AMA: Vanta Head of PLG Product Marketing, Madison Leonard on Self Serve Product Marketing

Land and expand is music to my ears! Growth for PLG companies focuses on word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer sharing, both organic and strategic. Example of organic word-of-mouth sharing = mentioning slack in a product marketing discord group. Example of strategic peer-to-peer sharing = slack prompting me to invite users during onboarding, and I do. However, this can be utilized internally as well for a bottoms-up adoption movement! I call these folks "champions" - they are deep lovers of the platform and want others to benefit, too. We can leverage these champions through in-product growth loops (e.g. prompts to invite your coworker) as well as strategic expansion initiatives such as CS-led adoption campaigns or change management support. The truth is, this takes a long time to do effectively so strap in for the long haul! The best metric I can recommend for expansion is called product-qualified-lead. This is essentially a scoring system that is determined using the following information: * Size of the company * Persona/ICP match * Usage triggers Using Slack as an example, let's say that Pam is a product marketer at Salesforce. Pam created a Slack workspace and added her product marketing team. As she continues to use the product, she's finding that her workflow is inhibited by context switching between meetings/email and Slack - this makes it difficult for her to stay on top of product teams as they are nearing a launch in addition to wasting time relaying this information back and forth. Pam decided to add Jim, her product management counterpart, to her Slack Workspace since they are a few weeks out from a product launch. In that time, Pam and Jim experience the value of contextual conversations in Slack. Jim tells the rest of the product team and they join the following week. Pam and Jim match Slack's ICP criteria. And while they only have about 10 folks on Slack right now, using enrichment data we can see that they are part of a massive enterprise organization. Lastly, they are using primary features of Slack that indicate upgrade-readiness. These things in tandem push an automatic notification to Sales and Success teams to begin expansion playbook (also developed in tandem with product marketing teams). TLDR: 1. Identify your ideal customer, company size, and usage triggers to indicate expansion readiness 2. Implement an automated way to pass this information over to Sales/Success teams 3. Launch an expansion playbook to simplify change management, bottoms-up internal selling, etc. 

Great question - this is very common in today's PMM landscape. There are 3 main product marketing differences: 1. Target audience 2. Messaging 3. Value prop For self-serve products, the target is usually focused on the individual user. Therefore, the messaging and value prop is focused on simplicity and solving their immediate problem, which in return helps them do their job better or faster. However, when selling to enterprises, the target audience is usually the buyer. Keep in mind - the buyer often times is NOT using the product every day. Therefore, the messaging and value props are focused on the future-state of the business and results in more revenue or saving time/money. I talked about this in detail at Product Marketing World in Chicago - you can watch the video from my talk here: https://youtu.be/Mbd0pUO1HXs

Self-serve products are focused on the end-user rather than the buyer. Traditional product marketing in a sales-led organization focuses on positioning the product to buyers and enabling sales. However, self serve product-led organizations focus on positioning to individual users with specific use cases, and the enablement work can often times lean more heavily with marketing teams. 

Utilize product data for quantitative insight. For example, how many people clicked through the in-app product tour? Utilize surveys and interviews for quantitative insight. Extracting qualitative insight from interviews is a special skill to hone - you've got to think critically and analyze patterns in real time to make the most of it. Surveys are great for snapshots, but they do have a low response rate so come prepared with a reward! Big fan of Pendo for self-serve analytics. I've used Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, TypeForm, etc in the past for surveys. Customer interviews need to be recorded - you can use zoom recordings or Chorus/Gong as well. 

Think of onboarding as a path towards value. Product marketing, growth, and product should all work together to make the time to value as short as possible. The end goal is always to get the user "activated" (also known as the aha moment). So the first question your product team should be able to answer is --> how do we define activation in the platform? Once that north star is identified (and validated), all work you do on onboarding will be guiding that user towards activation. If we use AirBnB as an example, and assume that activation is defined as booking a stay, then you can trigger an email nurture sequence if someone created an account and browsed listings but never booked. The end goal is to get them to book, so all of your CTAs will be focused on that. When talking with customers who have gone through your existing onboarding but have not returned, I would ask them the following: 1. When you first heard about [product], what did you assume the value would be to you? 2. Did you receive this value when you created an account with us? 3. Ask them to screen share and point out what the most valuable feature is. If they are unable to point to anything, direct them to click on the activation feature but then fall silent again as they go through the experience themself. These questions will teach you a few things: 1. Is there a disconnect between how we're messaging the product (perceived value) and the value they actually receive in the product (experienced value)? 2. Does the existing onboarding flow drop the user off at the activation feature? If not, how can we implement in-app tours or pop ups to help them navigate there? 3. When presented with the activation feature, where are the gaps in knowledge? Sometimes if a feature is flexible and not prescription, the user may need help imagining how to apply that feature for their use case/persona. Once you have clarity on the above, it should become clear which levers to pull (email, in-app messaging, tours, etc), when they should be utilized/triggered, and what messaging and educational resources should be presented along that journey. I do want to heavily stress that without activation defined and validated with testing, all work you do on onboarding improvement will be a timely trial and error process - so, it's really important to start with that! Best of luck!!

