Product Marketing

Where to start? Every company has different policies for promotion criteria, but ultimately it needs to take into account 2 things: merit and business need. Business need has to come first. It means that there's a larger scope of a role that needs to be done - more responsibility and complexity within an org / team - and there's now an opportunity or need for someone to fill that. If that doesn't exist, promotions shouldn't be happening arbitrarily. I recongize that especially within startups, individual contributors want to grow and should be recognized for their efforts, but when merit supercedes business need, it creates complications down the road (inexperienced middle managers, people promoted for the sake of being promoted and then drowning in the deep end, etc.). There isn't a blanket set of KPI's someone needs to hit before they're promoted, but there should be an expectation with any job description that success is defined by x, y, and z. What those things are can be a combination of both quantitative and qualitative results. 

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have become a popular way for companies to clearly define goals and measure progress against them, at the employee, team, and company level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR There's lots written about these that you can reference elsewhere, but it's a really helpful frame work that allows you to measure, quantitatively and qualitatively, how you're tracking against the "key results" that you've defined. The common expectation is that you'll hit about 70% of your OKRs - idea is that you're including stretch goals so missing 20-30% doens't mean you're performing poorly. I do try to quantify as much as possible in my OKRs but you also need to be careful to not arbitrarily quantify things to the point that it distracts from what will really add the most value to your team or company.

If you're on this forum as a PMM, you know that one of the biggest challenges for the PMM org is "What the hell do we measure!?" - an age-old conundrum that PMMs always struggle with. This is especially pronouned in an enterprise B2B environment vs. a fast-moving B2C environment where immediate usage/feedback may be available.  To me, the most primary thing I'm looking for is how effective the person is in relationship/ stakeholder management. In Product Marketing, you have many constituents across Sales, Product, and customer teams, as well as within Marketing itself. It's easy to get pulled in a lot of different directions with competing priorities - so how these stakeholders are communicated & collaborated with, along with how they're supported becomes something I really try and pay attention to when looking at how a PMM is advancing in their development. Additionally, with PMM being a strategic and highly cross-functional role - instead of a list of set metrics, I'll look to how the PMM is able to bring together and run a cross-functional project that has clear outcomes and success metrics related to that (we've moved to OKRs, and also have project-team goal-setting & feedback tools within Culture Amp that support this agile team structure).  I think what's most important is for the individual to know, depending on the team's overarching priorities (aligned up to practice and company-level), how the work that they're doing contributes and which of the projects they are running are seen as critical projects for them to demonstrate competence and success in to align with their career progression objectives. Though, one thing I've also learned in my career is to make sure that you've had this conversation / and gaining alignment with your own manager on this, before extending this clarity out. Because if the individual really leans in and delivers, but you aren't able to hold up your end (I've been on both sides of this), it can really torpedo morale and lead to the frustration of people feeling like they're on a neverending treadmill.

This varies by company and role, but I generally think about the path to promotion on the two key vectors: ownership level and degree of autonomy.  Strong performance against OKRs or KPIs is a core underpinning to that. When considering promotion I start there and then look at how the person has demonstrated rising levels of ownership and autonomy across the following: * Strategic Direction: As an associate, I'd expect you to own a feature set fully and demonstrate the ability to bring insights into the go-to-market under direction. As you rise in the organization, I'd expect you to own a product group and set goals and drive projects with more independence. As you approach the most senior levels of the organization you most commonly own an audience or problem set and are expected to develop and drive your KPIs with very little direction.  * Execution & Accountability: At earlier levels you're executing against problems you're given and working with teams to show the results. As you rise, you're expected to help the organization understand the questions to ask and align stakeholders around how to understand the impact of that work. * Communication & Collaboration: For someone just starting you need to demonstrate clear communication with your assigned team and to escalate when issues arise. As you grow in the organization, you become responsible for identifying the team you need and the escalation needs to become more strategic and answer-first. * Leadership & Influence: If you're an associate I'd expect that you're a master of your assigned area. For a director and above, you're sought as an expert on broad audience problems and most frequently work with the most senior levels of leadership.

The best way for a product marketer to get promoted is by demonstrating the impact of their work. To do this, I incentivize all my PMMs to befriend data and tie their deliverables to key business and customer metrics.  To me, the two most important categories of metrics are: 1) Customer insights a. Number of actionable insights that helped drive product development b. Number of actionable insights that informed a business strategy/service 2) Customer engagement a. Product adoption: This is the % of customers that adopted a new service or product launched by PMM. b. Customer lifetime value (LTV): The total dollar amount you're likely to receive from the customers that adopted the new service or product, over the average life of the product or services. c. Active and engaged customers: Number of customers that actively engage with the product, could be measured daily, weekly or monthly.

I'm not a fan of connecting metrics to promotions for a role like product marketing becuase there are so many other dependencies that can't be controlled. Rather I like to establish some expectations of responsibility for each seniority level. Seniority levels can usually be attached to the level of responsiblity you can assign someone. Can they run a launch end to end? Can they take a new offer to market? You can use success of some of those outputs to make a determination of how and when to promote.

PMMs often are measured by output, since most of what we provide are tied to other metrics. I would focus on delivering tangible assets on a regular cadence (case studies, one-pagers, pitch decks, etc) and in parallel - measuring utilization metrics like: product activation, MAUs, reactivations, attach rate, conversion velocity etc. These two streams (tangible output + metrics) cover your bases, establish influence and prove growth (worthy of promotion).

The frameworks are pretty similar. Talk with your customers, develop a narrative based on the pain points they have, and craft positioning based on your findings.  There are some cool tools out there to help with website message testing (like Wynter), in-app messaging (like Pendo), and competitive intelligence tools (like Crayon). Ultimately, the availability of these tools will depend based on the stage of the company you're at and the available budget for software.  Even if you don't have access to those tools, you should still put a lot of emphasis on talking with customers. Hear their pains, develop positioning and GTM strategy based on what you hear, and test it with that same persona to ensure you're on track. 

