Get answers from product marketing leaders
Nisha Goklaney
HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, American Express, Sage • November 10
I have used several different messaging frameworks, but one that we are leveraging quite a lot these days is the Jobs to be done framework, accompanied by durable, evergreen messages that are centered around our key customer personas and their pain points. In this framework you start by: 1. First, Understanding your ‘who’ (aka your key buyer personas) - who they are, what are their goals, their challenges, what keeps them up at night and what pain points they are most struggling with. We get super detailed here, with understanding how our buyers make software purchase decisions, where they go for information, what their key influence points are (e.g. website, review sites, analyst relations, buyer enablement content etc.) 2. Second, Develop your ‘why’ - Our next step is then to articulate how we help our key personas solve for their jobs to be done and what makes us unique in doing so. These take the shape of ‘durable messages’ or ‘messaging pillars’ that explain the distinct value of your product or service and why a customer should consider your solution to address their JTBD. Top tip to get to this is by listening to prospect calls (Use Gong if your company records them, you’ll start to see patterns emerge) 3. Third, Develop your ‘how’ - This is where you go into details to explain with 2-3 simple examples of how a customer can use your product/service to help them solve their jobs to be done. Top tip here: If you focus on a specific industry, vertical - use the opportunity to explain how you have brought value to customers here. Always include output data points (e.g. time saved, efficiency gained, ROI, Revenue) where possible to measure impact 4. Put it all together - Using the insights and info you have collected, put together 1. Elevator pitch - 1-2 sentences that explains the job your product/service does, who it is for, and how it is differentiated 2. Messaging pillars - 3 pillars that explain the value you bring to your target customer 3. Used cases - real life examples of how you deliver value with outcomes 4. Reason to Believe/Proof - Include customer testimonials, reviews & ratings, analyst relations
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Kevin Zentmeyer
Jobber Senior Director, Product Marketing • April 27
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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David Esber
Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing • October 27
My first question is: what's the reason for not relying on your revenue org? Is there a lack of trust, challenges with prioritization, or something else? The best, most differentiated positioning means nothing if it's not being used throughout the customer journey – and since the majority of marketing orgs are focused on driving leads to a sales team, that messaging better be consistent at every stage of the marketing funnel. I view our sales partners as essential in building, validating, and activating our messaging. Since much of the intel we gain from sales teams is rooted in the present challenges our target audience is facing, I tend to work closely with them to identify key pain points, then validate with new and existing user research (both in-house and sourced with third parties), broad customer surveys (key trends based by audience), and by talking to customers any opportunity I have. To that end, I'll often volunteer to present a product pitch, volunteer for booth duty, or present our roadmap, just to have face-time with customers; we're providing direct value, so folks rarely object when I ask a few additional, discovery questions, or drop-in new messaging just to observe their reactions. The best messaging, though, doesn't just address the current problem, but future problems (and in an economic downturn, economic opportunities) that we are best positioned to address. So, vision-building is often more of a conversation and ideation exercise with my product stakeholders. Simply, intel from sales/customers is great for messaging that gets heads nodding, and the product vision conversations are what I use to get people excited about the future. Together, that's the peanut butter and chocolate of messaging. While this question was specifically about quant tools, it's essential to start with that qual research. Some really talented UX partners taught me that qualitative data is essential before building out quantitative research – I treat messaging the same way. On the quant side, here are a few things I've seen work: * Message testing with friendly customers/customer-facing teams (either via an ad hoc or existing VOC community – ask them for quant and qual feedback in exchange for swag, donations to a cause, or access to new features) * Painted door exercises (A/B test landing pages and ad copy with variations of content to measure CVR) * Sales training & correlative win/loss rate (train teams in new messaging and observe changes in win/loss and customer segments over time using tools like Gong)
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Priya Kotak
Figma Product Marketing • February 24
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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See my answer above - the KPIs that you choose when launching a new feature of an existing product should always be tied to business outcomes. When you launch features vs products, oftentimes the business goals can be framed in terms of product adoption and cross-sell / up-sell. Here's an example. Let's say you have two products: A and B. This feature is available on Product B only. Let's say launching this new feature may entice customers who have bought Product A to add on Product B. Your goals here would be to ensure that customers who have bought Product A are using this new feature (set goals around adoption, e.g. % of Product A customers who have activated this feature within 90 days), and create pipeline for customers of Product B (e.g. $XX pipeline from existing customers, 100 accounts from existing customers with open opportunities).
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Tiffany Tooley
Workday Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Salesforce, IBM, Silverpop, Blackboard • March 9
I've done a lot of interviews and hiring over the years and I'm constantly impressed by how smart and driven Product Marketers are! It's one of the things that makes interviewing so much fun - you get an opportunity to talk to and learn from the best of the best. That said, I think there are a few things that really stand out for me, and they are: * Curiosity - Most candidates are well-educated and skilled, so it's the folks with humility and a curiosity to learn that really shine during the interview process and on my team * Customer-First - Candidates with deep empathy for the customer (both buyers and sales) and can show consistent examples of how the work they've done has been developed with them in mind * Creativity - Whether it's their ability to creatively solve problems or the level of creativity they bring to their campaigns and strategies, I often find that these individuals are the spark of innovations that a team or project needs! * Resourcefulness - I believe you don't always have all the answers and neither do those around you. The best candidates can share how they've identified solutions across their team during ambiguous times. They don't let the lack of clarity prohibit their progress. Instead, they take steps to build clarity. * Impact-Focused - Finally, they never forget that the reason they're leading all the projects and programs at their organization is to have an impact. The best candidates can speak clearly to the impact they have had and have a POV on the additional impact they'd like to see.