The product roadmap is ever-changing! It's never too late to voice customer feedback. Most importantly, make sure to document your findings are provide visbility. If these conversations are just happening between the PM and you, expand the visibility to include others! I like to talk with at least 5 customers per quarter minimum. In addition, I record these sessions and share it with the product and marketing teams with a recap of the highlights. Lastly, whenever you have wins, include how customer interactions were vital to your decision making process. This allows others to see the benefit of talking with customers, which is especially helpful if you don't have too much buy-in on frequent customer interviews. 

This should be decided before a launch plan or GTM strategy is crafted. Always have a north star! Whenever possible, I recommend following this guide: 1. Identify the target audience and the pain point they encounter (Product owned) 2. Develop a solution to the individual's problem (Product owned) 3. Hypothesize the outcome of the new product (Product and Product Marketing owned) 4. Tie it back into business goals (Product and Product Marketing owned) 5. Develop a plan for launch that ties back into your north star metrics Once these 4 things are established, it's easy to identify if you should be focusing on product adoption with existing clients vs driving new business. However - it doesn't mean that you can't expand your GTM Strategy to include both! For example, if you have an Enterprise contract close to the finish line but they won't sign unless there's a certain feature in your platform, oftentimes you can close the deal under promise of building that new feature within a certain timeframe. For the initial launch, you're just focused on delivering what you promised. However, you could also craft a larger GTM Strategy if you find that other prospects or existing customers could benefit from it too. I would focus on data collection - talk to prospects and existing customers, plus look at market trends. If you see a pattern, it's possible this new product/feature could apply to others as well!

Great question. To clarify, self-serve product marketing still needs to enable sales teams. Just not as frequently as sales-led organizations. Typically, self-serve products have a tiered pricing structure that includes free/trial, premium, and enterprise with limits around seats, usage, storage, and/or specific features. For those who sign up for free or with a trial, there's a ton of self-serve value and education that rests on the product marketing team. For this base tier, success comes in the form of retention and conversion to paid (which for freemium plans, is only about 5% on average). This means focusing on onboarding, active and inactive nurture emails, feature updates or release notes, customer marketing, review site management, and working closely with marketing teams to develop product-specific content across social, blogs, landing pages, and paid acquisition. There's definitely tons of work to be done, but the level of work depends on your company size. For example, smaller organizations usually don't have a dedicated customer marketing manager, so PMM adds that to their responsibility. The biggest overlooked skillset of a PLG product marketer is their ability to plug into marketing acquisition strategy. Specialty roles like paid marketing or social media are focused on very specific outcomes. They are not expected to have deep product knowledge. This is where product marketing steps in to help guide messaging and graphics specific to each individual user persona and use case. One persona could have multiple use cases, so this really adds up! 

I love using NPS! I'm also a big fan of getting product feedback in the form of star rating, thumbs up/down, etc. Users have little patience for long surveys, so it's our job to be really strategic with WHEN we ask and HOW we ask (p.s. keep it simple!). IMO, NPS should be owned by whoever is responsible for retention optimization. Usually this falls into growth or product. Otherwise, you'll have division between NPS collection ownership and execution. Then, you can utilize data from NPS responses and cross reference with usage data and churn indicators to see who you should reach out to as a follow-up. 

PLG product marketing is focused on the individual user, whereas sales-led product marketing is focused more on the buyer. However, I will say that most PLG companies mature into utilizing both product led growth and sales led growth together. For PLG, the messaging is more focused on solving the individual user's pain point, ultimately helping them to do their job better/faster. These users are going to be using your product often and are looking for a specific solution. However, sales-led product marketing is focused on thought-leadership positioning about the future state of the business/industry. Usually, buyers are not going to be in the product that often and so they are looking for solutions that save time/money or increase revenue. 

I'm a big fan of in-app guides and tours. And from my personal experience, it usually outperforms email. Everything should be crafted with the best user experience in-mind. After you come up with a wireframe for the flow, ask yourself these questions: 1. How does the user discover this in-app tour? (is it hidden behind a trigger, such as navigating to a certain page?) 2. Does this guide/tour compete with or compliment other tours? 3. Is the tour broken up into bite-size pieces? (I recommend less than 6 guides in a tour) 4. Is it annoying or interrupting my workflow? It's all contextual, too! If you're launching a tier 1 new product, you probably want to draw attention to that when the user first logs in. However, improvements and lower tier features don't require something as flashy. I love contextual tooltips and badges to nudge the user when it's convenient for them and doesn't disrupt their workflow.

