AMA: Segment Former Head of Product Marketing, Kevin Garcia on Messaging

1. Make talking to customers integral to their role. By keeping your team as connected as possible to the customer, they will develop 1) sharper intuition and 2) a network of customers they can tap into for feedback on future projects.  2. Give them space to develop messaging that matters. Clean, clear, concise messaging is not every PMMs strong skill. You need to let people work through their messaging, test it in the wild, and hear broad feedback for them to learn quickly what works best. 3. C ...Read More

First of all, I feel your pain! With the company moving fast, it can sometimes feel that your messaging is always playing catch up. In cases where your product and business evolve quickly, I recommend anchoring your messaging on the elements that remain most constant: The market trends around you The top pain(s) your audience feels The top use cases your company solves If you work for a mobile attribution company, your product might change every day. But the growing number of digital touchpoints ...Read More

AI/ML means a lot of things to a lot of businesses. Some companies have high data maturity where AI/ML tools are a vehicle for data science teams to create proprietary value for the business. Others are fairly low on their data maturity (which is fine!) and they want out-of-the-box AI/ML for fairly simple use cases, usually around personalization.The best messaging technique here is clarity. Do the work for the prospect. Is this product for advanced or basic users? Technical users? Does it requi ...Read More

As a rule of thumb, you should always test your messaging. The level of rigor and criteria for success should be sized appropriately the higher you go in the messaging hierarchy.For this answer, I’ll use a pretty simple messaging hierarchy: Company-level: Who are you and what do you do? Use case-level: What problems do you solve? Buyer-level: How do you deliver value to a specific buyer (e.g. CMO)? Capability-level: How do you enable the buyer to get that value? In every case, you will never reg ...Read More

Great question! A great GTM strategy is ultimately focused on driving 1 business metric forward. I'll share an example where a podcast made a lot of sense: We researched our enterprise market to try to understand: Which audiences should we focus on within this broad category and what do those people want? After rigorous research, we discovered that the most relevant enterprises for Segment are those that are doubling down on digital experiences (new apps, new experiences, often called "Digital T ...Read More

Messaging is hard to get right. At its best, messaging is a clear and simple distillation of who you are, what you do, and why it matters. But in my experience, there are a few common themes that lead to missing the mark:1. Trying to connect with too wide an audience. No messaging, no matter how clever or well-written, will resonate with every audience. The act of trying to make it work for every buyer persona, every company size, and every industry eventually leads to generic messaging that mig ...Read More

When you don’t have your own network to tap into, you should get creative to find one. People congregate with like-minded folks on social media, forums, blog newsletters, slack communities, meetups, etc. Find them and see how they talk about their work, their problems, their solutions.  After some digging, you’ll develop pattern recognition on where you can add value. Build a voice with this existing audience in a way that adds value, that goes beyond “look at me” and is much more about “look at ...Read More

I’ve never met a PMM who was able to keep everyone happy. So I’d reframe away from that goal as much as possible. Instead, I like to focus on how to keep your messaging defensible early and often.You’re right that everyone has opinions. But there are a few opinions that matter most: Customers and prospects: They are the lifeblood of your business. CEO (or business GM/leader): They own the company strategy and where you’re going next. There is no better defense than real evidence that your messag ...Read More