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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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 8
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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John Hurley
Notion Head of Product Marketing • December 15
Marrying company objectives and vision with customer pain and value – which is informed by user/buyer research and market research. Leads to themes that will help drive value with company and customers. Within those timebound themes, you have product innovation (bundles of features, new products) that teams will be involved in. So you can think of it like this * Company objectives and vision with customer pain and value > Themes > New/Improved Capabilities > Launches Features do not necessarily mean launch. Here is how I differentiate the two. Releases are the individual features, enhancements, and updates shipped into our product on a continuous basis. Supported by Release Marketing function (ex. Feature Release emails). Product Launches are multi-channel promotion campaigns to announce a marquee release or bundling of releases to the market, generate interest, and illustrate how your product delivers value to customers and the business in significant ways. On Tiering – Here is a summary of how my teams have approached tiering: Tier 1 (New Markets or Product Launch ): New major feature/product that will drive significant revenue by attracting new customers to Amplitude. This set of capabilities or product enables access to new markets or win existing segments by substantially differentiating you from the competition. * 1-2 Per Year, 12-18 Wk Timeline, High Revenue Impact Tier 2 (Differentiation Launch): A large new capability or set of features that can drive revenue primarily from our existing customer base through upsells, cross-sells, and attract new customers by increasing the value of existing products. This affects win rates and helps you differentiate from our competition. * 1-2 Per Quarter, 8 Wk Timeline, Medium Revenue Impact Tier 3 (Painkiller Launch): A capability that solves a major pain point that impacts a large portion of users. Could help drive adoption at one of our top customers. Or is strategically aligned with company key bets. * 2-3 Per Quarter, 4 Wk Timeline, >20% Customers Impacted
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Justin Graci
HubSpot Marketing Fellow - Partner GTM & Product Readiness • November 23
My answer would change depending on what we're talking about (B2b Marketing program vs Sales enablement program). For a sales enablement program: 1. Pitch Deck 2. Product use case glossary 3. Case study 4. Discovery question list or Demo video 5. (this isn't necessarily an asset) Prospecting lists / target account lists w/ enriched data
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Vidya Drego
SmithRx VP of Marketing | Formerly HubSpot, LinkedIn, Salesforce • January 19
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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Jodi Innerfield
Salesforce Senior Director, Product Marketing Launch Strategy & Emerging Products • January 12
For your launch to be a success, ideally you have completed a customer pilot so you have success stories for press; you've built a robust demo org for your sales teams so they can show customers the product; and you've spent time conducting internal and external research to make sure your message resonates. But we don't live in an ideal world :) Other factors that may impact the timing of your launch for a big impact: * What's happening in the market that you can take advantage of? I.e. are there industry events, global trends, etc. that you can use as momentum for your launch? * What events or opportunities are happening internally that make a specific launch timing ideal? Do you have an annual conference? A new campaign launching?
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Stephen Baloglu
Adobe Director of Product Marketing • March 30
Organization readiness can be measured at different altitudes…e.g. Super high level and broad: does the business have the right strategy to win? vs. tactical: are we set up for a successful product launch and meet near-term goals? And points in-between. Let’s assume the big strategy pieces are figured out and set up for success and we’re focusing on the more near-term tactical pieces of a successful launch. There are a few areas that I focus on to assess launch readiness. For all of these, the key is to gain partnership and commitment with your x-functional leaders on the priority and measures of success. 1. Product readiness * Customer voice - Talk to your beta customers. What do they think? What is their behavior, look at the data. Don’t have a set of beta customers? Well, you need to find a way to get real-world insights from your target customers to inform the launch. * Launch metrics - is the product meeting established criteria that have been set to signal product-market fit. This can include things like CSAT or NPS, high-intensity use, performance & stability metrics, etc.. * Scalability - are the product and systems ready to handle the volume and scale of the launch…and then some. You are going to crush the launch, right! 