AMA: Crossbeam Senior Director Product Marketing, Amanda Groves on Go-to-Market Strategy

Love this question! I also have to call out we love joking about this acronym and affectionately call it "Insane Clown Posse" like the hip hop duo versus the marketing term. BUT for the industry term... I use existing data to inform the define who their ICP IS and who their ICP IS NOT. Good ICPs typically are orgs who: * Use your software (active, increasing ARR) * Love your software (positive NPS, 8-10) * Short sales cycle (depends on industry but typically less than 30 days) * Scales with growth (no customizations needed) * NRR (4+ integrations activated) If you can 10x your ICP, what does that do your pipeline? More importantly, if you know who your ICP is not (and can get to no quickly for detractors) how much healthier is your pipeline? For me, I use our CRM data to identify where I have the strongest penetration in our addressable market, isolate key attributes, and build ICPs from there. Remember, it's just as important to identify who you will NOT go after, as it is to identify who you WILL.

I typically back up departmental asks with customer sentiment (qual) and data (quant). This makes it easier to rally team members around our why and cultivate influence towards a new GTM initiative. For example, recently we decided to issue a new survey that required cross-functional and leadership support. We created a charter for the initiative and documented why the program was necessary, then built a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) to clearly outline responsibilities among stakeholders. The RACI framework helped to build trust, buy-in and accountability across teams while the charter rallied the group around one clear north star.

This is a great question and totally depends on company stage. But for really early companies like seed stage or A-B, I think WAUs can be a solid metric. I also have fallen quite fond of superhuman's PMF survey where they: "How disappointed would you feel if you could no longer use [x software]? Possible choices: * very * somewhat * not disappointed If your org gets on average 40% of survey responses are VERY dissapointed to no longer have your software - that my friends, is product market fit!

A good product launch has the following attributes: 1. Data-backed. You've identified the business need, verified use cases, validated addressable market (and revenue outcomes) and mapped to target audiences. 2. Differentiated. You've researched why this launch is unique, compelling, and meaningful against alternative solutions and the status quo. In other words, you've clearly articulated why anyone should care. 3. Targeted. You've identified who this launch serves, at the right journey stage, and at the right time. This can go as deep or as wide as your data allows - the key is to resonate, and the best way to do that is to meet your audience where they are (when you can serve your solution as an aspirin to their pain). 4. Collaborative. You've trained and enabled your internal teams and stakeholders so they know the value story (sales) and how it works (customer success). Remember, especially in remote work, there are no implicit notions. Make your launch clear, concise, and compelling. 5. Customer-centric. You've completed customer insight sessions, listening tours, and have developed authentic positioning and messaging from the PoV of the customer. If nothing else - prioritize this! 6. Measurable. Define shared goals and outcomes with stakeholders like product, growth or content. Prioritize embedded tracking and instrumentation early so you can track what good looks like and iterate overtime. 7. Iterative. Launches should flow in waves. They are continous and ebb and flow with market lifecycle stages (awareness, activation, adoption, advocacy). Like a painting, a good launch is never finished! Seize the moment(s) with great messaging.

This is a great question. I think you'd want to first conduct a retrospective with stakeholders to understand what is flawed with current GTM strat. Is it target audience? Should you go up market or down market? Or is it the approach? Sales-led, marketing-led, product-led? Price? Packaging? There are a few experiments you can run to isolate the issue, but upon identification, the best way to redesign would be to test the iteration on a small subset of existing market. Assess outcomes. Then broaden scope to transition model overtime.

