Thomas Dong

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

December 9 @ 10:00AM PT
View AMA Answers
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
Very simply become a credible source of synthesized market and competitive intelligence. I'm being very deliberate about the word "synthesized", because in understanding ...
...Read More
1131 Views
1 request
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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 stakeho...
...Read More
1810 Views
2 requests
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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 (roadm...
...Read More
2075 Views
2 requests
What's a good way to approach decisions that UX/design feels they should own vs. Marketing feels they should own?
I've seen this quite a few times when it comes to brand related items both in terms of developing and brand keeping guidelines, as well as tone of voice where design has assumed they should have a stronger say.
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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 ambiguit...
...Read More
1425 Views
1 request
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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 corpor...
...Read More
2259 Views
1 request
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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, ...
...Read More
5686 Views
2 requests
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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,...
...Read More
888 Views
3 requests
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
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...
...Read More
1008 Views
3 requests
What's your approach to competitive differentiation?
How does this inform your core messaging, how do you enable sales to understand what makes you different/better, how do you know if it's working with your target buyers?
Thomas Dong
Agora VP of Product Marketing | Formerly NetSpring, Heap, Couchbase, OpenText, IBM5y
There are many stakeholders when it comes to competitive intelligence and aligning messaging and product strategy with competitive differentiation. I have found an effect...
...Read More
1877 Views
2 requests