It certainly depends on the launch tier along with other market factors/customer
dimensions, but typically I am looking at the data to inform next steps. Did we
hit our product usage target? Is the narrative landing in sales calls (listening
to gong recordings)? Is the pitch deck working (checking deal velocity in SFDC)?
I am continually tweaking to ensure we are landing in a place of impact and not
stagnation. Aside from this, the mission critical post-launch activity should be
- the RETROSPECTIVE! Get your GTM teams together to chat about what you should
"start, stop, continue" so you're even better next time. It's important to look
in the rearview to inform where you're headed.
Product Launches
1 answer
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • June 21
1 answer
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • June 21
I really like the story brand framework by Donald Miller. The narrative
structure puts the customer as the hero of the story and your solution as the
guide to their problem. The book also talks about picking a fight for your
product with a focus on vilifying the issues your customers are having. This
framework can be applied across stakeholders and performs very well from pitch
decks to landing page copy.
For example: your customer need to migrate from an old API to a new one.
2 answers
Product Marketing, Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2
The first step is defining the customer journey and making sure your key
functiona teams understand that journey. Then, recognizing that there may be
stop gaps that need to be implemented to ensure customers can take advantage of
the feature. What needs to happen on the delivery side of the house so CS and
technical teams are enabled? How can we over communicate and document docs and
materials for our teams and customers?
What kinds of enablement efforts do we need to account for to make sure
customers understand the benefits?
Welcome to the fun world of Enablement! And there are internal + external
aspects of this.
* External
* Message x Value & benefits: What's in it for your users? Migration is a
pain in the ass. Before you get to the logistics, you have to sell them on
the why
* Transition plan: What's the step-by-step guide? Is it one size fits all,
or does it require different approaches for different types of users?
These need to be documented and clearly laid out.
* Timing & cadence: Give your customers enough time to make the changes.
I'll leave the communications format, channels, and cadence up to you (but
this is never a one-and-done exercise). For example, don't expect one
email to the entire database to yield good results or high customer
satisfaction.
* Internal
* Is an Enablement team in place at your company? If so, great! Loop them in
early on customer enablement plans and they'll be able to position that
for your internal folks. If not...
* Message x Value & benefits: Why is this change important to communicate
and will it help your team sell more & better? Sell the change internally.
* Transition plan: Leverage what's built for customers and share it widely
internally so that every customer-facing team is aware. Roadshow it in
team meetings, mention it at all hands, set up office hours to give your
colleagues the opportunity to ask questions and poke holes.
* Timing & cadenece: Keep internal teams updated on the customer comms plan.
In B2B sales, give your CSM team the opportunity to send 1:1 messages
while marking takes care of the 1:many.
2 answers
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
Get positioning reps in early with your champion sellers. I like to create small
collaborative pods with sales team members to test new positioning and
messaging. I gather their feedback, weave their voice into my enablement
materials - and then they train their team on the corresponding messaging so we
GTM stronger and consistently.
Director of Product Marketing, IRONSCALES • February 6
The most important sales enablement activity that PMMs should being doing is
meeting with the sales team regularly. Split it up into smaller groups that way
you give everyone an opportunity to speak comfortably. Understand what's
working, what's not, and where you should focus future enablement sessions or
update materials based on feedback.
In the enablement sessions (regardless of topic), it's important to frame it
around your personas and messaging to help reinforce it.
4 answers
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
Persona! If you're able to research your persona and develop their user cases,
value drivers, motivations and goals - the rest (positioning, messaging and
sales enablement) will follow. Customers are the ultimate aligner, prioritize
actively listening to them, join insight sessions and fuel their voice within
your programs.
President, Giant Stride Marketing Group • January 24
When you are starting up a product marketing organization (even if it's an
organization of one!), it's easy to get pulled in a lot of directions. It's hard
to add the most value, though, without tackling the fundamentals: buyer
personas, positioning and messaging, and understanding the buyer journey. The
trick is to get this strategic work done in a way that it appears to be
addressing your company's burning tactical needs.
Example: In Week 2 of one crazy job, I was tasked with building a sales kit for
the financial services industry. The product's horizontal messaging was not very
compelling. However, the financial services project gave me the opportunity to
work with some of the most successful sellers, interview big customers, and get
quick input from key company stakeholders. All of that work went into the
horizontal product messaging work not long afterward.
Some steps you could take to get started:
1. Engage with your sales team to learn about your buyers and buyer journeys.
If you discover gaps in their sales tools, find 1-2 that you can fill
quickly.
2. Offer to interview customers for case studies (and write them if no one else
in the org is tasked with doing so). You'll get a lot of great messaging
input and a valuable deliverable along the way.
3. Update web copy instead of writing messaging documents. Use the new copy to
write the messaging documents later on.
