AMA: Google Head of Marketing, Cybersecurity, Apurva Davé on Platform and Solutions Product Marketing

I'll focus on the creating great messaging, because frankly that's the most challenging part of the job. Especially given the noise out there with so many products, and so many companies being funded, it's really hard to stand out. I think there are lots of ways to create great messaging, but it all comes from the same place: Great insight into your customers drive great messaging. That's it. So then the question is, how do you get there? For me it means holistically understanding the environmen ...Read More

I think PMM orgs go through phases. When I started in this role we were strictly by product, but our portfolio quickly became too complicated. We moved to more of a segment or sub-portfolio model. At the same time, the rest of the organizations' PMM teams were sub-dividing by objective. In order to match with the rest of that org we had 'ambassadors' to the objective-based teams. Given that PMM stakeholders are typically PM and Sales, I think the best approach is to best align your PMMs with the ...Read More

Think about what matters most to your customer, and then what matters most to your company. Is your base platform something which your customers will natively interact with and drive value from? Is it something that a new user in your target accounts will benefit from (eg, developers) ? Or is your platform something that allows you to accelerate development, so the customer sees more value from the platform faster? Thinking through this will tell you how to build your messaging. While most compa ...Read More

I would argue that, when your product is early (and basic), your messaging and positioning matter more than when you are established. Why? You need to speak to a specific buyer and convince them to care. Your positioning must bring a unique insight (or many!) that bring your buyer/user along on your journey. You must paint a vision for why your basic capabilities will turn into something full featured that solves an incredibly important problem. After all, if you can't communicate it, why would ...Read More

Portfolio: a set of products (which may or may not be connected) that solve a particular type of problem or serve a particular user Platform: a foundational technology that allows you (or others) to build multiple products faster given a set of primitives. Ecosystem: a set of companies that are connected in some way to solve a customer problem Suite: a subset of a portfolio, where there is a set of products that have a common look and feel, some integrations, and likely are bundled together to s ...Read More