AMA: Vanta Head of PLG Product Marketing, Madison Leonard on Self Serve Product Marketing
December 7 @ 9:00AM PST
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Vanta Head of PLG Product Marketing, Madison Leonard on Self Serve Product Marketing
Top Questions
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 (Produ......Read More
282 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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-ap......Read More
270 Views
3 requests
How do you approach building a land and expand strategy?
Let's say for a product like Slack, how would you leverage marketing, product, sales and CS functions to increase Slack adoption across the company. I read this article on how IBM adopted Slack (https://medium.com/design-ibm/listen-to-the-wild-ducks-how-ibm-adopted-slack-2bcfd3732680) and I was wondering how the product marketing team at Slack would formulate it?
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 = slac......Read More
609 Views
1 request
What questions do you ask users when trying to improve user onboarding from a product marketing perspective?
I'm a product marketing who has been tasked with helping to improve the onboarding experience from a product marketing point of view (emails, comms, in app messages. I have a list of new users that haven't returned to the platform and I'd love some thoughts, feedback, and insights from previous experience.
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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......Read More
439 Views
4 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 p......Read More
371 Views
1 request
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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......Read More
297 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 ......Read More
328 Views
3 requests
What is your process for collecting user feedback?
Do you use ever use NPS or any other survey style?
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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......Read More
339 Views
2 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 sol......Read More
528 Views
2 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 us......Read More
300 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 basi......Read More
264 Views
1 request
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 ......Read More
308 Views
1 request
What do self-serve product marketers spend their time doing, given that they don't have sales enablement responsibilities?
Where does all that time get repurposed in self-serve PMM? What are some of the big categories of work where you over-invest in self-serve vs. traditional B2B PMM?
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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, stor......Read More
311 Views
2 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 b......Read More
284 Views
1 request
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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......Read More
344 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 impl......Read More
974 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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......Read More
1032 Views
3 requests
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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 com......Read More
803 Views
1 request
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM Consultant • December 8
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-l......Read More
799 Views
2 requests
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