Try applying elements of the “t-shirt sizing” product methodology within your tiering process. For background, t-shirt sizing helps you map effort to impact. Typically, a team assigns points or t-shirt sizes ( i.e., XS to XXL) to represent a task’s relative effort/market impact. This helps illuminate team capacity, scope, impact, and ownership around projects. To parallelize this practice for product marketing, start by consulting your product manager with these standard questions (or tweak to your heart's desire): Does this feature/product… 1. Provide something our competitors don’t? 2. Solve a new buyer pain point? 3. Solve a new use case for an existing customer? 4. Introduce new functionality that changes customer workflows? 5. Improves functionality or performance of an existing customer workflow? 6. Change the User Interface (UI)? 7. Add new internal tasks/support requirements? For each question, apply a 0 (False) or 1 (True), then calculate the total to automate your corresponding launch tier: Tier 1: 6-7 points. - These are typically big launches that involve innovative, net new functionality that increases market share, domain authority and acquisition. Communication channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, external - email announcement, in-app post, social promotion, website update, sales/cs outreach template, blog post, explainer video/tour, pr/ar, newsletter, and co-marketing campaign if relevant, website update. Tier 2: 4-5 points. - These are typically medium launches with functionality that improves product market fit/net promoter score, retention and expansion. Communication channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, external - email announcement, cs/sales outreach template, in-app post, social, embedded tour, newsletter update, slide update, website update, help doc update. Tier 3: 2-3 points. - These are typically small launches with functionality that maintains market position, parity, and performance. Tier 4: 0-1 points. Communication channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, external - cs/sales outreach template, targeted email announcement, newsletter, help docs update. - These are typically your soft/quiet launches that don’t require broad messaging/awareness. (Pixel changes). Communicaiton channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, cs outreach comm if relevant, help doc update. Channels will also change per targeted launch outcome: awareness, activation, adoption, advocacy.

There are a few key ways you can decide to end a launch and claim success: 1. Attach rate met (hit utilization goal) 2. Next feature iteration deployed (next enhancement is released to improve/expand on original launch) 3. Upsell/expansion rev metrics met I typically like to use attach rate as my north star metric as it's clear and shared with the product team. It also has many influencers making it more attinable overtime.

The core elements of strong, repeatable GTM framework are: * Objective: Backed by data (quant) and customer feedback (qual) insights along with market and competitive research and business outcomes * Measureable: Tied to business outcomes (revenue, win rate, deal acceleration, NRR) * Timely: Meaningful to total addressable market (solving an acute need) * Scalable: Templatized by means of documentation, internal processes, training and enablement

My product marketing team is responsible for bringing products to market so that customers will readily convert. We focus on the bottom of the funnel and expansion revenue. Measurement: We execute on our responsibility by measuring against the 4 As: — Awareness: demand — Activation: usage — Adoption: upsell/expansion — Advocacy: retention/evangelism Focus areas: product launches (full lifecycle e.g., pricing, packaging, positioning, messaging and enablement), competitive & market intelligence, customer marketing (reviews, case studies, surveys), lifecycle marketing, and ecosystem marketing. At a high-level, Product Marketing is the process of bringing a product/feature to market and overseeing its overall success. How it’s different from traditional marketing: A marketing team focuses on acquisition and converting prospects into customers. PMM typically starts at closed/won (bottom of the funnel) and focuses on the 4 As: awareness, activation, adoption, and advocacy for customers. Main Focus: PMMs focus on understanding and marketing to customers, driving demand & product adoption with the goal of creating happy, successful customers. Strategies by product: PMMs drive adoption and usage of the product by focusing on processes such as product positioning, enablement, product messaging, packaging and positioning, buyer personas, metrics, meeting customer enablement needs, and product activation. Tactics: PMMs take an integrated approach to deliver results across the 4As. This ensures customers receive the right message, at the right stage of their user journey and positions the business for growth.

Some KPIs I consider across the PMM remit are: * Core PMM: Platform Adoption, Activation, and Expansion (via product and sales-led motions) * Customer and Lifecycle Marketing: Direct Revenue Attainment + Adoption and Retention * Ecosystem Marketing: Indirect Revenue Attainment + Demand Gen * Competitive Intelligence: Win/loss rate, deal velcity

GTM could very by motion (sales-led, product-led, marketing led) or packaging (free/paid) or persona (audience). GTM could also vary by time to value (long or short sales cycle) or industry segment (vsb, mid market, enterprise). The bigger the client, the more complex the sales cycle - the longer the deal. However if you're down market, you're likely facing more volatility (churn) and a crowded space (lots of competition). Many factors to consider!

