Get answers from product marketing leaders
Nisha Goklaney
HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, American Express, Sage • November 10
Yes, there are plenty resources out there for you to continue to sharpen your toolset and learn from others in the community as well. Here are some of my favorites 1. Listening to podcasts - Women in Product Marketing by Mary Sheehan is by far my favorite. She brings on a host of Senior PMM's in their field to discuss topics from messaging, positioning, pricing, getting into PMM, GTM strategy etc. 2. Following thought leaders on Linkedin. 3. Spend time on other websites - Some website I have come to love over time are Airtable, Asana, Snowflake, Zendesk, Gong, Drift, Dropbox, Evernote etc. Here's a good list of good B2B website examples and what makes them great as well 3. Spending time in the field with actual customers - listen to how they talk about their challenges, goals, aspirations and passions. What they like spending time doing and what they don't. Ask specific questions on how your product/service helps them, what they would do otherwise and take notes on the specific words and language they use to describe the value your product brings to them 4. Listen to Gong calls or shadow your sales/Customer success teams - to hear first hand on how your sellers sell your product/service, the slides and pitch decks they use, and their words and language. Pay attention to what resonates with customers, and what doesnt. Listen also, to how prospects describe their problems.
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Marisa Currie-Rose
Shopify Director of Product Marketing • October 13
I think about Go-To-Market plans being comprised of the following work: * Understanding the product and its value proposition * Gather feedback from current and potential customers * Understanding the competitive landscape * Identifying the total addressable market (TAM) * Setting objectives and the goals of the GTM plan * Developing a pricing and sales strategy * Crafting a messaging strategy by including the value propositions * Choosing marketing channels * Creating a launch timeline
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Natalie Louie
ICONIQ Capital Product & Content Marketing | Formerly Replicant, MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • January 12
Start with my 30/60/90 day plan. I embark on this process and begin looking for where I can dive in for my quick wins. You never know what scenario you are walking into or which project has suddenly been prioritized when you first start. The key is listening for what people are working on, understanding why it’s important and raising your hand for anything you know you can do with your eyes closed. I have 10% execute in my first 30 days because that is me working on my win. Then each 30 days thereafter ramps up my time spent executing and delivering more wins. I've joined companies where I took full control of a product launch, created all the decks for a conference, launched new partnerships and pricing strategies in my first 90 days. Your company hired a PMM because a board member or executive knows they need you, so look for all that low hanging fruit. QUICK WINS EXAMPLES * Product Launches: are they planning one or in the midst of one? Jump in to run it, help/takeover an aspect of it, uplevel the launch plan line items * Press Release: is there a PR going out? Ask to write or review it and uplevel it. * Acquisition: are they acquiring a new company? Help with how to message and position the new partnership * Conference: do they have a user/customer/internal conference coming up? Dive in and volunteer to help with the decks, speakers, storyline and content. * Competitive: hear lots of chatter about competitors? Offer to deep dive on collecting research and create some battle cards with your killer template * Product Market Fit: did you join before product market fit? Start doing research to define ICP, Personas, TAM, SAM, Competitors and map the Customer Journey * Marketing campaigns: look at existing campaigns and help create content, position content better, discuss which new channels to activate, ensure campaigns are integrated * Content: look at existing content and uplevel it, create what’s missing ASAP or help organize it better * Video: think they could do more? Help create a good video for their website or marketing * Website: looks lackluster or they want to update their website? Jump in to help with strategy and delivery, definately fix any copy/messages that aren't clear * Hiring: have open headcount or gaps? Help hire, close top candidates, refer good people you've worked with before * Blog: offer to ghost write a blog with Eng or Product * Webinar: help create content or present on a webinar * Monetization: pricing a new product? Jump in to help them figure out value, pricing and packaging * Partner: are they announcing a new partner? Help message and position it * Gaps: see a hole? If you can’t fill it, offer to find and manage a contractor who can and bring them onboard, so you can have a win together * See something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense? Speak up, ask questions and dive in to help bring clarity
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David Esber
Twilio Senior Director, Product Marketing • October 27
A deep understanding of the product, target audience, job to be done, and the technical solution is essential for our team to be good PMMs. For any product, even those that are less technical, knowing what the job to be done is and how the product offering does that job is a strong starting point. Every product conversation starts with what I call 20ish questions that generally focus on the following categories: * Job to be done (who, what, why) * Product accessibility (how do they use it, what limitations exist) * Market landscape (how does this address a need, what others solutions exist) * Go-to-market (paid/unpaid, roadmap) From there: * We partner with Product to develop a v1 of messaging * Test with internal stakeholders (account execs, solutions engineers, marketing colleagues) * Test with external stakeholders (analysts, friendly customers, painted-door webinars/3rd party events) * Refine positioning and gain signoff from Product and leadership * Activate through web updates, launches, and sales/internal enablement The level of depth we go depends on the launch size/opportunity size (i.e., a feature may be nested within our broader messaging and positioning, whereas a rebrand of a platform would be more extensive).
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Alex Wagner Lavian
Origin VP of Marketing | Formerly Uber • November 23
When building a tiered product it's important to define the goals of the entire package and each tier. Once you set goals, you'll want to segment your target audience by tier to map benefits to each level. Each tier should have clear benefits and ideally one “hero benefit” to serve as the hook to get customers to sign up for the offering. While the tiers should feel distinct they should also feel connected so that customers feel motivated to earn/pay more to move to higher tiers. A clear example of this approach is building a good/better/best model where the base benefits get increasingly richer as you move to higher tiers. Once benefits/pricing is set a GTM plan that includes varied tactics and messaging will be key with flexibility to market the entire package + targeted campaigns for each tier.
