AMA: Motive Head Of Industry Marketing, Sina Falaki on Industry Product Marketing

Product based differentiton is gone. Get rid of the problem - solution approach. Brand differentiation is now key. A company story should align to the buyer: * Show the industry trend and market shift * Talk about the threat * Story the dream The journey is constantly evolving and changing, for example, b2b smb customers now expect a b2c like experience (self service, fast sales cycle, quick checkout). Segmented messaging and targeting is necessary and relaying messages that administer value has shifted the landscape from a "catch all" b2b lead generation approach to quality. Identify potential customer touch points Buyers ultimately expect personalization to their needs, value driven content mapped to the buyer journey, and preferences along with immediate responses followed with a sales rep who understands their pain. Value and solution selling across the funnel is the emerging trend that will soon became the norm. * Provide a solution to a problem * Key in on value propositions and solution marketing Integrating the customer experience and creating a consistent experience across touchpoints is key. Product marketers must adopt a more strategic approach to campaigns, partner experiences, and key in on the enrichment phase of the customer lifecycle - understanding how the prospect interacts with your website, product, ads, and even partner applications, across the entire lifecycle, whether its direct or indrect - from early in the buyers journey to customer succces, locking in on value and solution messaging will be crucial. * Upselling / Cross Selling during land expansions will be needed, especially if you have multiple products. As platforms became a necessity to ensure productivity and profitablity across organizations, also being aware of the partner experience will soon explode in value - customers are now coming from all angles, traditional and digital, and through channel marketing, messaging must be hyper aligned to their needs. * Ensure your customer success is fantastic - this is critical and an utmost differentiator in most companies. Implementation and support should be a leading value propsition. * Customer reviews are the new gold. Especially for SMB - once you go upmarket, analyst publications and gartner quadrants will be crucial to ensure trust. * Post sale success is crucial - Key in on retention and engagment strategies. * Integrate internal tech stacks and construct omnichannel campaigns - target specific segments and channels with the right messaging once you can fully understand the buyers journey.

In the early stages, as teams are starting to get built - trust and dividing responsibilites is the biggest factor in ensuring alignment, especially between PMM's and PM's. How do you build trust and clearly divide responsibilities? Communicate and clarify your end goals. Align on goals - Ownership from both teams is necessary. Product Marketers are customer and market facing, while PM is developer and product facing. PMM's must ensure product adoption is critical and their highest priority. Marketers must align product packaging and messaging with market demands and PMs must align requirements. Teams must have shared goals, product deliverables should be married to marketing deliverables that speak to the customers desired response. Having one end goal, that is strategic and not tactical, allows both parties to work together to drive the products success forward. KPIs - Divide KPIs between both teams whether its customer or product oriented. Product managers care more about usage and customer satisfaction while product marketers drive growth and retention. Create a clear set of KPIs and get buy-in from internal stakeholders and partners. Product marketers must always have metrics attached to their launches, its the only way to ensure there is accountability and more importantly, showing the PM team you too are in it with them. Market research - provide visibilty into market conditions, sales, customer feedback, and industry research is prevelant. Consistently share this information with PMs in order to help shape the products trajectory and success. 

Product Marketing and Industry Marketing should both own: * Deep category knowledge: ICPs, personas, and competitive * Pitch deck, demo script, demo video, customer stories/heros, campaign messaging * Voice of the market * Competitive insights * Win/loss * Inputs on Pricing & Packaging Where it differentiates with Product Marketing is: * Category & Product Positioning & Messaging * Value story, strategy, training on message, pitch decks * Launches * Demos * Category advocacy Industry Marketing should then own: * Segment & Solution Positioning & Messaging * Pitch deck, demo story, campaign messaging, training on messages. * Audience-specific & product launches tied to solutions * Audience advocacy * New segment and industry entry

A company that has multiple products, different buyers, and leans towards vertical SaaS needs solution oriented messaging in order to speak to the aspiration of the buyer. In this case, industry marketing is a priority to build. When you speak to value and pain of the buyer vs product centricity per industry, you're message not only becomes authentic, but you're speaking to a critical path for the buyer to succeed, their aspirations, their problems, and you paint a vision which shows how they can be succesful. This type of messaging naturally requires more than one product as the pain involves multiple products in order to solve their problem, all wrapped around a single message. Typical product marketing is naturally focused on the product, and because of this, makes it very hard for traditional product marketers to pivot into this solution oriented messaging. 

Storytelling, bringing the customer vision to life, and having a wide variety of skillsets (I always love ex-entrepreneurs) is vital for an industry marketer to be exceptional. The industry marketers job is to bring the buyers vision front and center. A key difference here is that product marketers are more focused on ensuring the product is the centerpiece; Its features and benefits are all around the product, not the customer. Solution marketing, which ties into industry product marketing, brings value driven messaging to life and the product is the support for the message. Messaging is around moreso what the buyer needs and wants. A good industry marketer will be able to wrap around multiple products and at times, partners, in order to package them together to effectively communicate and ellicit the needs of the buyer. Often times this leads to higher ASP per deal due to "packaging" different products around a single message.

In a proper program, Industry Marketing & Campaigns have joint ownership of communicating the right messages, in the right channels, at the right time, in order to build pipeline and win NARR. I say this as a preface because Industry and Campaign leadership should work together to: * Establish business objectives * Set targets, goals, and key intiiatives * Help with cross-industry efforts This should then yield to: * Pipeline generation * Open Pipe * NARR As such, they should hold each other accountable for the primary areas of responsibility, be able & willing to step up and help the other when appropriate, and escalate challenges as necessary. Industry Marketing metrics to look at: * Global NARR * Rep Productivity (monthly) * ASP (monthly) * Close Rate (monthly) * Cycle Time (monthly) * Market Penetration (quarterly)

As an industry marketer I am mostly concerned around the sales cycle, ASP, win rate, content performance, and rep productivity. Good enablement, marketing, and content, should shorten sales cycles and drive how things are leveraged ie case studies, whitepapers, solution briefs, and blogs. Often times good enablement will measure these variables continuously on a rolling basis and will work closely with industry and product marketers in understanding training gaps.