When I think of GTM, it's from demand to advocacy. You aren't responsible for every step of this journey but are a significant contributor to enabling and owning the customer buying journey. Questions I always ask myself when I join as a GTM PMM are as follows: 1. Do my fellow marketers have what they need to create demand, growth, and brand campaigns? Do they have the strategy, positioning, and message to do their job? Do they understand the persona/ICP segments? What's missing? How can I enable and support them for success? Do they have the content?  2. Do my sales team have what they need to be successful? Can they talk about the value of my product or platform? Can they show it? Do they have assets or content? Do they know who they are targeting?  3. How can I help with expansion? How can I help market services?   4. Who are my partners and stakeholders in these areas? 5. Which area is most important for the company right now? Where should I prioritize my time? These questions will help formulate what to do. Now you aren't responsible for all the activities but for strategy, positioning, messaging, content, and asset development (to a certain extent) — you will be the lead. Being best friends with your enablement org and your sales engineering org will help you far, especially for #2 and #3. The one area I didn't cover is the partner organization. For some org, GTM PMM has a say, other orgs you enable your partner marketer to do the job. 

There are, of course, several elements so I’m just going to touch on the foundational pieces that product marketers must have in place. But before I do, I have one pro-tip: develop your GTM framework as a narrative. I've found that the activity of writing it out in narrative form helps to create clarity of thought and to socialize it with stakeholders so that everyone can contribute. This narrative should include: * Market adoption stage – Your goal is to understand where you are in the classic technology adoption lifecycle. Pinpoint whether your technology speaks to Innovator, Early Adopter, Early Majority, Late Majority, or Laggard. * Positioning strategy – Your goal is differentiated value. Over the years, I’ve seen so many different fill-in-the-blanks positioning frameworks, but I’ve come to love April Dunford’s positioning canvas approach in her seminal book Obviously Awesome. She defines positioning strategy as how a company’s offering is uniquely qualified to be a leader at providing some kind of value that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about. There’s a lot there – read the book! * Messaging – Your goal is to strengthen your positioning with messages that resonate with the target audience. The biggest growth opportunities that I’ve seen in many organizations are message discipline and how to speak with one voice. * Ideal Customer Profile – Your goal is to define what the ideal customer (at the organization level) looks like. This should include firmographic, geographic, and technographic information. * Buyer and User Personas – Your goal is to define the people (B2B is still marketing to humans). Look at job titles, roles and responsibilities, sequences of participation (in the buying process), and roles in the decision-making unit. Note: Job titles in rapidly changing categories can be elusive – if that’s the case, look more at their roles and responsibilities. At GitLab, we do so in our Handbook here.  * A Trusted Customer Journey – Your goal is to define the key steps in the purchase decision process and to surface the messages and actions that will move people through the journey. A key part of this is to build and reinforce trust along the way by understanding their job to be done (what social and functional progress is the customer trying to make and hiring you to do) and empathizing with any anxieties in the purchase that may arise. * Prioritized Use Cases – Your goal is to spell out how the primary buyer & user can use the product for the most significant value and success Again, this is just a start, but if you can gain consensus on this across the entire go-to-market organization, you’ll be in a strong position to execute and repeat the process.

To simplify it at a high level, I would say its having a clear understand of the 3 C's: Customers, Company, and Competition. To dissect that a bit: 1. Identify your target market and key buyer personas -this includes understanding the demand 2. Understand their problems and how your product specifically solves them 3. Develop your messaging 4. Understand your customer's journey (what does the buying process look like) 5. Develop pricing strategy 6. Create marketing plan (with clearly defined success metrics) 7. Generate content 8. Enable teams (not just sales!) To make this even stronger and repeatable, I use an Asana template with clearly defined steps and assigned POCs. I have clear buckets related to each step that I use for every GTM plan so that other teams know what to expect and can also track progress and links to deliverables!

The core elements of strong, repeatable GTM framework are: * Objective: Backed by data (quant) and customer feedback (qual) insights along with market and competitive research and business outcomes * Measureable: Tied to business outcomes (revenue, win rate, deal acceleration, NRR) * Timely: Meaningful to total addressable market (solving an acute need) * Scalable: Templatized by means of documentation, internal processes, training and enablement

(1) It's a strategy, not a goal. You're diagnosing the problem and focused on how you should go to market. (2) There is an operationalization aspect for your marketing team. Marketers need the audience, message, and channels/communities these people live in.  (3) There is an operationalization aspect for your field teams.  (4) Stakeholder alignment, buy-ins, and they have a role to play. 

I strongly believe that every GTM strategy should start with researching and understanding the market, competitive, and buyer/prospect needs. Above, I mentioned more details about what types of data might be interesting to look at for verticle prioritization, but this list can also apply here. Combining market and more internal business data together helps inform your business case, which ideally happens and comes together before a decision is made to prioritize an offering onto the roadmap. If for whatever reason the business case step was skipped early on or not fully completed, you can still complete it. Better surface potential risks/opportunities before launch than wait and learn after the fact.    Beyond starting with research, I recommend spending some time establishing a structure and plan to set yourself, your team, and your company up for a successful launch. This probably includes: * Identifying your key stakeholders and hosting a kickoff * Aligning on a framework/process with clear stage-gates * Decide how you want to communicate and share updates, will you meet weekly, bi-weekly? Is there a slack channel or will you use email? * Set goals and decide how you will track progress as a team * Align on who is the final decision maker on key decisions, who is responsible for each GTM task, who is contributing and pitching in, and who needs to stay informed. Often times the "informed" group may be executives so consider how you will share updates with your executive team. 

