AMA: Sendbird Head of Product Marketing, Jack Wei on Platform and Solutions Product Marketing

Your platform sits within a hierarchy itself (e.g., working bottom-up, messaging at the feature/function level are subordinate to product, to platform, to suite, to solutions, to corporate, to brand messaging). In other words, messaging cascades downwards from your mission and brand promise. Messaging at every level should map back to the previous level while telling its own story. Follow the MECE principle. Within your platform itself, prioritize the unique selling point. What about it drives the most value for your customers? List the top 3 buckets. Then for each bucket, note down whether it helps your customer unlock "new" value, "better" value, or "more" of the same value. Prioritize new, better, more -- in that order.

Sales enablement programs have to be designed with a hierarchy in mind, just like how there's a messaging hierarchy. You lead with the hero and follow with the supporting cast. Based on the way this question is phrased, I'll assume that the move towards selling a platform (from product) was decided upon for good reason. And it does introduce more complexity: * More platform-type of information * Different packaging (and likely pricing) * Content curation for different teams Where enablement may have been a one-and-done event, it now becomes a continuous program. And the program can be delivered in stages, prioritizing the platform in stage 1 followed by products in stage 2, 3, and so on.

The product marketing team at Sendbird officially transitioned from product to solutions marketing last quarter. I don't see PMMs take on both product and solutions marketing responsibilities in the sense that they're now taking on double the workload. The focus has just shifted from selling product features & functions, towards measurable outcomes and the customer value that our solutions deliver. The desire (and need) to speak with customers is always there. We ran the company's first customer advisory board event during the transition to solutions marketing and were able to get live feedback on messaging, roadmap, and strategy from customer executives.

When the customer nods in agreement with messaging, it's good. When they pull out a credit card or sign the contract, it's great. Ultimately, a product marketer IC, leader, CMO, or CEO can opine on messaging all they want. None of it matters until it's put in front of a blunt customer or battle tested with dozens of prospects.

If your product team ignores product marketing, that can be fixed through better exec alignment, relationship building and proving out collaboration successes in smaller, low stake projects over time. If product is ignoring customer feedback & insights.... run the other direction. Some teams have great intuition and make the right move without any customer feedback. It's rarely repeatable, let alone scalable.

Embrace repetition, and get influential stakeholders on board. I've been lucky to have worked in very collaborative, supportive cultures where any repositioning and messaging was broadcasted at major internal events, then re-broadcasted at subsequent opportunities. For example: * Unveiling: Annual sales kickoff (delivered by PMM) * Follow-up 1: Company all hands 2 weeks later (delivered by CEO) * Follow-up 2: Roadshow at team meetings (delivererd by leaders) * Follow-up 3: Inclusion in bi-monthly enablement track and certification (by Enablement) * Follow-up 4: Company all hands beginning of following quarter (by CXO) * etc. I don't know if there were egregious mistakes, but I would always welcome even more customer feedback.

Not very important. Nail the basics (at the product feature/function level)... make sure they map to the corporate and brand messaging. Once the business passes a certain revenue threshold in your space, then uplevel towards platform, solutions, etc. When you have basic product capabilities, you're likely very early stage with unproven fit and individual user personas who aren't going to think about platform implications for other teams or stakeholders. Nail it, scale it, then uplevel it.

Sendbird is an in-app conversations platform, where we help improve customer retention and conversion through chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs. Our team is structured as follows: * GTM excellence * Market intelligence * Customer marketing Within GTM, there are 3 solutions and a PMM owns each of the solutions. Each solution may include up to 3 products or major areas of functionality. Each solution also has a key performance indicator (KPI) or customer metric it's meant to drive.

* How are products currently released and who's involved? * What does pricing/packaging optimize for and how was it developed? * What's the company's ICP and why? * Who's the target persona and has this/will this evolve? * What type of marketer was the company's 1st marketing hire and why? * What's the founders' ideal ratio of PMM:PM?