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

January 10, 2023 @ 10:00AM PT

How do you ensure that product marketers you manage are creating great messaging, and hitting the right milestones?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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.

406 Views

2 requests
How do you structure your Product Marketing team?
Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y
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.
1,208 Views
3 requests
When your platform does many things, how do you prioritize your messaging hierarchy?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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 t ...Read More

644 Views

3 requests
How important is platform positioning and messaging early when you have basic product capabilities?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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.

373 Views

2 requests
How does sales enablement change when you go from selling a product to selling a platform?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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 ...Read More

716 Views

3 requests
How is your team making the transition from product marketing to solutions marketing?

Do PMMs share both product and solutions marketing responsibilities? Or do PMM now speak more to the users and solution marketers to the buyers?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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 cust ...Read More

665 Views

2 requests
How can I start making a change in my organization to influence the roadmap based on consumer insights?

I am at a company where Product builds the roadmap without many insights from Marketing or research.

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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.

469 Views

2 requests
Which are the mandatory questions you should ask the company founders when you're empowered to create the Product Marketing function from zero?

I will face this challenge very son and my thoughts are: - which are the company objectives? - which are the marketing and product marketing specific objectives? - the resources in place to achieve the objectives (human, financial, tools) - where is the product on the lifecycle? - top three priorities - how are sales/marketing/product teams organised?
Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y
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?
1,040 Views
2 requests
What internal messaging efforts have helped you shift your company's mindset from a product company to a solutions or platform company? What worked the best? What mistakes did you make?

Jack Wei

Sendbird fmr Head of Marketing | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte, Beardwood&Co • 3y

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 enable ...Read More

469 Views

2 requests

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

View AMA Answers

How do you ensure that product marketers you manage are creating great messaging, and hitting the right milestones?

How do you structure your Product Marketing team?

When your platform does many things, how do you prioritize your messaging hierarchy?

How important is platform positioning and messaging early when you have basic product capabilities?

How does sales enablement change when you go from selling a product to selling a platform?

How is your team making the transition from product marketing to solutions marketing?

How can I start making a change in my organization to influence the roadmap based on consumer insights?

Which are the mandatory questions you should ask the company founders when you're empowered to create the Product Marketing function from zero?

What internal messaging efforts have helped you shift your company's mindset from a product company to a solutions or platform company? What worked the best? What mistakes did you make?