Get answers from product marketing leaders
Nisha Goklaney
HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, American Express, Sage • November 9
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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Jodi Innerfield
Salesforce Senior Director, Product Marketing Launch Strategy & Emerging Products • January 12
The goal of most B2B launches is revenue--but there are many other KPIs you can track besides how much revenue you've generated! Customer KPIs: These KPIs all tell me how much my launch resonates with my target customer. Pipe generation; lead generation/form fills on any key launch assets like demos and datasheets; registrations/attendance to events and webinars; website views; time on-page. Sales team KPIs: This is how I make sure my sales teams are excited about my launch and are properly informed to have customer conversations. # attendees for enablement; # views/engagement for key enablement assets; # sales support requests; AR/PR: This is how I know I'm getting the right coverage. # AR briefings/inquiries; # AR reports/mentions; # PR interviews pre-launch; # press mentions
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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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Lauren Hakim
Zendesk Group Product Marketing Manager, AI • January 19
This can certainly vary depending on the company! Here are some examples of areas that would be owned by different product marketing levels based on my experience: Messaging & Positioning * PMM: Crafts messaging and positioning at capability/feature level with some coaching * Sr. PMM: Drives messaging and positioning at the product/feature level and coaches others on product/feature level positioning * Director: Drives messaging and positioning at the category level and ensures alignment across teams Sales enablement * PMM: Creates materials and conducts enablement sessions on sales fundamentals (e.g. first call deck, demos) * Sr. PMM: Orchestrates enablement initiatives and programs at the product level or across multiple features. Identifies opportunities to increase pipeline by collaborating directly with reps and sales leadership. * Director: A mix of strategic/tactical partner to sales leadership for their functional area. Ensures execution of sales-facing content and training. GTM strategy & execution * PMM: Plays a specific role in building GTM strategy and execution for area of focus (e.g. buyer, competitors) * Sr. PMM: Drives GTM strategy work across multiple products, features, or initiatives (e.g. pricing, narrative). Makes recommendations to optimize methodologies and processes. * Director: Ensures the success of the development of GTM strategy and responsible for their teams’ execution of GTM programs. Considers the portfolio strategy (e.g. where a particular launch strategy fits in amongst other launches). Makes recommendations to optimize methodologies and processes.
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Raman Kalyan
Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft 365 Security • December 1
We have different types of product marketing teams: 1. Core product marketing - responsibile for working closely with engineering on influencing the product roadmap and developing the value proposition with associated assets to drive awarness, consideration and adoption of our solutions 2. GTM - responsible for training our field and partners to ensure they understand the value proposition and can clearly articulate it to drive consideration and adoption of our solutions 3. Events - responsible for all first party and third party events where we will be present
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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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Adrienne Joselow
HubSpot Director of Product Marketing • December 6
My favorite example is Adidas video which shoes that yes, a runner can sprint through the desert in Nike shoes -- but a camera man with 50 additional pounds of equipment and wearing Adidas can keep up with him. It strikes the balance between saying, we respect your product and - ours is as good or better. Really clear value, clever approach, not so dimishing as to take away from the credibility or respect associated with Adidas' brand. Companies can absolutely straddle the line. It's about solving a new problem, solving a problem differently, and disrupting the status quo. The way to do this is focus on the benefit / new value you are delivering rather than simply tearing down a competitor. We offer extended value (strong) vs. they're not as good as you think they are (weak). There's a new way to think about this (stronger) vs. they're thinking about it wrong (weaker). The Bounty ad in the above blog also does a great job of this - no specific paper towel brand is the problem, any brand that isn't using Bounty technology is. Compelling stuff!
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Apurva Davé
Aembit CMO • May 25
I think PMM orgs go through phases. When I started in this role we were strictly by product, but our portfolio quickly became too complicated. We moved to more of a segment or sub-portfolio model. At the same time, the rest of the organizations' PMM teams were sub-dividing by objective. In order to match with the rest of that org we had 'ambassadors' to the objective-based teams. Given that PMM stakeholders are typically PM and Sales, I think the best approach is to best align your PMMs with the stakeholder objectives. In most organizations that's by product line or segment.
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Angus Maclaurin
BILL Director of Product Marketing • February 2
Product Marketing plays a critical role in launching products, but it is harder to measure. This question can come up frequently in performance reviews and setting OKRs for the coming year. Product Marketing owns several key areas of product launch - from defining customer needs and key features to launch strategy and target channels. Multiple goals may be binary - Did you do customer research? Did you create a launch plan? The challenge comes when you want to tie these activities to specific revenue results and try to separate what team contributed what percentage. The type of product also has an impact on what gets measured. For some it’s about active usage, or upgrades to premium features, while for others it’s about how many units are moved off the shelf. Product Marketing should help define the baseline goals and track improvements against these metrics as you optimize your marketing and outreach. One of the best options is to create shared goals. Frequently you can see conflicts between sales and marketing when the goals are different. Marketing may reach MQL goals, but sales may complain that the quality of leads were not high enough. The more you can align on the same goal, the more the teams work together to reach your overall revenue and profit goals. Ideally you can get to a point where everyone - from product management to product marketing to sales - are measured on the same target. Then each team can focus on how they can optimize their specific part of the process. In my current role, Product Managers, Product Marketing, and Growth Marketing all have common revenue targets. This enables us to all aim towards the same end goal. We can start with the customer journey and how we can contribute to bottom-line growth. Often it works well to create a prioritized list with all potential tactics back. Then we can easily determine if it’s more important to build a new feature or optimize our email messaging.
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Liz Gonzalez
Zendesk Director of Product Marketing - Global Enterprise (previously NYSE: ZEN) • August 23
PMM can influence several touchpoints across the enterprise sales motion. PMM’s biggest impact will likely vary widely depending on the business stage. Identifying and anticipating the needs of each person in the buying group and building appropriate content and messaging and aligning that to the sales process will be key. Adding value through the enterprise sales cycle can be done in a number of different ways including managing standardized Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, building a partnership with analyst relations team to help drive analyst outlook, and enabling the sales team with a differentiated story that speaks to large business impacts with solid proof points. I’d recommend analyzing your current sales motion today, what’s the biggest area of impact you find? Is there enough pipeline coverage? What are your conversion and win rates, can they be improved? What objections do your sales teams need to overcome? Is your message resonating in the market?
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