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I agree with this statement. Sometimes when I look at PMM resumes that say something like “Increased sales pipeline by 30%” or “Increased product adoption by 15%”, I’m often skeptical because how much credit can a PMM really take? Did you write all the content? Did you do all the work on campaigns, ads, paid performance, SEO, SEM, digital, video, webinars, and webpages? PMMs operate through influence, not authority. We’re the strategic center of marketing—defining the strategy, personas, messaging, and execution. That being said, let’s at least start with the stuff we can take credit for: * Personas - How well are the personas defined and how well does the marketing and sales org understand these personas? What research has been conducted? Which documents can we point to? * Messaging - Good messaging is highly subjective but the key here is ensuring all messaging has been vetted by sales, customers, and internal experts. Is the messaging easily consumed by other stakeholders like content marketers? * Sales enablement - If you’re B2B, PMMs are directly responsible for enabling the field on the market, competition, product positioning, messaging, pitches, and demos. Of course, this is all influenced pipeline but is the foundation there? If it’s not, you’ve got work to do. * Campaign strategy - PMMs should be shaping and directing the themes of campaigns throughout the year and educating the marketing org on why a certain kind of campaign is needed. Campaign runners are responsible for driving those campaigns in market. * Product launches - PMMs are often the quarterback for launches. How many launches can be accomplished per year? How organized are these launches? Are they reaching their target audience? Was the launch able to drive the expected amount of product adoption? * Analyst briefings & thought leadership - Just keeping analysts informed and up-to-date is critically important for the business. Spearheading a Gartner MQ is a ton of work. Did you develop thought leadership themes with the comms team? * Events - Supporting user conferences, tradeshows, and keynotes. How many field events did you support? There's a lot I missed. Some of the above can be measured quantitatively but most are qualitative. If you take a step back, I would say a PMM can tie themselves to the holistic movement of core KPIs quarter-over-quarter. If you’re doing your job right, you should be able to claim influence on sign-ups, activation, pipeline, and close rates QoQ.
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Dana Foster Chery
Samsara Vice President, Marketing • February 9
The best analyst briefing decks that I've either seen or helped build are not filled with marketing messaging. They clearly layout what analysts typically care about, which could include the following: trends you've observed in market you operate in, the challenges your product(s) solves, overview of your growth trajectory, industries you touch plus key use cases for each, unique differentiators, and insight into the product & (high level) GTM strategy and company vision. Other elements I'd suggest: Include customer success stories, lay out the ecosystem that supports your products (ie. partners, integrations, develop engagement), and share how you support your customers. Also, it may seem obvious, but I'd caution against including stats/proof points that were produced by another analyst firm. In general, have a clear agenda that includes space for Q&A and listening to their feedback.
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Vidya Drego
SmithRx VP of Marketing | Formerly HubSpot, LinkedIn, Salesforce • January 20
It's an interesting time to be in product marketing because I think there will be significant shifts in the next few years in how we think about go-to-market. There's a fair amount being written today about how go-to-marketing motions have evolved from inside sales to inbound marketing to product-led growth and are heading towards more community-led growth. Each phase is additive to the one before it (i.e. companies are not going to stop doing one and move to the next but find more success in combining strategies) but I think a lot of the same skills will persist. First, PMMs will ALWAYS have to be exceptional communicators. Specifically, they have to be able to simplify the complex and not only write in their own voice, but typically in the voice of their company or sales team. They have to be able to understand a process or scenario that they're often not a part of and come up with ways of influencing it. And they have to be able to tell a story. Secondly, they have to be able to understand the dynamics of their market. This starts with who their customers are and how these people are changing or being challenged. The means by which a PMM influences or relates to their customers has changed and will continue to change but constantly listening to those customers and periodically picking your head up to evaluate whether the dynamics of the market have changed can often help you partner with experts to execute in the right way. As an example, my team has and will invest much more time with our customers telling their story, helping turn them into acvocates and build and develop their own communities. This is different from where we spent our time five years ago but involves many of the same skills.
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Eric Bensley
Asana Head of Global Product Marketing • September 14
There's no perfect way to do this. People hate when I say this but when it comes to messaging, I'm much more into qualitative feedback vs. quantitative. If you similarly hate me, feel free to move on. If not, here are a few qualitative measures I use: * Can your sales team remember it and pitch it on calls? If you use call recording software with your team, take a listen. If your sales team is pitching it, it's working. If not, it's not. * Do a webinar or event and ask for feedback after. Incentivize response with free swag. Session scores call tell you a lot about how your messaging landed. * Is more work "falling out of it"? What I mean by this is whether other people are building on top of it. ARe they thinking about it could be used for their segment and iterating on it. The best messaging becomes an organic force at your company.
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