My blueprint usually consists of at minimum completing a product marketing brief that consists of: * feature name * description * value props * use cases * audience * packaging/pricing * how it works * help docs Couples with tiering calculation (tier 1-4) you can build a scrappy GTM blue print and execute on tactics with key stakeholders across relevant communication channels.

The big different to me is training, enablement and product localization. Make sure field teams are trained and enabled within geo-targets and materials are localized to support target markets. Ensure security, compliance and privacy regulations are considered given strict GDPR measures that impact marketing programming in Europe. 

It really depends on the channel and material. An email will vary from a webpage or a positioning document. I would encourage you to think about buyer stage (awareness, activation, adoption, advocacy) and tailor your message and CTA by corresponding outcome. For example, a feature release for paying customers should highlight the benefit statements, how it works, and how to get started. Ideal materials would include: email/in-app post (awareness), tour for how it works, help doc for how to get started, and contact/cta for conversion.

The tried and true 4Ps of marketing is a great framework to inform launch tactics. They involve the following four key elements: * Product. The item or service being sold must satisfy a consumer's need or desire. * Price. An item should be sold at the right price for consumer expectations, neither too low nor too high. * Promotion. The public needs to be informed about the product and its features to understand how it fills their needs or desires. * Place. The location where the product can be purchased is important for optimizing sales. Once you've developed an outline to your 4Ps - you can drill into relevant tactics per element. Let's look at an example for PLG Product: Value is realized by trialing basic functionality Price: Upsell/expansion rev tied to advanced use cases or increased utilization Promotion: Meet customers where they are. If PLG - likely in app via post, tour, or banner advertisement. Place: Self-serve trasaction, lower barrier to entry with in-app purchasing options.

The most risky operationalizations in a GTM strategy to me are spray and pray (homogenous) campaigns, broad (not segmented nor sophisticated/suppressed, not segmented (targeted) and not timely (saturated). Basically, if you are not intentional with your outreach that is a huge risk and you'll end up as noise, spam, or worse - blacklisted (and that is a huge risk).

We aim to diversify our revenue strategy with dynamic and compelling GTM campaigns. We use market research from internal and external sources to fuel decisions. Internal market research comes from our harvesting our own customer data to identify areas of penetration and greenfield. We couple these insights with analyst insights to invest in programming. When entering a new market, we test small segments and iterate our way to what good looks like (pricing, packaging, positioning).

Do you have access to a listening tool like chorus or gong? I find when we can't be in the room, listening to how sellers pitch after calls have concluded helps us gain insight on how to iterate or improve on strategy. Another option would be to peruse customer success/support tickets to identify gaps in perceived value. I would also encourage you to ask to join calls as a ride-along or silent observer!

Get positioning reps in early with your champion sellers. I like to create small collaborative pods with sales team members to test new positioning and messaging. I gather their feedback, weave their voice into my enablement materials - and then they train their team on the corresponding messaging so we GTM stronger and consistently.

My most successful launch to date was with a partner (ecosytem is everything!). It was successful because we proactively identified a rolling list of campaign activites and invested in high-quality promotional materials including co-branded explainer videos, gifs, and landing pages. The campaign was a rolling sequence of integrated activities that ran over an entire quarter. It resulted in increased product utilization, press coverage (earned media), expansion revenue, high-quality traffic and most importantly, happy customers.

These are typically small launches with functionality that maintains market position, parity, and performance. Communication channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, external - cs/sales outreach template, targeted email announcement, newsletter, help docs update. For small piel updates, you can think of these as your soft/quiet launches that don’t require broad messaging/awareness. (Pixel changes). Communicaiton channels should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, cs outreach comm if relevant, help doc update.

We have operationalized how we glean market and competitive insights as a team. From internal feedback loops, to social listening apps, to CABs, and Salesforce reports - there's a steady stream of competitve insights piped into PMM regularly to inform our programs. Howeever with knowledge comes power. Remember to build for the people who chose you (your customers) and use competitive info to your advantage (positioning and sales enablement).

Persona! If you're able to research your persona and develop their user cases, value drivers, motivations and goals - the rest (positioning, messaging and sales enablement) will follow. Customers are the ultimate aligner, prioritize actively listening to them, join insight sessions and fuel their voice within your programs.