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AMA: Okta Former VP of Product Marketing, Scott Schwarzhoff on Messaging
February 6 @ 10:00AM PST
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Okta Former VP of Product Marketing, Scott Schwarzhoff on Messaging
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
A couple to try out. Here’s a combined messaging source doc that I use every time I start working with one of our portfolio companies. Inherited from Citrix days and then adapted over time. Hope it’s helpful! The second one is one I've been working on for a year and am sharing with the Sharebi......Read More
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
First thing, how are you segmenting the market and determining evolving customer needs/priorities? Great news - no product category stays fixed for very long. There’s always some new ’shift’ that the incumbent product category leaders don’t see coming that provides your company with a new busines......Read More
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
I don’t think there are a lot of completely new categories created these days. In enterprise software, most new companies are improving on existing ways of solving the same problems we’ve had for a couple decades. So, the real question, I think, is how to align on a shared view of what the ‘new w......Read More
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
One of the biggest challenges we had in the early days was competing against Microsoft. They are the grand-daddy of identity in that they created Active Directory, which has been the authoritative directory for every enterprise for decades. As you can imagine, they wanted to hold on to this criti......Read More
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
Certainly when a new product has been defined, you want to get out and get a regular drumbeat of messaging feedback. When there are big new releases on features (eg: around the time of your annual keynote), it’s helpful to do a refresh. Or if a competitor has made a big move and you need to asses......Read More
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
I've always been in the product team, so that's the most natural interaction for me. For PM, we'd collaborate on how to position new products. We built a spreadsheet that had product pillars>concepts>key features>'feature rank'>feature flags, price. You may be asking, 'what's a feature rank' a......Read More
2123 Views
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What do you use or do to get people to buy into your positioning plans and consistently using them?
The product marketers job typically revolves around positioning a product. Sometimes, it can be difficult to align sales, marketing, and product teams around your positioning.
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development. Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product......Read More
1129 Views
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
Lots of ways to do this, but there are 'tactical' and 'strategic' ways to measure success. Tactically, setting up metrics-based feedback loops in the go-to-market is key. We used Outreach in our SDR efforts that offers a great, low-risk way to quickly test messaging, we measured content performan......Read More
1559 Views
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
When I was at Okta, PMM was under the Chief Product Officer, so my peer was our head of product management. We had a ‘triad’ model of one PMM, one PM, and one TMM (tech marketing manager) per product for the first 8 years. That worked pretty well as the PM/PMM lead essentially owned the business ......Read More
1779 Views
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
There is a classic fit in / stand out paradox that all companies have. On the one hand, most companies are improving on an existing way of solving a problem, there’s budget for that category, and therefore opportunity to pursue. It’s really, really expensive to create a completely new category as......Read More
1383 Views
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
There’s basically one big one and that’s focusing too much on product/benefit and not enough on fitting the narrative into how a customer views their world, their priorities, and setting the table for the new world. There are all kinds of tools for salespeople to essentially become a consultative......Read More
2243 Views
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Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development. Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product......Read More
1241 Views
1 request
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta) Operating Partner • February 7
Posted this on another similar question, but on the competitive positioning point specifically, I think there's a 'turn' in the narrative toward the end of the story where existing solutions can't solve the problem completely and it's good to have specifics on how your solution is better. But you......Read More
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