AMA: Pomerium Head of Marketing, Nikhil Balaraman on Enterprise Product Marketing
May 7 @ 10:00AM PT
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👋 Nikhil Balaraman
Hi all, I'm Nikhil Balaraman, Head of Marketing @ Pomerium:
• 👋 Based in: Oakland, CA
• 🧠 Top of mind: Is less truly more?
• 💬 Ask me about: Whether startups are worth it ;)
• 🍦 Fun fact: I've started a wine label with a few of the sales leaders I've worked with in the past. Who says sales and marketing can't be friends?!
• 👋 Based in: Oakland, CA
• 🧠 Top of mind: Is less truly more?
• 💬 Ask me about: Whether startups are worth it ;)
• 🍦 Fun fact: I've started a wine label with a few of the sales leaders I've worked with in the past. Who says sales and marketing can't be friends?!
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Days 1-30. Senior PMMs need to be experts on the product and sales process within the first 30 days. Especially in the world of Claude co-work, call recordings, etc. data...
370 Views
1 request
How do you develop in-depth product/feature demos when your company rolls out frequent updates? Are there tools out there that can make the update process cheaper/less time-consuming?
Building out our customer education arm and realize our existing product videos are very high level and do not show actual screenshots due to wanting to avoid having to update. Is there a way where we can still show actual screenshots in our overview videos/create feature demos that can be easily adjusted based on updates?
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
There’s a ton of tools that can do this for you, let alone building an AI stack to rebuild these videos for whatever the cost of the tokens consumed are. Especially in th...
357 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Look, sales is always going to do what it wants to do. That doesn’t mean don’t give them new slides, trainings, enablement, etc for new launches. But instead of focusing ...
362 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Product education doesn’t stop with sales, it has to extend to post-sales/account management/CS teams. While a lot of this might be achievable at larger orgs/mature produ...
356 Views
1 request
How would you differentiate a mature enterprise product that is similar to competitive products?
We're struggling to find value added differentiators for one of our products that has been around for 20+ years, for which we've historically been recognized as a market leader. Currently we're losing ground because it's very similar to competitor offerings but at 2x the price. What approach would you recommend from product marketing perspective to to drive sales?
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Riches are in Niches. If your product is functionally similar (and not truly differentiated) to competitors at 2x the price, you have one of three real options, and most ...
390 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
High touch vs. low touch. Buying committees versus single buyers. 7-figure multi-year deals vs. 3-4 figure monthly credit card swipes. Those are some of the differences, ...
377 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
The best way to transition to a new role is not to move companies. If you can find a way to work with the team/manager/peers who are in Enterprise PMM, you already come e...
359 Views
1 request
How do you coordinate and work cross functionally with the product team to create commonly shared KPIs?
Any advice on KPIs tied to product launches?
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Product teams should view PMMs as their distribution channel. What are their needs/wants? Typically to drive awareness and usage of features. For more self-serve products...
408 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
ABM is targeted and in support of the Sales team. Obviously there's more nuance to it, but I think of it as much more mid-funnel exercise. You already know the 20-100 or ...
373 Views
1 request
How do you perform extensive competitive product research?
I've been tasked with it but I'm missing the mark. This research is for the CEO and Product/Engineering teams who want to know how our tech stacks up in the market. Do you have any tips?
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Claude Co-work...How good are your prompts? Competitors are pushing out tons of collateral. It's actually pretty easy now to go grab a few key pieces of collateral...alwa...
557 Views
1 request
Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
Not that much differently than answered above, except maybe to say that you have to build trust across the org. And doing this in a way that doesn't turn you into the con...
373 Views
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Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
As a PMM, I believe one of the most important things is showing business impact…so Pipeline and Revenue. And, typically because of how PMM is staffed, understanding how t...
423 Views
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Pomerium Head of Marketing | Formerly Roofstock, Instacart, Uber, Algolia, Google • May 7
You have to start at the ground floor with a consistent narrative. Company-level positioning, the master deck, the hero one-pager. This is the “I have a first call in 5 m...
372 Views
1 request