The best way to start with a GTM strategy is to assess your strategic readiness before building out the plan. For example, do you know the audience you are targeting, the positioning, the packaging and pricing? Have you assembled your core internal GTM team? Have you established the key goals and metrics for your launch? Once you have these key items answered, it makes it much easier to build out the plan.  

1. Diagnosis - what's my opportunity? What's the pain I'm solving? What's the problem?   2. Guiding Principles - given the above. How should I address this problem? This section arent' tactics.  3. Coherent Actions - your tactics.  Remember, if #1#1 isn't clear, focused, and concise, then #2#2 isn't either, which means #3#3 isn't as effective.  I highly recommend a book called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. 

There are dfinitely many directions to take. I'll try to distill down to two metrics across external & internal GTM KPIs: External * Leads, or Revenue within X days of launch * Activation/adoption within X days of launch Internal * Stakeholder satisfaction (survey) * GTM on time delivery, asset readiness The X in days depends on the type of business you're in. For B2C you'll focus on MRR and shorter conversion cycles, likely within the first 15-30 days. For B2B align it with your avg sales cycle for prospects and 75% of the time for customer add-ons.

The goal of most B2B launches is revenue--but there are many other KPIs you can track besides how much revenue you've generated!  Customer KPIs: These KPIs all tell me how much my launch resonates with my target customer. Pipe generation; lead generation/form fills on any key launch assets like demos and datasheets; registrations/attendance to events and webinars; website views; time on-page.  Sales team KPIs: This is how I make sure my sales teams are excited about my launch and are properly informed to have customer conversations. # attendees for enablement; # views/engagement for key enablement assets; # sales support requests;  AR/PR: This is how I know I'm getting the right coverage. # AR briefings/inquiries; # AR reports/mentions; # PR interviews pre-launch; # press mentions

I'm glad you asked about KPIs. As Product Marketers, we don't have the luxury of a single metric or even a couple metrics. We own the health of the story & vision our company is selling. I say health intentionally. It's not just that we own the story (we do) but we also need to make sure it's landing amongst our key segments, that we have the right segments, our sellers can actually deliver the story (if you're B2B) and on and on. And it's something that we need to be monitoring regularly --- which is where KPIs come in. I see the cornerstone KPIs in four categories: Interest, Velocity, Win Rate, Cross-Sell. For the B2B context, these are some specific examples I would expect to see in these categories. For B2C - these can still apply, but win rate will be more around engagement or purchase conversion. Interest - Opportunity Growth - how many new opportunities is the business creating each month? Your goal is to grow this number! If it starts to stagnate - go figure out why. Is your content stale? Did your target segment change? Is a competitor stealing attention? Velocity - Deal Progression - how long (days/weeks) does it for deals to move through the sales cycle? Your goal is to see if you can shorten it - through sales plays, content, customer stories, ROI calculators, etc. Look for where deals are getting stuck and stay close to your sellers. Win Rate - Win Rate :) - what percentage of deals become closed-won revenue for the business? Your goal here is, no surprise, maintain or improve your win rate! Also included here is a win rate against top competitors, but as an input into the overall metric. If you see your win rate dipping that's where you need to quickly diagnose what's behind it. Cross-sell - Cross-sell :) - what percentage of accounts purchase additional products after becoming a customer? Your goal here is understand if your story continues to work post-sale. Is the vision your company sells compelling customers to expand their business with you? Are youe expansion plays working as well as your land plays? The challenge we face as a product marketer is we don't control a single part of the process - rather we influence all parts of the buyer journey from first touch all the way to cross-selling. Looking at one metric will never give us the full picture. Use metrics like those above to measure the impact of the work you are doing and look for opportunities to make improvements.

As always, the answer is probably “it depends” as it really does depend on what the goal of your launch is. For example, are you trying to drive awareness of a feature? Adoption? Expansion sales? Once you’ve determined the goal of a launch, the KPIs should be relatively straightforward from there. For us, most of our Tier1/2 launches have the goal of generating pipeline revenue (for either new logos, or expansion, or both) so we look at number of demos set / pipeline generated. Even if the opportunity already exists, I’m also curious to see whether this was the thing that moved the needle for the prospect to buy. When it comes to Tier 3/4 launches, the metrics may be more focused around product adoption and less around direct revenue impact. Did the customers we were targeting in our marketing actually try using the new feature? How often do they use it? For example, is it happening on every order/transaction they do with us, or only a subset? For product adoption you also have to determine what “success” means - that is, what is the specific ‘event’ you want to track when it comes to the feature that would make it a successful use.

As much as I would love to share a one-size-fits-all KPIs, I’ve found that no two launches are the same. Even if you’re launching a product again in a new market, you’ve probably learned something from the first launch that will lead you to optimize your approach the next time. Instead, I break it down into these four categories and choose the most important metric from each category: * Business metrics: How will this launch help the business to meet its goals? Is it revenue, subscriptions, marketplace balance, users? * Product metrics: What action(s) do we want our target audience to take? For example, trial, adoption, retention, increased usage. * Channel metrics: Based on the way that the campaign is set up, what’s the most important way that our audience can engage with the marketing campaign? Do we want them to watch the video, click on the push notification, read the blog, ask a question or something else entirely? * Top of funnel metrics: What do you want your audience to know, think or feel based on the launch? These are your awareness, perception and sentiment metrics. It takes a lot of discipline to pick only the most important metrics and stay laser-focused on those. But I’ve found that when I’m able to do it, it gives the team a clearer mission and strengthens the impact.

Product Marketers should, as they say, measure what matters...and what matters is heavily dependent on the stage of the business and product. If you are earlier stage, focus on assessing whether the problem your product is solving is real and important. Good metrics for this stage: Funnel conversion, win rate, marketing tactical effectiveness (traffic, leads). For later stage, your GTM strategy should be measured by more sophisticated indicators, such as pipeline coverage, deal velocity, net expansion, overall category penetration, and customer time-to-value.  The most important part is to understand which metrics drive the business and which levers drive those metrics.

