AMA: Heap Former VP Product Marketing, Thomas Dong on Stakeholder Management

I have been fortunate to work for CMOs who have a firm grasp and strong working knowledge of all aspects of marketing. Often times you run into CMOs who only know brand, or only DG (or for that matter, only PMM), and the results can be disastrous. My past bosses have structured our marketing teams into three distinct pillars: Product Marketing, Demand Gen, and Corporate Marketing. The roles and responsibilities are quite clear, but keeping communication open is essential even within our own mark ...Read More

Very simply become a credible source of synthesized market and competitive intelligence. I'm being very deliberate about the word "synthesized", because in understanding the target market, we must understand and convey customer needs at large, not just echoing the loudest customer or citing the most recent competitive loss, customer meeting, or analyst conversation. That was probably already happening before Product Marketing showed up! Then as a trusted source of market and competitive insights ...Read More

Become the driver of GTM strategy. Going back to the corporate trinity: Sales, Marketing and Engineering, a sound GTM strategy informs Engineering on what to build (roadmap), suggests to Marketing what messaging resonates and where and how to reach our targets (campaigns), and helps Sales focus their efforts and find repeatable success (sales plays). This all begins with a strong foundation in persona-based marketing. The key is to drive consensus at all levels and across all functions on: 1) Wh ...Read More

Set a consistent expectation for what messaging entails. The best way to do that is to establish a common messaging platform you can use regardless if you are messaging a solution, product, or feature. Here is a sample messaging template. Filling out this templates ensures consistency and forces completeness every time new messaging needs to be developed and approved. The template requires details on target market/opportunity which provides critical context and aligns your messaging to the relev ...Read More

There are many stakeholders when it comes to competitive intelligence and aligning messaging and product strategy with competitive differentiation. I have found an effective model where PMM is the the driver, although any of the contributors could also drive. Regardless, it is a joint effort across at least PMM, PM, Presales and Sales Enablement (some larger enterprises like IBM have dedicated, centralized competitive program offices). As the driver, PMM can focus on arming the sales team with u ...Read More

It's not so much surprises, as it is the scope of opportunities to improve sales and marketing effectiveness. PMM generally brings stability and consistency to messaging, so where I have built the organization from the ground up, PMM has played a crucial role in helping Sales better replicate success and scale revenue. The website often needs a redesign to realign with crisper positioning and messaging, Demand Gen may need to be redirected on who (and where) they are targeting, and you'll almost ...Read More

Whoever controls the budget for the website owns the strategy, and that is typically Demand Gen since the website is the foundation of digital marketing. However a corporate website serves many different audiences and purposes, thus the role of the web manager is to coordinate the requirements of multiple stakeholders, including PMM (product pages), Business Development (partners page), Finance (investor relations page), HR (careers page), etc. As the driver of GTM strategy, in addition to the p ...Read More

While I see PMM as the flywheel of the corporate trinity: Sales, Marketing and Engineering, and view our influence and relationship with all as important, the one stakeholder relationship tied most directly to corporate success is with Sales -- and Sales Enablement in particular. Unless Sales is successful selling, there is no need for Marketing or Engineering. In driving GTM strategy, PMM can ensure repeatable sales success, so that reps can focus solely on selling. So very practically, our wor ...Read More

PMM is a highly collaborative role and I've found that if you define a DACI model: Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed, you can help remove some of that ambiguity upfront. A single approver (likely the CMO in this case) can broker any debates in order to make timely decisions. Then if someone in Marketing (be it PMM or Creative) is the single driver of brand, when UX/design is clearly identified as a contributor, they not only have a voice in the decision, but are executors of the brand ...Read More