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Joshua Lory

AMA: VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market, Joshua Lory on Product Marketing vs Product Management

March 29, 2022 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. As a product marketer, how do you know if you're a better fit to be a product manager?

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    A few questions to ask yourself: Do you want to be the mini-CEO of the product? Do you have enough experience to appreciate how engineering operates to build a product?  Are you comfortable making major tradeoffs between direct customer requests and company strategic priorities? Are you savvy enough to navigate tough decisions when requirements or quality are cut to meet deadlines? Are you excited about documenting product strategy, epics, users stories and low level requirements? If you answere ...Read More

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  2. Where does in-app copy fit in your org? (Under Product Marketing, Design or other?)

    Particularly interested in technical products, but also curious for nontechnical.

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    In my opinion, PMM has a better vantage of customer needs and command of customer voice to produce best in app copy, product naming nomenclature and in-product guidance. This responsibility can be shared with UX and PM to ensure everyone is on the same page. Engineering and PM usually need a lot of help in this department as it is not their forte. 

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    1 request

  3. How would you describe the key differences between the product manager role and product marketer role?

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    Think of a restaurant with front and back of the house. Back of house is prepping, cooking and organizing the food for front of the house to position, serve and engage the customers. Another way to look at this is front of the house understands what the customers want, thier expecations, reactions and provides feedback to back of the house to prioritze what food is being prepared. This symboitic relationship is anlogous to PMM (front of house), PM (liason between front and back of house) and eng ...Read More

    867 Views
    2 requests

  4. How do you track success of product launches?

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    Here are some OKRs my teams track for product launches:

    Awareness - Web, social and blog activity (impressions, engagements and link clicks)

    Sales if not self-serve - MQLs and SQLs

    Time to value - how long does it take a customer to onboard and get value?

    Consumption - How often are new features being used (DAU / MAU)

    Renewals - NRR

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  5. What specific areas of roadmap influence do you think product marketing can help the most with?

    Is it the decision of what features to actually build based on customer feedback and marketing opportunity OR more so naming, branding and how we position and target features?

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    Product marketers should leave there stamp outside and inside the product. What I mean is that traditional marketing always takes place outside of the product i.e. sales enablement, blogs, technical demos, tools etc . Now with the advent of SaaS PMMs can market inside the product as well. By having a pulse on the customers end to end journey PMM can shine a light on where the experience can be improved by highlighting moments that matter. PMM should also co-own consumption targets like MAU and D ...Read More

    761 Views
    2 requests

  6. From your experience, what are some best practices for product managers and product marketing managers to work together effectively?

    Joshua Lory
    Joshua Lory

    VMware Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • 4y

    Some best practices that helped my teams create a collaborate cross pollinating environment are: Standing 1:1 with PM and PMM leads to discuss major open actions with full disclosure PM contributes or leads customer feedback in regular product backlog grooming sessions PMM develops self service customer intelligence that PM can use to steer product strategy PMM leads customer advocacy efforts and invites PM and Eng leads to participate "hear from the horses mouth"  PM is included in Product PI p ...Read More

    1,690 Views
    2 requests