There are different motivations for launching products. For example, beyond solving a buyer problem a company could launch a product to expand TAM, retain customers, or differentiate from competitors. Based on this business objective you should determine specific goals and KPIs to ensure you are tracking towards success. This may look slightly different whether you are B2B, B2C, or B2B2C.   That being said, there are some go-to KPIs that most product marketing care about. As PMMs, a key part of our role is finding product market fit and then communicating value to the market. When it comes to launching new products, this is when we get to find out if all the time spent on research and testing is time well spent. Will buyers/users purchase and engaging with the product? Key metrics to consider 1. Buyer Adoption - did your buyers purchase the product? Or, if it doesn't carry an additional cost, did they adopt the new offering? Depending on the launch, you may want to segment your buyers by persona, industry, or new vs. existing customer.  2. Engagement - is the end user utilizing the product? This one is simple, are users utilizing the product as expected and are they satisfied? 3. Market Engagement - press release engagement and corporate comms engagement (press release, social campaign, blog post etc.).  4. Win/Loss - If the product you are launching is differentiating or intended to compete with a specific competitor, consider setting a specific win/loss goal  Once you have your end goals set, I recommend setting some leading indicators to help you understand throughout the launch if you are on track to hit your end goals. A few examples here include email engagement on launch emails, webinar attendance for upsells, or website landing page engagement. 

The most typical KPIs are pipeline/revenue if it’s a product that can be purchased or product adoption if it’s free. However, there are other KPIs that can be leading indicators to follow. It’ll depend on the feature/product/service you’re launching and what the goal of your launch is, so there’s no hard and fast rule here. But here are some examples depending on what you’re trying to achieve: * Product goals * Product-market fit: product adoption * Product launch success: product-specific pipeline, sign-ups * Marketing goals * Awareness and perception: brand awareness, product awareness, brand associations * Content and campaign performance: paid/email click-through rates, website conversion * Financial impact: marketing-driven pipeline and revenue, MQL → SQL conversion rates * Sales goals * Sales productivity: win rates, pipeline conversion * Financial impact: average deal sizes, target attainment

Ultimately I think that every launch should have one "north-star" goal and cascading KPIs, and you might see that varies by launch. For example, your north-star could be increasing Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), increasing customer Monthly Active Use (MAU), or increasing net new customers. Once you've landed on that, you should be ruthless about developing a GTM strategy that helps you hit those goals, and choosing metrics that help you understand if you are on track for those goals or not.  That being said, the KPIs that I've found most common to track are:  * Total web or app traffic and conversion rate * Email sends / opens / conversion rates * Product usage & MAU  * Attributed ARR  * Digital marketing metrics like impressions and conversion rates  * Contribution of the launch to Marketing Qualified Leads MQLs (for B2B) 

Some KPIs I consider across the PMM remit are: * Core PMM: Platform Adoption, Activation, and Expansion (via product and sales-led motions) * Customer and Lifecycle Marketing: Direct Revenue Attainment + Adoption and Retention * Ecosystem Marketing: Indirect Revenue Attainment + Demand Gen  * Competitive Intelligence: Win/loss rate, deal velcity

KPIs are hard for PMMs.  (1) we don't directly influence everything.  (2) we have a lot of indirect influence.  But my rule of thumb is figuring out your North Star Metric, meaning what is that one metric you can influence that drives say, pipeline, and what are those input metrics? For example, if you're doing a sales play, your input metric might be how often they have used your messaging (Gong is a great tool for this) or your assets (Highspot). In this simplistic example, your North Star Metric might be deal velocity, influencing the ultimate metric: win rates. You get the idea.  Here are some of mine.  North Star Metrics: Deal velocity   Input Metrics: Use of messaging/and content at different buying stages, product adoption Lagging Metrics: Win rates, increase in ARR, expansion 

Do not launch in that market/region if you do not have support. Instead, focus on other areas/regions that do, shore up your resources and be a bigger success. Nothing is more attractive than a successful product elsewhere, so if you find success in other regions, the stakeholder will be asking for you to come to the market.  A seniors sales stakeholder in a SaaS organization's job is to drive revenue, and the easiest way for them to do that is to launch a new product. If they are not welcoming the new product with open arms, it probably has big flaws and they don't want to go through the trouble of launching it or already biased against it. I would meet with that stakeholder for feedback. You can use the 5A Framework to keep it high level, and get solid feedback.   "If they don't sweat you, don't sweat them," Kunal Merchant, PMM at Meta. I could be butchering his quote, but this is something that has stuck with me through the years, and is great life advice. I actually think it works well with dating too. ;-)  Also, I'm making the assumption here that the senior stakeholder is a SALES/REVENUE driving stakeholder. 

A colleague once told me that Product Marketing is a team sport. I couldn't agree more, and gaining alignment and getting buy-in with stakeholders is a critical success factor in the role. The questioner asks about senior stakeholders, but I think it’s important for product marketers to think about all stakeholders, regardless of the level or title. The first -- and most important -- part of buy-in is listening. Great product marketing leaders listen very well. If I’m starting in a new role or building a new program, I start by listening to stakeholders so that I understand their perspectives and viewpoints. Listening leads to understanding and insight, but it doesn’t mean taking orders. The next step in getting buy-in is to formulate your own opinion. This is an area where I see product marketers stumble - they translate their listening tours directly into action without forming their own opinion. Stakeholders – especially executive stakeholders – are rarely looking for ‘yes people’. They want thought partners who have strong conviction (even if loosely held) and a POV. Another tool in the buy-in-toolkit is to establish ground rules for decision-making at the outset. I’m a big big fan of the RASCI model (see this post) as a way to build trust and make decisions. What if you’ve done all of the above and you still don’t have buy-in? What else can you do? There are more actions you can take. Try getting everyone in the same room to debate and mine for conflict and, if there still isn’t alignment, strive for a ‘disagree and commit’ agreement. That approach is effective most of the time because you’ve created an environment where everyone is heard. Finally, one of the most important ways to gain buy in, especially with executive stakeholders, is to root your recommendations in the business. Understand the metrics that drive the business and levers that drive those metrics -- with that approach, you'll rarely be misaligned. 