2. Customer Experience * Discovery and customer journeys - do you have the right funnels with a cohesive story/message across the journey that drive customers to whatever you’re launching? At Adobe we do end-to-end experience mapping by a partner team (unbiased 3rd party) to uncover risks and gaps to fill prior to launch. * Product led growth engine- Are you delivering value fast enough, with low barriers to entry as a part of a loop to get customers more deeply engaged? Map this all out and figure out what's critical at launch to keep customers engaged and what you can build post-launch as you iterate on the experience. * Customer support - this includes status content as well as live people helping people in whatever channels you have; phones, chat, community forums, social channels, etc…Do these teams have all the right info to help customers when and if they need it? * Globalization and Culturalization - If this is a global launch, are you serving an experience that is not only localized for language but culturalized to connect with your customers in their local context? Partner with your geo teams to get this right and make the right investments where you can have the most impact. 3. Sales & Channel readiness * Sales enablement content - Have you armed the team with great content? Make sure you have some strong relationships with the sales team and be open to iterating on this content to make it work for the field teams. * Awareness and motivation - You can send your 1-sheeter to the sales team…but that doesn’t mean they’ll use it. Find the opportunities to get in front of the team and hit home why this is important for them and their goals. 4. Data * Analytics - I’ve had too many launches where we’re close to launching and haven’t built the dashboards and fully defined what we’re measuring beyond the KPIs. You’ll want diagnostics to come along with the high-level metrics so you can tell what’s working, and what’s not. Data…do it early and often. * Feedback loops - Do you have the right listening posts pre and post-launch to get well-rounded insights from the market. This can be product telemetry data as well as qual feedback and quant customer surveys. Use this to determine success as well as informing the next iteration and roadmap. 5. Team * Big launches need professional biz ops/program management - Don’t ask the pastry chef to make the soup. Leverage what people are best at…A great biz ops partner will ask the tough questions in an unbiased way, shake out the overly optimistic/unrealistic parts of the plan, and get the right people in the room to solve problems. * Don’t be afraid to get real - Let’s talk Status - The launch is either green or red (all product launches are yellow and come down to the wire…the question is, are you going to make it or not? Is the team blocked? Do they need more resources? If you need leaders to unlock something or make a decision, it’s red. If not, it’s green and you’ll figure it out) Debate this with the team…Candor…ask the team what’s not being said that should? * Team health - Along the way, be sure to check-in with the team on the personal and emotional aspects. Big product launches are most successful when a team is collaborating effectively, with clear responsibilities, committed to the vision, and trimming the boat in the same direction.
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Apurva Davé
Aembit CMO • May 25
Think about what matters most to your customer, and then what matters most to your company. * Is your base platform something which your customers will natively interact with and drive value from? * Is it something that a new user in your target accounts will benefit from (eg, developers) ? * Or is your platform something that allows you to accelerate development, so the customer sees more value from the platform faster? Thinking through this will tell you how to build your messaging. While most companies want the platform concept to take center stage, it might not be right for your customer. Or it might appeal to one audience more than another. Or, your platform might really just be like a "feature" that customers only need to know about tangentially.
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Priya Kotak
Figma Product Marketing • February 23
A common pitfall when trying to improve feature/product adoption is to jump straight into tactics. This often results in emails and in-product messaging that doesn’t have the intended impact, and annoys users. I like to start by better understanding the users that have adopted a feature/product. Ideally, I can look at product usage data in addition to talking to users. I want to know who they are, how often they’re using the feature, what they use it for, and what they like/dislike about it. In addition to understanding the users that have adopted a product/feature, I find it helpful to talk to users that have not adopted. In my experience, this has largely been qualitative — via sending out a survey and talking to users directly. When reaching out to these users, I focus on understanding on whether they know about the feature or not, and if they do, why they haven’t tried it yet. Is there a workaround they prefer? Another product where they’re doing this activity instead? Lagging adoption can be the result of many things (e.g. poor discoverability, lack of product-market fit) — taking a step back to first understand the root cause allows you to tackle the right problem and be targeted in who you reach out to. Example: Recently at Figma, we launched a new product, FigJam, so I’ve been thinking a lot about how to drive adoption. When we first launched in beta, we wanted to better understand adoption from our existing user base, so we surveyed active users and users that had abandoned after trying it. One learning we had was around templates —active users loved and relied on these, while abandoned users identified these as a feature gap. We realized our problem was discoverability, and took action by prioritizing changes to the product UI and creating a template-focused re-engagement campaign.
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