At what stage of a company should a product marketing team think about resourcing an industry-first approach?

There are a couple dimensions to this that I find helpful to double-click into depending on your company's situation. First is creating a clear delineation between Industry Marketing and Industry Product Marketing.  To me, the initial need for Industry Marketing is driving awareness and brand relevance within a specific industry. This is done through speaking the native language of that industry with relevant content marketing, primary research into an industry’s end consumers, internal research ...Read More

The focus should always be on the needs and wants of the customer. Storytelling needs to be at the center and strategy should be based on customer problems and marketing should align to the solution.  Industry based marketing should be a priority once product market fit has been established across an intiial target market. Targeting subsets of customers by vertical and segment is key in order to align value based messaging with customer pain. Creating seperate marketing strategies allows for acc ...Read More

Every single company, starting on the very first day that the founders have an idea on a napkin, should think, and resource, industry-first. Surprising? Well, that's because early stage startups need to have an extremely narrow focus on their ideal customer, which tends to be within a single industry at first. After that, and at scale, it can really depend on the type of product you're marketing, and how different the value propositions are by industry. At Procore, we've found that our core solu ...Read More

This one all depends on the product, market, and customers. If you're an industry-specific solution and just getting started in market, taking an industry bent first will help you differentiate against the horizontal plays. Being able to tell a credible "insider story" and keep the team focused on material problems is a huge advantage.  Alternatively, if you have a horizontal play that's starting to get real traction in more than 2-3 industries (and by traction, I'd say if you have 3 industries ...Read More