments are most aligned with your offerings 2. You want to learn more about your existing user base by leveraging behavioral data (e.g. platform usage or purchase behavior), and segment them into groups based on their behavioral patterns 3. You have the resources and time to fully develop the research methodology to accurately meet your needs Research Objectives: 1. You’ll also want to consider your primary research objectives. Are you looking for personas that will primarily impact current or future strategic initiatives? Which teams will be leveraging these personas? Will they need to be operationalized in a way that will include algorithms and formulas to track their behavior? 1. Whether quantitative or qualitative, personas that are primarily based on attitudes, wants, and needs tend to be more future-focused because they highlight unmet needs and areas of opportunity. If your goal is to grow your user base or create new, innovative products, this is a good place to start. 2. Personas that are rooted in current behavior help optimize for the present and shorter term strategies. For example, if you’re creating presonas to learn more about your most engaged users, or users of a particular product, this could be a good place to start. Protips: 1. Bonnie’s (Director of Market Insights) Pro tip: Prioritize the jobs to be done with your personas. If it only does one thing well, what should that thing be and who will leverage it the most? 2. Patti’s (Head of Consumer PMM) Pro tip: Get the most out of your personas by engaging all potential stakeholders before you finalize your research plan. 3. Sophia’s (Product Marketing Lead) Pro tip 3: Use what you have! Get scrappy and connect with whichever teams have the best access to your target audience (e.g. sales, customer service, data science, UX, market research, PMM, etc.). Take initiative to get in touch with customers, work with teams that have dedicated research resources (like UX and market research). 4. (For more, check out our answer to the question about persona framework!)
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Christina Lhi
Square Head Of Product Marketing • September 14
Some key documents that my teams have implemented for competitive positioning are starting with data gathering on points such as: key value props, feature set, target customers, pricing, strengths, customer perception. Partnering with brand and demand gen teams on creative campaign insights and media spend are also helpful to coordinate on. These inputs can then be inputs into frameworks like SWOT matrixes and battlecards for Sales/AM teams or internal one sheeters that can be good alignment collateral across product and marketing.
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Justin Graci
HubSpot Marketing Fellow - Partner GTM & Product Readiness • November 23
Here are a few tips for ensuring your sales team leverages the content you create: * Make sure the content can easily be found. Have a central, go-to place that reps can find all your content. This can be a 3rd party platform such as Highspot, Seismic, or Allbound. Or it can be a more simple Airtable/Spreadsheet that has proper filtering if you're on a budget. Of course with a platform you'll get data/insights into what's working, what's not, so I recommend a platform vs spreadsheet. * Keep the content up-to-date. If a sales rep loves a piece of collateral, but continues to find that it's outdated and missing the latest info, then they'll quickly lose interest in using it, and they'll lose trust in the marketing team. * Host monthly 'marketing/enablement showcases'. At HubSpot, we've hosted monthly meetings that are around 45-60 minutes, and attended by sales reps. During this time, the team walks through the latest content, collateral, and campaigns. And we don't just show what the asset is... we show reps why we created it, when they should use it in the sales process, and often try to share a recent sales-win from using the asset. * Showcase any rep wins attributed to your content. This one has worked REALLY well for us. If you find a rep who leveraged an asset from Marketing and it led to a good engagement with a prospect or customer, then get a quote and showcase that to the broader team. Once other reps see another having success, they're more willing to use it. Bonus - if you can show these wins to Sales Managers, who are willing to share with their teams, that'll work even better. At the end of the day, marketers who support the sales org need to focus on QUALITY and not quantity. Don't get yourself in a place where you're a content factory. Instead, do research with your reps, find what would be most impactful and useful, and commit to a small number of high value assets.
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