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AMA: Veeva Systems Former Director of Product Marketing, Abdul Rastagar on How Product Marketing Represents the Voice of the Customer (VOC)
May 7 @ 10:00AM PST
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Veeva Systems Former Director of Product Marketing, Abdul Rastagar on How Product Marketing Represents the Voice of the Customer (VOC)
Top Questions
How do you drive culture change with market research?
I'm hoping to influence Product and Design to talk to users more and build a clear picture of our user. The team will often refer to themselves as "the consumer" when they're not in our target demographic?
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
This is concerning to hear. Unless you have the next Henry Ford on your design team, this mentality will ultimately lead to a poor product-market fit. That’s not saying that your design team should not have a voice at all – they may have a solid product vision and if they are market experts, the......Read More
1018 Views
2 requests
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
Data should always inform decisions, though it’s OK to supplement it with some qualitative insights driven by observations of market trends. It’s not good enough to simply let the most senior person define the segmentation. Segmentation is relatively easy if you are focused on one specific vertic......Read More
1395 Views
1 request
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
This really requires a dedicated effort and should be owned by Product Marketing. Different industries change at different paces – in some cases, a quarterly review process is needed, in other case, it might be less frequent. It really depends. Product Marketing needs to keep a close pulse on cus......Read More
1451 Views
2 requests
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
Measuring effectiveness around anything, including personas, starts with knowing what the goal is. Why are you building personas in the first place? Some common uses for personas tend to be for message development, sales training, product design or campaign creation. But there are plenty of other......Read More
1711 Views
2 requests
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
That’s a great question. A full, NPS-style VOC program with a closed-loop feedback system is quite complex and requires dedicated people, processes and systems to execute. It’s a major, long-term initiative that should be driven by the C-Suite and has to be part of the organization’s cultural DNA......Read More
1288 Views
4 requests
What role should a customer advisory board have in influencing your product roadmap, and why?
Product marketing owns the customer advisory board but product management owns the roadmap.
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
You’re describing a common situation. Customer advisory boards (CABs) represent an important channel for bringing VOC into your organization, not just for immediate product development but also to understand overall trends in the market. Before convening your CAB meeting, product marketing and pr......Read More
1098 Views
1 request
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
VOC is used in a wide variety of ways. Some examples include guiding product development, building personas, message refinement, content development, targeting campaigns, sales training, educating customer support teams and much more. Most importantly, perhaps, is that it allows your teams to bui......Read More
1026 Views
2 requests
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
First off, nothing beats primary research. Monitoring digital behavior, conducting focus groups, building customer advisory boards, embedding yourself into the customer’s ‘native’ environment, conducting win/loss interviews, visiting clients on site, interviewing your various customer-facing team......Read More
1504 Views
4 requests
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
I think the biggest mistakes with starting a formal VOC program are 1) to do it without truly knowing what the goal is, and 2) to not secure CEO-level buy-in. If you don’t do the first one, then how will you know where to focus or how to measure the impact? And second, if you don’t get that commi......Read More
1062 Views
2 requests
What is the best way for a B2B marketer with a background in the life sciences industry to transition to a Product Marketing role with an organization like Veeva Systems if they do not have direct product marketing experience? Is industry experience or title of 'Product Marketer' more important?
In other words if someone has the life science industry experience + familiarity with cloud operating systems such as CRM, in more of a generalist marketing background, including some responsibilities that cross over into product marketing ,however has not had the title of Product Marketer, what advice would you give them? Would some hiring managers be open to a background such as this within Veeva Systems from what you have seen ?
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
Rather than answering this about my current employer specifically, I’ll say more broadly that it depends on the company, the hiring manager’s specific needs, the corporate hiring philosophy, the employment market conditions and more. That may not be a satisfactory answer but it is truthful. Havin......Read More
641 Views
1 request
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
VOC doesn't have to be expensive at all, it just needs to be programmatic. You can get customer insights from a wide variety of sources, including digital behavior monitoring (campaign responses, website tracking, social media, etc.), customer focus groups and user group meetings, win/loss interv......Read More
1415 Views
1 request
Abdul Rastagar
GTM Leader | Marketing Author | Career Coach • May 7
Going from an individual contributor to a manager is a big step in anyone's career. Everyone has an idea of what the ideal manager looks like. First and foremost, you have to have the product marketing skillset so that you can ensure you are driving your team from a place of excellence. After tha......Read More
1589 Views
1 request
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