AMA: HackerOne Former Vice President Product Marketing, April Rassa on Stakeholder Management

One of, if not THE most direct indicator of a strong product marketing output is product adoption. If PMM’s high-level responsibility is to translate product features into customer value points, measuring the onboarding and usage rates of your products is a critical litmus test for any product marketer. The other key areas also include content and win rates. Onboarding data: At the onset of a contract, are customers using the product as much as you think they should? Are they using all the featu ...Read More

Use customer insights and data to your advantage.  Your customers should be the “why” behind your product vision and at the end of the day, there shouldn’t be anything that goes on your roadmap that doesn’t help address customer pain and solve their problems. Maintaining customer focus within your roadmap also means not wasting your team’s valuable time and resources on features that will have no impact. Investing time into meticulously prioritizing your customer’s needs and coming up with real ...Read More

Brand marketing and product marketing perform very different roles in a company’s overall brand strategy, but when done well, they work together seamlessly to create a brand experience customers can trust. Let’s start with a basic analogy we use when helping a company create or improve its brand: a brand is like a person. It has a personality. It has strengths and weaknesses. It has goals. It has a voice. Now, this person also makes things. But you can see right away that it’s one thing to talk ...Read More

PMMs are experts on the “who” (i.e. target personas) and “why” (messaging for these personas) while Campaign is the expert on the “how” (channels/tactics to reach these personas). If the two teams take a collaborative approach on everything from brainstorming campaign themes to execution and performance tracking, it usually leads to great outcomes and a shared purpose. Our PMM team works very closely with our Growth/Campaign teams in terms of quarterly planning including content strategy, themat ...Read More

This will continue to be an ongoing challenge for those in Product Marketing. Because this role sits at the nexus of all the functional teams within the organization, its easy to get pulled into the "problem du jour" and try to address it. It starts with defining the mission of the PMM team within the organization, the key areas the team will own, and areas where it can be an advisor but not a driver. Define the key priorities for the PMM team (this can be KPIs or OKRs) and get alignment across ...Read More

The key is to clearly define roles and responsibilities within your Marketing organization. For starters, let's start with where Product Marketing fits in. Product Marketing operates at the center of product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Under the general marketing umbrella, there are many teams that are dedicated to the tactical areas of marketing: digital marketing, PR, email marketing, PPC and paid advertising, social media marketing, etc. But who creates the overarching stra ...Read More

Yes! When approaching stakeholder management, it's key to accurately identify who your stakeholders are to cultivate and nurture strong relationships successfully. You'll want to fully understand the unique points of view and needs of your stakeholders. Like any solid relationship, it requires ongoing strategic engagement and effort. You’ll need to determine the best way to involve and communicate with each of your stakeholders to earn their buy-in and support. One way to do this is to create a ...Read More

Traditional B2B marketing is often done through broad-reaching campaigns. Most marketers try to get their word out—as far and as wide as possible—by leveraging different marketing channels: owned, earned, and paid. The objective is to cast a wide net and put out as much content as possible, in order to act as a marketing magnet and draw a large number of leads into your funnel. On the other hand, account-based marketing (ABM) is in many ways the exact opposite. It’s about getting all your resour ...Read More

Product marketing and sales enablement teams share an ultimate goal: to help sales teams sell more. Each team has an important role in driving revenue. Product Marketing focuses on developing content assets for the sales team to use throughout the buyer journey, and Sales Enablement ensures reps know how and when to use that content to deliver great buyer experiences and close more deals. Product Marketing and Sales Enablement are most effective when they're working with each other, rather than ...Read More

Sales enablement is about people and technology, and strategically aligning them both behind a common goal: sales successes. It helps organizations streamline sales cycles by improving buyer interactions with better, more relevant sales content and equipping sales teams with the tools they need to be more informed and productive sellers. When executed properly, sales enablement has a measured impact on time spent selling, win rates, and deal size.  But before we can enable sales on how best to a ...Read More

If your organization uses Slack, set up "Donut" time. Or simply set up 30 minutes monthly 1:1 with your product managers. It can be informal, build relationships. If you see a report that may be relevant to their specific product area, share it with them. If a customer insight is relevant, share it with them. Build trust and credibility and get to know your product managers personally. What are their hobbies? Do you share any interests? People are people, so get to know the people you interact w ...Read More