How does self-serve product impact product marketing function?

If you’re asking about how self-serve product teams impact my function: I’ve never been at a company where there is a “self-serve product” team. There are some teams that are more focused on the self-serve experience, like a “first experience” team that’s really focused on getting customers up and running with the product. That team is, of course, going to optimize for the self-serve customer that doesn’t have a customer success or sales person there to help them get up and running, but they wil ...Read More

I believe it may be important to start out with how product marketing is the same across a self-serve/product-led motion and a sales-led motion. In my opinion, the core product marketing responsibilities remain the same: Target audience and buyer definition Positioning and messaging Pricing and packaging Product narrative and storytelling Product and feature launches and so on... With either motion, you have to be an expert in your product, customer, and market. Where the function starts to diff ...Read More

Whether you work on a self-serve or a sales-driven product will, in a way, define the type of product marketing you'll do. In a sales-driven organization, most of your product marketing activities will enable sales or account management teams. Your metrics will be focused on the sales team's success such as driving leads and ensuring wins over losses. This model benefits from a 1-1 customer-to-sales relationship since the sales team can convince hesitant customers to buy or explain tricky parts ...Read More

As a partial answer, it's helpful to think about some of the things that Sales and CS roles might typically contribute to the customer journey or your understanding of customers, and how you can obtain that value in a proactive or self-serve way that's scaled and repeatable. As a self-serve PMM without the benefit of those roles, you need to be considering: Do you have all the pieces in place to help people through the pre- and post-purchase customer journey without human intervention: Is your w ...Read More