Oooo this really depends on so many factors! Is your organization focused more on product-led or sales-led growth? Do you have a Growth Product division? etc.. IMO, yes. Product, Growth, and Product Marketing teams should all co-own adoption KPIs, especially for large tier 1 features. Here's why: if you have no say over how a feature is implemented, why are you then solely responsible for adoption? I see that as a recipe for disaster where Product teams create whatever they want and aren't responsible for the outcome (i.e. it's the blame game of marketing). Adoption should focus on two parts to be successful: 1. Getting people in the platform (e.g. email, press, social, etc) 2. Adopting the specific feature (e.g. good UX, in-app guides, etc) Product Marketing teams can easily do #1, but if the adoption experience inside the platform isn't optimized it will be wasted efforts! 

Personally, I hate mini projects for strategic roles and think they should be abolished altogether. The only exception to this rule is internal transferring, esp if you have no prior experience in that type of role. I prefer that prospective candidates put together a presentation on a previous strategy they've built. Presentations are a must-have skill for any product marketer, so this is a great test to see how well they tell the story and if the messaging sticks. Presenting previous experience ensures that you're getting the best from your candidate. They should be experts on that industry, the users, the problem/solution, etc. You should be able to ask them any question, no matter how detailed, and they should be confident in providing a thorough answer. If you were to ask those same detailed questions about a mini project for a product and industry that is likely foreign to them... you'll get either lies or "I don't know". This isn't an efficient use of anyone's time! Some basic questions to that any PLG product marketer should have no problem answering: * What do you think is the difference between PLG product marketing and traditional product marketing? * How do you know if a company is successful at PLG strategy? If you're looking for some green flags, I'd recommend folks with B2C experience and/or experience with other types of marketing rather than in sales.

I'm a huge fan of slack messages. I usually create a public slack channel and add key stakeholders to it. I'll bookmark resources to the top for easy self-serve access. Then, I'll post an update once a week to inform others of progress, wins, blockers, etc. In launch retros I've done in the past, this has been the #1 thing everyone points out as being a huge contribution to the success of the launch. It's so simple but I can't recommend it enough! 

This is such a hard one! I think it would be getting leadership buy-in. There are so many conflicting priorities in the workday, especially in a startup environment. Each team is contributing to the overall success of the company in major ways. When you have new initiatives you want to implement or a pivot in strategy, it can sometimes be hard to convince other teams or figure out a way to add it to their workstreams. And often I find that even if I do get individual teams to buy-in, leadership is a whole different ball game! Here are my top takeaways to make this process easier: * Establish a cadence with your top 5 folks * Contribute quick wins to impact their deliverables * Plant your idea seed early 

TDLR: self-serve product marketing focuses on the individual user persona and their use cases vs traditional product marketing in a sales-led company focuses on the buyer persona and business results. However, the catch is that most PLG organizations have both product-led growth and product-led sales happening simultaneously so you'll need both to have a successful acquisition strategy amongst SMB, Mid Market, and Enterprise alike! If you want more detail, check out this talk I did on the difference between PLG PMM and Sales-led PMM: https://youtu.be/Mbd0pUO1HXs

With SMB, your buyers are also your individual users. You need to sell them on both the solution of your product and impact on business results, as well as sell them on the experience of the product. However, ENT buyers are rarely your users so you can focus more high-level on impact to the business and an ideal future state. I recommend investing in messaging testing software to create personalized landing pages based on the persona. But if you're not at that stage yet, you do really need to pick one lane (at least on your home page). ENT deals typically take 9+ months to close, whereas you could close an SMB deal within 30 days. Since SMB is focused on specific use cases, that needs to be reflected in your marketing. Ad copy, social presence, etc are all centered around the product. Whereas, ENT is usually more focused on lead gen and command of the message within sales. 

Leveraging your existing user base can be done in a number of ways, but if I could highlight only one thing it would be this: have someone dedicated to it full-time. You can moderate communities on Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, etc. But it's a lot of work to not only deliver value on a daily basis, but also foster a culture where the majority of folks are willing to contribute. There's nothing worse than having a "community" with thousands of people but no active chatter. Much better to have a community of 20 active folks! 

Ooof this is a tough one and honestly it depends on how things were structured at your organization from the beginning. IMO, product marketing should influence/contribute to webinars, but not own webinar execution. For thought-leadership webinars, I've seen product marketing, content, and comms all own this in the past. If you're lucky to have a large marketing team, I usually divide responsibilities for webinars like this: 1. Product marketing owns outline and enablement material 2. Content owns design and copy refinement 3. Ops or Success owns delivery and lead tracking backend