You must first: * Identify overall approach for alignment with brand and company priorities * Identify primary target segments for programs * Determine program-specific messaging * Communicate plans to stakeholders From there an Industry marketer must then define: * New market opportunities * Define overall messaging & positioning & personas * Win / Loss analysis * Market segmentation and sizing * Competitive intel gathering + analysis From there you then execute on the measurement and reporting: * Training: Messaging by solution and sub-audience * Messaging: Messaging by Segment/Marketing type * Content: Top level or big rock content creation (e.g. blog posts, case studies, webinars, etc) * Buyer persona and ICP Profiles * Launches through solution based marketing * Competitive analysis and training * Webpage content and messaging

Industry KPIs should encompass sales and marketing performance. Sales and marketing teams need alignment on pipeline, revenue goals, and rep productivity. In many instances, when a proper solution marketing team is created, KPIs should encompass market penetration and sales performance. Even if quota isn't tied to the industry, benchmark figures must be baselined to grow off of: * New Logo ARR * Cross Sell ARR * Rep Productivity * Upsell ARR * Close Rates * Cycle Times * Pipeline All of this then translates to: * Drive pipeline and top-line revenue growth, inclusive of new logo and cross-sell / up-sell (land & expand growth) * Partner with Enablement * Prioritize, open, and adapt to new markets (both countries and buyer types)

Most organizations do not properly understand solution and industry marketing - mainly because it is different from how the company currently operates. Industry marketing requires a different GTM approach than a product focused company. Some companies may benefit from having a product, solution, and industry team that is part of product marketing while in other companies, especially if you have multiple products and solutions encompassing different target customers, industry and solution marketing is its own discipline and a bigger priority. Solution marketing (customer centric) will encompass the entire breadth of products, services, and whatever else is needed (partners) to solve the customers pain. A major value for solution marketing is that you put yourself in the shoes of the customer, understand their POV, and give them solutions that solve their problem. Product Marketing (product centric) is complimentary to solution marketing ie product centrict vs customer problem centric. Product Marketing focuses more on the benefits of the product and features. There are instances where customers need a single product, that is where product marketing is a fit. Even in a company with multilple products and solution marketing is the norm, customers often want to buy single products, that's product marketing. Industry marketing is customer-segment centric (oil & gas, construction, food & beverage, etc) ie how do you message and segment each vertical in order to derive product market fit. Solution marketing is the stem and message that solves the customer problem that intertwines with industry marketing. To increase marketing effectiveness, companies must establish teams of industry marketers to solve customer problems. 

A firm grasp on the market, understanding sales, empathy, great copywriting, amazing storytelling, understanding of campaign operations, an entreprenurial spirit, and leading with solution marketing is key to being a succesful industry marketer. In my opinion, a great marketer is an ex-salesman. Marketers should always be trying to sell and close, this allows them to create the best possible collateral and pitches for sales teams. You must be keen on directing and developing target markets, segmenting & positionining, and eliciting customer feedback at all times. Leading product marketers through campaign strategies, creating demand for the product, and increasing sales and market traction are foundational skills. Work closely with internal stakeholders, gather a good amount of experience in product marketing, and try to be an SME in a particular market. You should also truly hone in on communication, written, analytical, and research skills to be effective. During interviews a candidate can set themselves apart by doing the following: * Demonstate your understanding of solution marketing * Understanding sales ie sales cycles, pitching, closing * Walk the interviewee through a detailed GTM plan (massive points for unorthodox and out of the box strategies) * Show how you have worked with demand generation and campaign teams * Cross collaboration across departments ie how have you worked with sales and customer succes? * Understand a marketing funnel inside and out, and how certain stages map effectively to a buyers journey

The focus should always be on the needs and wants of the customer. Storytelling needs to be at the center and strategy should be based on customer problems and marketing should align to the solution. Industry based marketing should be a priority once product market fit has been established across an intiial target market. Targeting subsets of customers by vertical and segment is key in order to align value based messaging with customer pain. Creating seperate marketing strategies allows for accelerated growth instead of a one message approach across industries that falls flat. Once you start segmenting based on needs and preferences, is when the fun starts and the true growth happens. This requires extensive customer research - truly understanding what they care about most, and then aligning the messaging and marketing to the correct channel. 

Always remember - be a storyteller and understand your customer through and through. Highly recommend Aaron Sorkins masterclass on screenwriting, it gives a fantastic framework for storytelling. I typically read and listen to thought leaders that are customer centric, almost to a fanatic sense. With that being said, its also important to be well rounded as an industry marketer, reading and listening to things outside of marketing helps understand the bigger picture. I see the role as revenue focused and highly strategic, and tend to surround myself with content that emodies it (sales/cro books, operation strategy, and so forth). In this list of books, I've omitted a few that I think are foundational books, which if you're reading this AMA, you've read (Crossing the Chasm, Blue Ocean strategy, etc): 1. Loved: How to rethink marketing for tech products 2. Sales Acceleration Formula 3. Behind the Cloud 4. Ogilvy On Advertising 5. Managing Oneself 6. Ultimate Sales Machine 7. Cashvertising 8. The Boron Letters 9. Hooked 10. Influence (all marketers should read this)