Sharebird
Sign Up / Sign In
Ask me anything
AMA Page
Dave Steer

AMA: GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing, Dave Steer on Go-to-Market Strategy

July 13 @ 10:00AM PST
View AMA Answers
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing, Dave Steer on Go-to-Market Strategy
Top Questions
What are the steps involved to create a successful go-to-market plan?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Great question - you'll see the answer is some of the questions/answers throughout the AMA. I'll add a few other steps: First, be intentional about the core working group. Go-to-market can be vast, so it's important that you have key functions (sales, customer success, marketing, revenue opera......Read More
1781 Views
3 requests
Do you have a framework or process for determining what tactics to use as part of your launch?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
This is such an important question since, especially for product marketers, we can find ourselves adopting a tactical cookie-cutter approach, making our marketing bland. Blech. Yes, checklists aligned with tiered products are important in creating a consistent, repeatable workflow (imagine the ch......Read More
408 Views
1 request
How do you use market research to inform priority verticals to go after in your go to market efforts?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
I believe that market insights are the #1 core product marketing capability. Literally everything – from positioning and messaging to the products and capabilities you deliver to the market – flows from insights that you generate via smart, well-run market research. I’ve worked on dozens of pr......Read More
728 Views
5 requests
What are the aspects of operationalizing a Go-To-Market plan that might prove to be most risky?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and executing the strategy in the market. Here’s my list of the riskiest elements and how I solve for them. First, team alignment. In my ex......Read More
1017 Views
3 requests
What are some cornerstone KPIs that product marketers should use for every Go-To-Market strategy?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Product Marketers should, as they say, measure what matters...and what matters is heavily dependent on the stage of the business and product. If you are earlier stage, focus on assessing whether the problem your product is solving is real and important. Good metrics for this stage: Funnel convers......Read More
1040 Views
3 requests
What are the main components of your GTM strategy? How do those vary by product type?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
See answer on core elements of a strong, repeatable GTM framework. These elements -- market adoption stage, positioning strategy, messaging, ideal customer profile, buyer and user personas, trusted customer journey, and use cases -- apply to every product type and create alignment throughout the ......Read More
772 Views
4 requests
As PMM, how do you get buy-in with senior stakeholder in a big SaaS tech organisation to execute your GTM strategy in the region?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
A colleague once told me that Product Marketing is a team sport. I couldn't agree more, and gaining alignment and getting buy-in with stakeholders is a critical success factor in the role. The questioner asks about senior stakeholders, but I think it’s important for product marketers to think abo......Read More
326 Views
1 request
What would you say are the core elements of a strong, repeatable GTM framework?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
There are, of course, several elements so I’m just going to touch on the foundational pieces that product marketers must have in place. But before I do, I have one pro-tip: develop your GTM framework as a narrative. I've found that the activity of writing it out in narrative form helps to create ......Read More
1185 Views
7 requests
What metrics do you look at to say that you’ve achieved product-market fit for a totally new product?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Ah, the elusive product-market fit…what Mark Andreesen once called ‘the only thing that matters’. Broadly, there are two components that I look at: a defined and interesting market with a clear problem to be solved; and a capability (or product) that meets the need in the market. With this ......Read More
1083 Views
5 requests
When organizing a product marketing function, what key capabilities are required vs nice to have?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Part of what makes Product Marketing such an exciting (and sometimes complicated) function is that it can have a wide array of capabilities. The exact capabilities will vary by team and company size, as well as the stage of the company and the business, product, and GTM strategy.  Still, I’ve ......Read More
998 Views
1 request
What are you looking for when hiring PMMs?
Dave Steer
Dave Steer
GitLab Vice President of Product Marketing • July 14
Let me start by saying this: I’m hiring! Check out the GitLab careers page or HMU directly. When I’m hiring a product marketer, I’m looking for a set of experiences that will add to the capabilities of the team – see my answer on capabilities – so the specifics are highly dependent on the cont......Read More
1160 Views
1 request