AMA: Klaviyo Senior Director of Product Marketing, Jenna Crane on Self-Serve Product Marketing

Even in sales-enabled businesses, sales enablement is just one aspect of product marketing responsibilities. The bulk of the work is consistent across both self-serve and sales-enabled product marketing teams, such as: * Owning positioning and launch of new products and features * Building, maintaining, and enabling the company on foundational insights: Messaging, competitive intelligence, customer/buyer journeys, personas, proof points, etc. * Creating content that drives revenue and retention: Website content, webinars, demo videos, etc. * Working with Product to shape the roadmap and feature requirements based on customer insights, competitive landscape, and market positioning * Owning positioning and messaging for the company (and the category, if you've created one) Of course these responsibilities differ by company (especially the industry and stage of the company) but those are the main themes for B2B SaaS. Where self-serve PMMs generally 'over-invest' instead of working on sales enablement: * Creating content that convinces prospects to sign up (often website content and videos) * Driving or supporting consideration activities like email nurture flows and/or webinars * Driving adoption and net retention by working on onboarding experiences (in and out of the product), introducing more advanced features to the right customers at the right time, and finding the right touchpoints to introduce cross-sell or upsell opportunities

I've generally seen that the most successful product <> PMM partnerships are based on shared goals, not split goals. Here's what that usually looks like. Both teams should agree on a feature adoption target based on similar features and the scale of the launch. Feature adoption (usually measured 30 days post-launch) is influenced by both launch effectiveness (PMM) and how compelling & easy-to-use the feature is (Product). From the PMM side, adoption success is a reflection of how compelling and resonant the positioning and messaging was, and how effectively the news was shared. On the product side, if it's a feature no one cares about / that doesn't solve a real need, or if it has a high barrier to trying (e.g. it's a paid add-on, it takes a while to set up, or the onboarding flow isn't great), then that will negatively influence adoption. 

I know this situation well; it's the same here at Klaviyo! First, you need to understand the composition of both audiences. Are the self-serve customers smaller businesses that don't need to talk to sales to feel comfortable using the product? Are at least some of them actually enterprise customers poking around in the product before they talk to sales? Is this a product-led company that makes it easy for end users at enterprise companies to self-serve? Maybe a combination of the above? With that in mind, there are some core differences and some potential differences. The core differences: * The buyer journey. Self-serve customers usually don't have long and complex evaluation processes with lots of different stakeholders. Enterprise customers usually have long sales cycles involving multiple different stakeholders. Serving both audiences means you need to invest in both self-serve content (mostly via your website) and sales enablement (pitch decks, one-pagers, training on personas and competitors and objection-handling, etc.). * The onboarding and value-realization process. Self-serve customers need an intuitive, self-driven onboarding flow that helps them not only learn how to use the product, but also realize value very quickly. There's no one holding their hand as they get up to speed, so they can easily drop off (and it's hard to win them back). Don't forget that the onboarding experience is both inside and outside of the product. Meanwhile, enterprise customers generally have more complex and resource-intensive onboarding and implementation journeys, usually led by Customer Success and/or Solutions Architect teams. There's still the potential for failure, but human-driven experiences are generally more forgiving than self-serve experiences. * The upsell/cross-sell motion. Similar to the buyer journey, driving expansion among self-serve customers looks very different than doing so with enterprise customers. In the former you need to use the channels available to you (in product, email, etc.) and ideally surface these prompts at precisely timed moments in the customer journey. Pricing & packaging can also be a powerful lever here. For enterprise customers, upsell and cross-sell happens via the Customer Success team (or sometimes specialized sales teams focusing on the existing customer base), so you need to give them the resources — assets, training, etc. — to effectively have those conversations. The potential differences: * The positioning, messaging, and proof points. Enterprise customers are trying to solve different problems — or at least at different scale — than smaller customers. That means your positioning and messaging, the language you use, the customer proof points, the use cases, and sometimes even the features you emphasize should be different across the two audiences. For each audience, you want prospects to have the same takeaway — "this product was made for companies like mine / people like me." * The product & success needs. Enterprise customers tend to have more complex product requirements than smaller customers, and almost always have more rigorous support needs. This has implications on the product roadmap, your pricing & packaging, and your Customer Success model/staffing. 

Introducing new features in-product is often the best way to drive awareness and adoption, because it's in context of the user's workflow and timed when they're actually thinking about your product (vs. email, social, etc.). Generally speaking, you want to: 1. Make users aware there's something new 2. Provide a product usage fast-lane to users who already 'get it' and want to try 3. Provide additional detail to users who need more hand-holding Here's what that looks like: * Make users aware that there's something new. This could look like a highlight of that product area in the navigation (an icon next to it, a modal pointing to it, etc.), a general modal on the start page, or a highlight on a designated spot where you always talk about new features (a What's New page or modal, for example). Keep this short and sweet. * Link to that area of the product. You want to make it easy for users to jump in and try. * Share more detail about what's new and how / why to use it. If you can, keep this in product, alongside the feature. It can be just a couple sentences, or if you have the real estate you can add a GIF and some step-by-step instructions. * Link to more detail. A help center article is generally a better destination from inside the product than a blog post. Also important — here's what not to do: 1. Have intrusive modals that get in the way of product usage 2. Use language that feels too much like marketing- or sales-speak 3. Always have some kind of promo or call-out running — users get tired of seeing it and will automatically close out of it even if they would have found something valuable 

Courses, certifications, and books can definitely help transition into product marketing, but the best way to learn is by doing. I would see if there are side projects you can take on with the PMM team, in addition to self-driven learning. For courses and certifications: * I typically recommend the PMA. They have a variety of programs depending on how broad or narrow you want to go, and how much time you have. * I've also had great experience with General Assembly; depending on your location they may have relevant product marketing courses to choose from. * There's also Pragmatic Institute, but I haven't heard any feedback there. And my 3 must-read product marketing books are: * Obviously Awesome, by April Dunford * Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout * Playing to Win, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin Good luck!