We used a RAPID framework and set up 1-2 hour sessions to review with the executive leadership team. The RAPID framework stands for: Recommended Agree Perform Input Decide You outline key exec stakeholders in each, and allow them to Approve/Reject and provide "input" while outlining all the reasonings for your (specific) recommendation.  I can walk through an example LIVE of how we did this for GTM strategy in 2023!

Tbh—this is very hard since most of us sit in North America, and we think the world ends in North America.  The key here is to listen to their priorities. They are on the ground and might have different needs. Start with your internal customers before you push for a global GTM strategy. Make sure the diagnosis of the problem in your strategy includes their issues. If their issues are addressed, the rest is more about alignment and ensuring they have a stake in the game, meaning they have to do something to make this strategy come to life. 

I don't actually use market research for that, is the short answer. If we believe that our solution is well suited for a particular vertical, we have the budget to invest in GTM to capture business in this vertical, and the vertical is fragmented / doesn't have a real clear winner, we will go for it.  Additionally, you should look at your own customer data and overlay it with your product. For example, if Square is has developed a number of features that are suited for Restaurants, we will prioritize this vertical. If after a couple of months we are not well penetrated here, we have a problem. 

There are a few questions you need to answer to determine if it's worth targeting this new vertical: - Do you have product-market fit? Are you solving a real problem for this vertical? - What is the size of the market opportunity for this vertical? How will it grow over time? (their industry growth and your product growth) How does it compare to markets you are doing well in? - How similar is the vertical to existing verticals where you have success? Would you have to do much to change your value proposition or messaging? - Are there known competitors targeting this vertical? How do you compare? If you know you have product-market fit, the next step is to identify the size of the opportunity in the potential verticals. Use research reports to find the size of the industry you are targeting, and it's CAGR compared to other industries. You also may find spending reports to know how much they are already spending or are predicted to spend in the coming years on a technology similar to yours - IT, advertising, etc. The information is out there. Another method is more of a "bottoms up" approach where you would determine the characteristics of the companies you are targeting (industry, employees, size of the marketing team, etc), and determine how many companies could be in your target market.

Ensure verticalization aligns well with core competencies, market perception, ability to deliver and differentiation. If you do not clearly understand the definition of the target vertical, the trends in that vertical’s consumer or enterprise user market as well as the size of the opportunity, it will cause internal and ultimately market confusion that hinders speed and success. Assuming that you've determined this is an attractive vertical to pursue, here is a list to consider at the onset of prioritizing verticals and viability of entrance:  - Current capabilities (such as how capable you to serve industry clients). - The resources you have to invest (such as skills, channels, ecosystem partners). - Market objectives (“to achieve X% market share,” for example, or “to be in the top three” in a given market). - The type of offering(s) (whether they are fundamentally “horizontal” in nature or developed from the outset for a specific industry process or issue). - Position in an ecosystem (owning and driving one or contributing; optimize or transform)). - Existing position in the industry (route to market, current client expansion, competitor dynamics, industry connections and relationships, including influencers, etc.).

When looking to identify target verticals, I always prefer a data driven approach. I'd work up a detailed analysis exercise and build a vertical based TAM. I have a go-to bubble chart that I like to develop which is based on the growth rate of each (CAGR, y axis) vs the revenue opportunity (x axis). It gives you an easy visual that shows where the optimal use cases/verticals will be - up and to the right.  Here are some other questions you can ask to focus your efforts: 1. Do we know how much revenue opportunity is out there in the key verticals? 2. What are the top five verticals based on revenue opportunity? 3. What does our customer concentration look like across verticals? 4. Do we have any strong differentiating features in certain verticals? If yes, which ones?

Market research is a pretty valuable data point in terms of prioritizing verticals (or any other segmentation slice), but so too is your product ownership point of view and your internal usage data. So you don't need to lean on external research, but it can certainly augment your other efforts. I think there's value in looking at 1p, 2p and 3p input sources in coordination with each other. Where we have used external research towards our segmentation processes is when we do message testing measured across different user groups and then review any consideration or preference gains we see across those persona types such that we can forecast where we may see impact and how we should talk to that specific group. In this style test, we're building a messaging hypothesis and then using it as a constant and the persona type as the variable, so that we could see impact to the segment. Depending on how you set up your study, you can also introduce nuances in your messaging to work through as well. You can also look at interest across verticals and map that back to your product differentiation to target industries where you have the best PMF.

Instead of a "vertical focus" go forward with a New Audience focus so you can leverage the 5A GTM framework , and ensure you're thinking through a consumers' need.  Also, if you focus on a new user, you can also employ the "Job to be done" framework, which can help narrow what the customer really wants to get done and how your product can satiate that need. After you establish those jobs (UXR) you can use market research and even analytics to scale out the size of these jobs and what could bring in the most users. Always put people first.  Market research, user research and analytics (data trends) are you sweet trio of fantastic insights that can help you figure out the new Audiences to expand your product.

