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April Rassa

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

January 19 @ 10:00AM PST
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HackerOne Former Vice President Product Marketing, April Rassa on Stakeholder Management
Top Questions
How have your product marketing teams traditionally worked with your demand generation / growth marketing team?
At our company, demand gen is a much bigger function than product marketing so they drive all of the campaigns with our input, but I came from an organization where we lead the campaign strategy a bit more since we had more numbers. Anyone have a good solid process they use with their demand gen team?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
Addressed a similar question related to Campaign teams earlier. Please refer to that response.  In short, Product marketing is the vital work of developing a customer lifecycle journey, pricing, sales support materials, analyst relations, and press. Demand generation consumes the outputs from pr......Read More
2482 Views
1 request
What product launch metrics should B2B SaaS product marketers be accountable for?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 ma......Read More
816 Views
2 requests
What does your product marketing team do differently when executing on an account based marketing strategy compared to traditional marketing?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 or......Read More
675 Views
2 requests
How do you prioritize the variety of requests and responsibilities that fall on the Product Marketing Manager?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 with......Read More
512 Views
2 requests
What tips or best practices do you have for convincing channel teams (or other teams) to fund your projects or initiatives, when Product Marketing commonly doesn't have their own budget to spend.
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
Once you have a plan, you can assess the data and determine the financial impact, linking it to a strategic company goal.  The key is to attach to company business objectives and make a business case for why the specific project/or initiatives will drive results and how success will be measured.......Read More
264 Views
2 requests
How do you view the distinction between brand marketing and product marketing?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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......Read More
461 Views
2 requests
Where does sales enablement end and sales strategy begin?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 t......Read More
301 Views
2 requests
What are some effective strategies to inevitably influence the product roadmap rather than simply bringing that roadmap to market?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 yo......Read More
390 Views
2 requests
How does your team divide up the responsibility between the PMM team and the Campaign team? How has that worked for the new products/new markets for existing products that company has wanted to go into, where the campaign team cannot just package up existing asset but needs to create a PoV?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 perf......Read More
503 Views
2 requests
As a product marketer, how do you build informal relationships with your product managers to stay up to date on things in a remote company?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 19
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 ......Read More
376 Views
1 request
Do you approach stakeholder management differently based on the team you're talking to? (Product, Marketing, Sales, Growth, Customer Success). And if so, how?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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 on......Read More
548 Views
1 request
What strategic value can Product Marketing and Sales Enablement partnership drive?
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 18
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......Read More
524 Views
2 requests
How do you split the PMM function vs general marketing function responsibilities, and how do you better manage this relationship?
Not to create divide or silos, but to be able to handover ownership at a certain stage whilst remaining involved
April Rassa
April Rassa
Aventi Group Product Marketing Consultant • January 19
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, the......Read More
1061 Views
2 requests