AMA: Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Jira and the Jira suite, Claire Drumond on SMB Product Marketing

Customer proof. The real question you're asking is how do you get consensus around a lot of opinions. Getting messaging approved can feel like being stuck in a wave pool. It's because messaging uniquely forces uncomfortable reflections like what do we stand for and why will anyone care? You can't know the answers without deeply understanding your customer. And that deep customer empathy is what makes a great PMM. I always go back to the customer's pain points when trying to drive exec alignment, not just on messaging, but everything. At the end of the day -- no one's opinion matters more than the customers. Some tips: * Bring execs & stakeholders to the table during the outline/ideation phase to uncover what they think are the most important value pillars and angles. * Test your main points with customers before writing anything. Use customers' own language when writing. * Show your process, supporting customer feedback, and why you are confident this is the right messaging when presenting.

My PMM team is built like a funnel. Our focus is to land new customers, which we only count when those customers start to pay. Therefore, the job of my PMM team ranges from raising awareness of our brand to getting new customers to upgrade to our paid editions. I have three groups focused on the following parts of the funnel: * Buyer Journey: This team focuses on connecting our marketing efforts at the top of the funnel through to the product. This team is goaled on Day1-6 Daily Active Instances to ensure high-quality sign-ups come into our funnel and they are happy when they get there. The teams' activities include running marketing paid campaigns, SEO, website optimizations, messaging & onboarding. * Core product: This team focuses on keeping our customers informed of new product releases, updating our core product messaging, and partnering closely with our product counterparts on product & GTM strategy. * Monetization & Expansion: This team is focused on driving our upsell motions within the product experience, driving customers from free to paid licenses, and cross-sell driving users to try and use other products and apps in our ecosystem. It's important to note that my team is primarily focused on SMB self-serve motions.

A lot of questions about self-serve PMM vs enterprise PMM activities, so I'll summarize here! A self-serve PMM's day looks very different from an enterprise PMM. Some might even call you a cross between a growth marketer and a product marketer. Here are three of the biggest differences: * Metrics Self-serve PMMs look at funnel metrics. Funnel metrics can (and should) include things like website traffic, sign-ups w/ activation, and purchase (especially in Freemium, your job isn't done with a signup, you have to get people to pay!). These PMMs work with data scientists on understanding data trends to make optimizations to the digital buyer journey. Enterprise PMMs look at pipeline. Enterprise PMMs measure MQLs and SQLs. They work with traditional analysts, sales, and customers to understand trends and make adjustments to their messaging, offerings & GTM activities. * Messaging Self-serve PMMs test fast and fail often. They look at website traffic trends & digital marketing trends, customer feedback, feedback from the field, market trends, and the competition to build and optimize their messaging. Self-serve PMMs know quickly if their messaging doesn't resonate, but the reason why is often hidden within a data trend, forcing these PMMs to validate with customers, while also being data literate. Enterprise PMMs analyze a lot of manual feedback. They rely on the field, customers, competition, analysts, and other more manual inputs to learn and make optimizations to their messaging and enablement. The lead time for trial and error is much longer, but often more clear. * Content Self-serve PMMs build content for our customers (and Google). The primary way to get content in front of the right people at the right time is through Google and the web. If we want to get our message out, we have to optimize for the robots as well as the end viewer -- the customer. Enterprise PMMs build content directly for customers. The primary way to get content to customers is through nurture campaigns and sales. You're optimizing for direct customer behavior vs. what the robots think is useful.

You have a very tall order ahead of you! These two motions aren't nuanced differences -- they are completely different playbooks. Most of my AMA questions are about comparing the two, so I'll summarize the key differences here: The buyer * Often a self-serve buyer is a team lead/director level or an end-user, looking to try out the product to see if it could work for themselves or their team. They are rarely thinking about their entire company's needs. These buyers want to validate the product fast and implement it even faster because it promises to solve an issue they are facing right then and there. They care about quick-time-value, self-driven learning & documentation, community support, and ease of setup. * An enterprise buyer is thinking about the opposite. They are looking for solutions to organizational challenges they are facing now and long into the future. They are often willing to: spend more time vetting all the best solutions through RFPs etc.; to pay for someone else to configure and manage the product; and they care deeply about customer service, not just product experience. Their decision has more lasting implications, like dealing with procurement, a task that no one takes lightly ;) The buyer journey * A PMM building a self-serve buyer journey connects the top of the funnel through to product and everything in between. You only have seconds to tell a compelling story and the feedback you get is a mix of data insights and customer responses. * An Enterprise buyer journey has to take into account human interaction as a content delivery vehicle. There are more direct feedback loops and more room for robust and detailed storytelling. The tactics * Self-serve marketing activities will include paid marketing campaigns, website optimizations, SEO content & blogs, Youtube, PR, online community engagement etc. all focused on driving traffic and signs ups. * Enterprise activities are most focused on that human touch through events, analyst relations, sales, channel, webinars etc. all focused on driving pipeline.

"If targeting entreprise customers requires ABM and a heavy sales movement, is it still possible to do PLG?" It's possible, but it's hard. PLG requires a company commitment to how you build products. A PLG product is focused on user experience for the end-user first and foremost. In a Sales-led company, your product is focused on meeting requirements for your buyer, getting them to install, and keeping them happy (less about the end-user). Think Workday vs. Trello. When it comes to ABM vs. Self-serve -- the same friction applies. Self-serve marketing is often targeting the end-user so they can land, then expand. ABM is targeting a very different buyer (see my previous answer). I say it's hard because how your product team prioritizes feedback from the field is where the rubber hits the road. Are they taking feedback from Sales about how to make the product more compelling to the CTO? Or are they looking at end-user feedback to make the product more engaging, resulting in MAU? As a PMM, you have to prioritize that feedback as well -- what's good for the C-Suite is not always good for the end-user.