Making the assumption here that vertical = industry. 1. Industry definition - which taxonomy are you using. NAICS, SIC, propietary, DUNS, Clearbit? This is important because there is a lot of nuance hidden in sub-verticals, so getting your language aligned is key 2. TAM - what is the actual addressable market for your product or portfolio or launch? This can be based on historical win rates by industry/sub industry for an existing product, or can be based on focus groups/survey data of your prospect base (how likely are you to buy X) 3. Product market fit - what are the core use cases for each vertical that you're thinking about? Can you actually satisfy them? How complex is the buyer? Is the cost to serve higher than the actual revenue you can make (bad margins)? You can figure this out again by looking at competitors (the good ones will showcase what matters via their websites), looking at analyst reports and again first-had research

I believe that market insights are the #1 core product marketing capability. Literally everything – from positioning and messaging to the products and capabilities you deliver to the market – flows from insights that you generate via smart, well-run market research. I’ve worked on dozens of products at every stage of maturity and, while most of these can be applied horizontally across several industries, it has been helpful to leverage market research to identify which verticals to target and how to tailor my positioning strategy. This type of insight has been beneficial as I move a product beyond early adopters and traverse the dangerous chasm to an early majority audience. Of course, market research can come in many forms. In my early days as a marketer, I leaned on traditional in-person focus groups (the ones with the double-paned glasses and the unlimited jelly beans for clients) for depth of insight and quantitative survey-based research to validate insights at scale. More recently, I’ve looked to other research techniques to help fine-tune my vertical strategy. One area to look at is your sales data to answer specific questions related to verticals. Are you seeing accentuated adoption, a faster deal cycle, and improved win rates in specific verticals? I also prioritize talking to my sales teammates to get deeper and richer insights. One cautionary note: make sure you are supplementing existing customer information with prospective customer insights. After all, if you only look at your existing customer base, you’re looking in the rearview mirror.  Another market research area to inform verticalization and all of GTM is the competitive landscape. Are you seeing competitors gravitate to a specific set of verticals? Or are they listing out verticals on their website, but the messaging is pretty much the same. (I call this fake verticalization). I also look at characteristics of the vertical, such as TAM or macro economic indicators of vertical health and appeal for the product. For example, at the outset of the pandemic, it was clear that certain industries such as Internet infrastructure were seeing a boom in adoption and other industries had the bottom fall out. In short, I make it a point to ensure that if I’m targeting a vertical, the addressable market is sizable enough and the vertical is poised to purchase. The end result of these market insights doesn’t just help me with a vertical strategy; it helps me formulate the Ideal Customer Profile and sets in motion a set of coordinated actions across the go-to-market and product organizations.

Market research is near and dear to my heart and at the core of any strong product and go-to-market plan. I have many examples of how you can use research to inform vertical strategy, but my first tip is to just get started. If you are on a small but mighty PMM team (or perhaps you're the only PMM), any data is better than none.   Verticals might mean prioritizing based on industry, company size, persona (or often a combination). I recommend trying to define what an early adopter looks like in your industry and prioritizing them early. My experience is primarily in B2B, but much of this can be generalized.  Market research - Review trends in your industry, new legislation that may drive new consumer/buyer behaviors, join all the relevant newsletters etc. Industry - Often times certain industries have more of an urgent need for your product than others, I've utilized tons of third party reports put our by industry groups to understand broadly which industries to do a deeper dive into. Consumer groups or industry groups are great and they host events, conferences, and trade-shows. engagement with certain industries in the past and if so, how did they convert?  Customer - To get insights on customers I've run focus groups, hosted 1:1 research calls, conducted surveys and worked with customer advocacy marketing teams to get feedback from customer councils. You can also take a look at your CRM system to mine for data based on past customer activities, feedback, and purchasing decisions. And of course, if all else fails (or is not an option) you can talk to your customer success team members, who talk to customers every day.  Prospects - Yes, users/buyers who have not purchased with you before may have a different perspective than your current customers, so it's important to understand their perspective. Joining sales calls, attending tradeshow/conferences, and trying to talk to as many prospects is important. If you have a tool like Gong, this is gold for learning about prospect needs and interest.  Competitive - Check out what your competitors are focused on from a vertical perspective. You can often tell based on their messaging, case studies, ads, landing pages, and content they are producing. Depending on your strategy (and the other data you collect), you may want to go after a different segment or choose to compete.  Once you've collected all your research, you need to synthesize it. One way to do this is to create a score-card and then prioritize each potential verticals into tiers based on most attractive to least attractive.

When we first started to verticalize our solution, we looked at: * TAM (total addressable market) and SAM (sellable addressable market--what is realistic that YOUR company can sell in to?) * CARR * Win Rate * Average Deal Size (ADS) * Sales Cycle (# of days) * Number of Curent Customers This gave us a good idea for where we were already winning and where we had the biggest opportunity. We have also been monitoring industries with high "digital maturity" based on reports from McKinsey and other analysts which has been helpful in planning for the next 3 years. We have since refined our strategy and doubled down on key verticals for the next year by looking at: * Pipeline (where do we have the most opportunity coming from?) * Product Gap Analysis - what are key product gaps that are leading to lost deals by vertical? And what is the low hanging fruit and level of effort to close some of those gaps * In addition to Total ARR and ADS This has led us to a 2023 plan to win in verticals based on these 3 things: *  SUCCESS: lean into what is already working (i.e. high ADS and win rates) and maintain success *  ALIGNMENT: with product vision and brand positioning (multi-channel, depth and scale of data, orchestrated journeys, content and automation needs) *  VELOCITY: lower win rates but higher (potential) speed to “success” by focusing on higher ADS verticals due to multiple channels, higher data fees, and need for premium features + higher opportunity (TAM)

We aim to diversify our revenue strategy with dynamic and compelling GTM campaigns. We use market research from internal and external sources to fuel decisions. Internal market research comes from our harvesting our own customer data to identify areas of penetration and greenfield. We couple these insights with analyst insights to invest in programming. When entering a new market, we test small segments and iterate our way to what good looks like (pricing, packaging, positioning).