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Natala Menezes
Grammarly Global Head of Product Marketing | Formerly at: GOOG, MSFT, AMZN, SFDC + startups • February 9
When I started at Grammarly, I did an audit of how PMM mapped to the product organization, our consumer acquisition and growth teams, and our B2B sales teams. The audit revealed that we were significantly understaffed (did I mention we are hiring?) And as a result, PMM was focused on launches more than product strategy and messaging. My first cut of the org chart focused on coverage – ensuring that our product partners had identified partners and that we aligned to the sales org. I also developed different PMM roles within our organization to deliver lateral growth. Our PMM team has 4 flavors of PMM: * Segment. Consumer PMMs focused acquisition, retention, and growth of a specific segment of users. * GTM. B2B PMMs focused on a segment (enterprise, mid-market, or self-serve/smb) and aligned to a sales org. * Core. PMMs focused on a specific product or set of features. For example, mobile or desktop experiences or our core writing experience. Features that are cross segment and cross line of business. * Specialists. Specialist PMMs are unique in that they provide expertise across the PMM org. For example, competitive intelligence or monetization/pricing&packaging. These specialist roles have helped me bring unique skills into the team as we grow and invest in our relationships with product and sales. I also reorganized my leadership team to map to product and built out an 18-month growth plan. It was straightforward to identify significant gaps in current coverage – but going through and understanding the roadmap and growth of partner organizations helped develop a long-term growth plan. It also allows us to be a bit opportunistic in hiring. We know which roles are critical today and which ones will be important soon. So, suppose we meet a fantastic candidate that meets the criteria for a position we might hire in the next quarter. In that case, we have some flexibility to pull that headcount forward.
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Quinn Hubbard
Matterport Head of Global Brand & Product Marketing, Director • May 4
This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time comes, then you’ll be successful in solving those last minute snafus. Assuming your marketing brief and GTM plan are finalized and approved, a successful GTM execution comes down to organization, stakeholder alignment and (the hardest one!) seeing around corners. Here are the riskiest components in each of those categories and how to mitigate that risk: 1. Lack of organization: * Misaligned plans * Losing track of documents and creative files * Overly tight timelines * Rehashing previous conversations How to mitigate: Keep a source of truth document (or spreadsheet, my personal favorite) where you track every single launch component, including status and timeline, meeting notes, resources, channel plans and assets, launch day tick tock and more. 2. Missing stakeholder alignment: * Vague R&R * Lack of resourcing * Unclear expectation-setting How to mitigate: Bring your cross-functional and marketing partners along for the journey by pulling them in at key strategic milestones when you’re creating your plan, then holding regular status meetings up until launch through to a post-mortem. 3. Not seeing around corners: * Lack of familiarity with the deployment tech * Broken user journeys * 11th hour feedback How to mitigate: This one tends to be company-specific, so ask your colleagues about unexpected day-of discoveries on previous launches and then prepare for those specific scenarios. Also, it never hurts to build a buffer into your timeline and have an extra set of eyes on the creative before it goes out the door.
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Patty Medberry
Infor Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly Microsoft • July 28
Successful product marketing, even outside of launches, requires close collaboration with the product management team. I encourage the PM team to consider product marketing as part of their team. Attending their staff meetings, business/planning meetings, and regular sync-ups are a must to understand and execute on the business. Choosing which features and products to focus on is a joint effort between the two groups. PMMs work with the PMs to understand what problem these new capabilities will solve or the opportunity this brings to customers. We also work with them to understand feature revenue potential, target market, etc. At the same time, PMMs are looking at our bigger story to the market and how these capabilities support that. All this helps us decide what to focus on…. We have two standard messaging templates (one long, one short) that include who we are targeting, the problem we are addressing, customer benefits, and key proof points. The longer version will include competitive information, the narrative, etc.
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Come with data and frame your initiatives for your leaders. Part of your first 30-60-90 days will involve understanding what's working well and not-as-well in the GTM. Talk to sales, CS, and RevOps to get a picture. Are you seeing steep discount rates in a certain segment? Are reps complaining that it takes too much time to find collateral? Is your win rate against a certain competitor low? Is your churn rate high? Look at the data, dig in to understand the why behind the trends you're seeing, then make the case for some PMM and team investment with senior leaders. And if you don't have the data at the ready, find a way to get it (without boiling the ocean). "Hey, VP Sales, you mentioned that rep productivity is a top priority for you this quarter. As I was meeting folks in my first week, I noticed a lot of AEs complained that material is super hard to find. I ran a 5-minute survey with the team and it turns out that 70% of reps spend over 2 hours each week just searching for product collateral. If you could get your reps back on the phone for those 2 hours this week, would that be a worthwhile initiative for you this quarter? If so, I can lead the charge with support from your sales enablement team." Why something like this works: * Clearly articulates the business problem in a way that's aligned with your stakeholder's priorities * Backed by data - it's irrefutable * Shows collaboration and leadership -- you're proposing to lead the initiative, while bringing along your leader's teammates for the ride * Make change less frightening -- show that you've got a plan and an idea. Even if you don't get buy-in on the idea right that second, it will help illuminate that you're thinking about the business and know your stakeholder's careabouts. It's also a great way to check in (again) on whether your initiatives are aligned with those of the business; it might turn out that the VP Sales (in this example) is worried more about competitive pressures rather than rep productivity, which helps guide you to work on something that is urgent and important to the business (which will definitely be appreciated by leadership).
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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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