AMA: Zuora VP Product Marketing, Emi Hofmeister on Platform and Solutions Product Marketing

Let's start with definitions for platform marketing and solutions marketing. Platform marketing: Platform marketing showcases the depth & breadth of your technology. Often in SaaS, the "platform" is the foundation that ties your products together and makes them stronger as a whole (i.e. better together). It typically includes shared capabilities like data management analytics, security, and extensibility through APIs or native integrations. Platform marketing tends to align more closely with ...Read More

Interesting that your company is making a “switch.” In my experience, product and solutions marketing are complementary disciplines and you don’t necessarily want to abandon one in favor of the other. My advice for doing either well is to start with, and get alignment on, the goals you want to achieve, then build from there. If you’re leaning into Solutions Marketing, that suggests you’re aiming to better align your products with customer outcomes. This can be tricky, but highly rewarding. A few ...Read More

Driving change within a sales organization is one of the most challenging parts of the job. Before doing anything else, I recommend partnering with sales leadership to identify a sales champion for the project. This person can advise on what will resonate, communicate updates back to the field, and ultimately stand behind the “new way” of engaging prospects and customers. Together with your champion, identify how to best motivate and incentivize solution selling within the team. A few effective ...Read More