I'm biased. I'm a former consultant and market researcher— market research always follows priority verticals and market efforts.   Depending on the stage of your organization, you might not have the luxury of full fledge research, but you need to at least talk to customers. Get some contextual awareness or directionally where you're going, then continue to validate and optimize over time. 

Changing your positioning is a big deal. So much of your Go to Market plan relies on a positioning strategy that is well thought out and embraced by your company.  Whenever I need to manage a change to positioning, I start with understanding whether the real need is to change the positioning or whether the need is to tune the messaging strategy. A lot of folks confuse the two. Remember: your positioning defines how you want your target audience to think about your offering. Since shifting perception takes a long time, your positioning should be stable and long-term. Your messaging strategy, on the other hand, is the full narrative and set of statements that reinforce your positioning. It is the story that cements your positioning. Since messaging can shift over time to respond to competitive dynamics or new customer insights, it is quite often that you need to tune your story, but you don’t need to change your position. But, if I do need to reposition, here's how I start:  First, I work with my team and stakeholders with a basic positioning statement template: For [your target market] who [target market need], [your brand name] provides [main benefit that differentiates your offering from competition] because [reason why target audience should believe your differentiation claim.]. Repeat after me: I will not rush this process. Your go-to-market strategy is only as strong as the positioning foundation on which it stands. Shoutout to Thomas Dong for providing this. With new positioning statement in hand, I then approach rolling it out as I would a normal Tier 1 product launch (see blueprint above). This means creating a wide array of content and documents so that all of your internal and external stakeholders are aligned. Finally, I tend to think big and creatively when there is a new positioning to be supported. For example, when my team repositioned PayPal years ago, we used the moment as an opportunity to create new messaging, a new website, enable the global sales team, and develop a new brand logo -- which meant sunsetting the giant physical logos on our office buildings (we sold one on eBay for charity!).

Seems like whoever asked this question may be a bit familiar with my world over at Yext! :) In the 6+ years I’ve been lucky to work here, we’ve transformed from a single-product location listings company to a search platform. Saying this transformation has been easy would be a lie. It didn’t happen all at once, but rather through a series of steps — some big, some small. To our executives’ credit, the vision has been clear since the beginning. This means that our employees generally understand the context and the big mission, which has made incremental changes feel less scattershot and easier to navigate. If you’re in a company that is also undergoing a transformation, the biggest piece of advice I will give you is that you don’t need to communicate the full vision to every external audience from the very beginning. The majority of your product marketing, your sales materials, and your GTM team’s time should focus on how you can solve your customers’ problems today. But, there are big benefits to sharing the overall vision when the audience and the time is right. At Yext, we have a vision deck that lays out the trends we see in the market, upon which we’ve based the vision for our product roadmap. A small team is qualified to present it in an Innovation Day-type setting. For customers who are interested, it’s a fantastic supplement to a sales cycle, especially for innovation-minded buyers.

This starts with aligning with the product on what this means for your product and company.  This probably involves meeting live to discuss the product direction etc. More tactically, we have a GTM handover template that the PM completes. And then, your job as a Product Marketer is to be a filter between the product team and GTM team, and simplify the new features to focus on the value prop vs. going deep on how it works.  What we've done before is package/synthesize all the updates in one succinct deck, record a Loom walking through all the updates as a detailed pre-watch, and then set up a live session where the GTM teams can ask questions. We capture the questions and deliver an FAQ after the live session as well as a reference guide. Depending on how complex the changes are you may need to schedule more than one session etc.  One thing to note is that the Support team usually need more details on how the new features work. Either the PM can handle the handover to support or it needs to be a different session. 

I built the 5A Framework of GTM for this question. :-) I know where you're coming from. You're proud of your incredibly, detailed GTM, but you need to present this plan to your GTM team, and you're in a sea of product documents and spreadhseets and you're unsure of what points to bring up. Create 5 sections with each of these A's, and you'll be surprised how holistic the GTM story is, and the quality feedback you will get back to pivot the GTM if need it. This is why 1. Audience: You must understand your target(s), and how it will be best to approach them. This can open eyes on who the product is built for and if you're going after an existing customer base or expading into a new customer base. This can start landing whether or not you're driving growth or retention in your accomplishments or goals 2. Angle: What is your message/angle. This will tell your audience(s) how you solve a problem. This can address whether or not your angles/messages go along with the existing mission and other product suite. Feedback here is critical to understand if the product is in line with where the company is going, and this is critical to get buy-in. This also leaves room for your copy and marketing team to get very creative.  3. Accomplishments: Your goals and milestones. These are also critical to get buy-in. If you're gunning for growth you will potentially have commercial objectives to hit. Either way, these will be necessary to ensure you are positiong your launch in line with the success executives want to see. This can also focus the GTM team for the right areas, and drive the right channels to hit these Accomplishments.  4. Activate: How will you execute your plan? This is where a screenshot of the GTM checklist with highlights of your top channels and partners come in. If you're not getting push back on any of the Audience, Angle, or Accomplishments, this Activation plan will not need to change much. But if any of the preceding A's are changed, be prepared to change how you will Activate, which is why it's more tactics than a big discussion. Also if your channel team understand all of the A's, they will have great ideas of their own to Activate. Empower your team with knowledge with the 5A Framework.  5. Assess: Evaluate and adjust. This will come in a post-launch and your plan of tracking. Everyone needs to be onboard on this for when you will regroup and what success/good looks like. This will enable the whole team to learn from each other and adapt better for the next launch.  If your teams don't all understand this at a high level, it would be very hard for them to have agency in their contribution to the GTM. So ensure everyone has this undestanding so they can brainstorm how the best to hit these goals in your launch. 

In my mind, enablement of internal teams is one of the most important thing you can do when it comes to repositioning or changing GTM strategy, including making it simple and effective to deliver on. We are currently in the process of this with one of our products and audiences right now. Changing how people talk about and position a product is incredibly hard, especially when they’ve been pitching a product in the same way for months or years. From my experience, not only does it take creation of written enablement materials (e.g., FAQ docs) but also live trainings, certifications on new scripts / talk tracks, listening to calls, and an *a lot of repetition*. On top of that, probably one of the most critical things you can do is enlist the help of various team leads / exec leadership to really hit home the fact that we need to be talking about a product / service in a fundamentally different way. It starts from the top where your leadership (Sales, CS) has clear expectations and standards around how you speak about a product and your level of knowledge about it.

It comes down again to segmentation, target and positioning. How critical is the new release/features to your target segment? Alternatively, it might seem like a small feature but can unlock a new market. Depending on the answer to these, you need to decide how big a deal you want to make of it.   The right amount of information for your GTM teams is based on their sales process. If they need a datasheet, a demo, a first+ second call deck, and supporting landing pages to match their opportunity stages, then thats what you create. But never create content for content sake - that is the source of content bloat.

It really depends on the channel and material. An email will vary from a webpage or a positioning document. I would encourage you to think about buyer stage (awareness, activation, adoption, advocacy) and tailor your message and CTA by corresponding outcome.  For example, a feature release for paying customers should highlight the benefit statements, how it works, and how to get started. Ideal materials would include: email/in-app post (awareness), tour for how it works, help doc for how to get started, and contact/cta for conversion.

I think this depends on the material and your audience.  If it is customer-facing, the rule of thumb is less is more. Get to the point. The details can go in the appendix.  Suppose your execs aren't into detailed, same as the above. However, if your execs are like those at Amazon, then do the lengthy brief.  Again audience matters. 

The most important thing to dig into here is why the existing GTM strategy is not working. Without deeply understanding this, you're just guessing blindly when doing GTM planning. Focus on really understanding your points of failure, speak with customers, speak with analysts, understand the market, and try again. 

I’m assuming that when you say “existing GTM strategy is not working for the product”, you mean that the product launch failed in some way. I think it’s important to first do a retrospective to understand what really happened and rectify the problem areas. Some common areas to explore first: * Dig into the data: Is it a conversion problem or top of funnel problem? * Assess the product & pricing: Is there product-market fit? Did we solve the customer pain points with the feature set we delivered? Is there willingness to pay for what we’ve built? * Assess target customers, messaging and competition: Is our ICP correct? Does the messaging resonate and is differentiated? Is there anything happening in the competitive landscape that could be putting pressure on sales

In the case the existing GTM strategy is not working, how can you go about redesigning the new GTM strategy? What should be the approach? This is a big question where it begs more questions than answers. And I think that's the key element is doing a deep dive and asking the right questions. Growth Mindset: Yes, you may not be happy with the way your GTM is doing but what's exciting is that you now have real life actual evidence of what worked or not. That's a critical piece of information that you can't really simulate or test for. And by asking this question you're already exhibiting a key concept of growth mindset, it's not working so what can we change. Collaboration: Get other teams involved, now that it's out in the wild, ask your CSMs for feedback, your account executives on what's not working, your product teams on adoption and drop off. Use all this internal knowledge and data to help advise you on step #2. Critical Thinking: What is wrong with the GTM strategy? Is it the product-market fit, or is it the messaging, positioning or pricing, is it oversaturation or is it the execution? Lay out your GTM strategy and analyze what went well and not. This allows you to determine if corrective measures are a simple tweak or a complete overhaul. GTM strategies requires a lot of time and resources from multiple teams to see the light of day. That I'm sure it's not all wrong. Keep what's working and tweak what's not. So before blowing anything up, it's critical to make an assessment of what exactly is not working with your current GTM strategy. And then based on what you have then ascertain what you can change that's low effort but high impact. Data / Measure of Success: Another thing to think about is what measurements did you start off to gauge success? Is it failing because the targets were too high, or were you aiming for the wrong criteria? Did the expectations change midway through the launch? Especially when launching a new product or initiative where there are no baselines to start off, sometimes real life is the best check of what's working or not. So this is a great point to bring it back to "What determines success" and then "Do we have what we need to reach this goal" and then go back to your GTM plan and see if it still's the right path towards your newly re-established metrics. A good measure of success is also time-bound. Did you give your GTM strategy enough time to be tested to breathe and determine if it's not working. Seemingly counterintuitive is also a balance of failing fast. Know what's not working quickly by measuring often and don't be too attached to your strategy.  Which looks to be exactly what you're doing! So already whoever asked this question is in the right path and mindset.

This is a great question. I think you'd want to first conduct a retrospective with stakeholders to understand what is flawed with current GTM strat. Is it target audience? Should you go up market or down market? Or is it the approach? Sales-led, marketing-led, product-led? Price? Packaging? There are a few experiments you can run to isolate the issue, but upon identification, the best way to redesign would be to test the iteration on a small subset of existing market. Assess outcomes. Then broaden scope to transition model overtime.

So I have three principles framework for strategy: the diagnosis, the guiding principles, and the coherent action. This framework has guided me in three careers, including tech. You can read about it in a famous book called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.  So if your strategy isn't working. How do you go about redesigning it? Well, first, you need to diagnose the opportunity or the problem. This first part is where you should spend the majority of your time. Why did it fail? What does your crucial buyer want? What is the opportunity in the market? Then the next part is the hardest part of your job—aligning leadership on the diagnosis.  Once you have aligned teams around the core problem, you'll proceed with the guiding principles. The guiding principles aren't tactics. They are meant as guidelines for any solution. So any solution to this problem or opportunity has to adhere to said guidelines. For example, if your market is partner-driven, then your guiding principle could be that any solution needs to be partner-led. Again the next part is the hardest, aligning teams to the guiding principles. Then your coherent actions or your tactics to solve the problem.  They key here is alignment, alignment, alignment.