4. Use your internal interactions to educate people about what PMM should and
should not do, to guide future work.
Good luck - I hope this sparks some inspiration!!
Director of Product Marketing, IRONSCALES • February 1
For me, the first focus would be understanding the buyer and building the
personas; everything else will cascade from there.
I'd start spending time with the sales to understand the deals we've won, what
problems they were experiencing, why they needed a solution, and how we provided
value. Work with the CS team to understand who the happy customers are and why
they are still with us (how we continue to deliver value)--a bonus if you can
work in a customer interview. Finally, work with the product to understand the
product and how it solves the customer's problem.
From those interactions, you can start identifying trends to help you build out
personas (you'll need other information sources). Once personas are created, you
can take that info to influence the Messaging/Positioning and update content as
needed. Finally, take the personas and messaging and use them for training your
sales team.
Founder and CEO, Deepstar Strategic | Formerly Puppet, Arrikto, Portworx, D2iQ, Mesosphere, Red Hat • February 6
The first priority is to reach out and engage those stakeholders. Let them know
you're there and here to help.
Discover what their immediate and medium terms goals are and the challenges
they're having in achieving them.
If you can help, commit to making their life easier and stick to your word.
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
So show them by helping them first.
I'm looking for functional/tactical tips please.
8 answers
Getting everyone on board after you're done is a lot harder if they haven't been
involved from the start. Give the GTM plan an iterative process treatment. Start
with a rough draft and shop it around. Get people to buy in on it. Ask for
feedback and ask questions so they feel involved. Make suggested changes if it
makes sense—and if it doesn't, work to reach a consensus.
Once you've gone through a couple of rounds with the primary stakeholders, the
GTM plan should be fairly polished. Everyone will believe they had a hand in it
and it's easier to work out minor kinks before implementation.
Head of Product Marketing and Documentation, Coro | Formerly Lytx, Cisco, Snyk, Lightrun, Comeet • November 26
This question is essentially "how to lead effectively without authority" - or in
other words, how to lead your peers and others who aren't necessarily in your
organization and/or who don't report to you directly.
Start early - before you plan on rolling out your new launch approach.
Talk with leaders and get their buy-in and then set up recurring meetings with
different stakeholders on the Marketing teams, and come prepared to present your
plans as well as to ask questions that spark contributions & brainstorming.
Share the goals of your new strategy in advance so that stakeholders can come
prepared with notes they might have on the different subjects and so forth. And
then, for each actual launch also make sure to prepare teams in advance and get
their opinions about the strategy you've built.
Remember these points:
* Develop long-term relationships and maintain regular and continuous
communications with all stakeholders.
* Do the same with senior leadership across the organization.
* Know the team leads; know their challenges; know their plans and programs.
* Remember that they have more than just product launch on their plates - make
sure you're there to help them with their other projects so far as you can.
* Communicate early and frequently for every planned launch.
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Drift • November 29
I know this isn't tactical, but I would make sure to include them in the product
launch kick off meeting (which happens ever before you have your entire plan
built) because it helps them understand WHY you are launching what you are
launching and enables them to feel part of the journey - part of the team - that
will make this launch a success. Because ultimately, it is a team that makes
launches happen. It can't be done alone.
I know this isn't a tactic (quite yet) but I mention this step because it will
help you get buy-in so you don't have to 'convince' anyone in marketing to
launch this. They will be excited about the opportunity and feel empowered to
share their POV on what acitivities/content they can create to support the
launch (respsective to their function. So demand gen team comes up with their
strategy and shares it with you to discuss, same ad content etc).
Tactics
-Set goals for the launch tied to quantitatve KPIs that impact the entire
business and every function
-Create a gantt chart (or Asana board) to track the key milestones (and every
deliverable / to-do) of the launch
-Schedule your weekly/biweekly meeting cadence
-Hold each member accountable to getting their work done. And make sure you've
empowered them to 'own' their workstream for the launch so they feel (and are)
bought in.
-Celebrate their success! And celebrate little wins along the way. Make the
launch process fun - and make sure to give credit to your teammates (at the exec
and peer level) along the way.
Head of Product Marketing, LottieFiles | Formerly WeLoveNoCode (made $3.6M ARR), Abstract, Flawless App (sold) • December 5
You need to get buy-in to the GTM strategy before you build it that includes:
* involving the team in the strategy development process, as this can increase
their ownership and commitment to the GTM plan
* providing clear goals and objectives to ensure that everyone is working
towards the same goals for the launch
Involving stakeholders early on can help to ensure that the GTM strategy aligns
with the overall goals and objectives of the company and that it takes into
account the needs and perspectives of all relevant parties.
Once you have developed a go-to-market strategy, it is important to effectively
communicate it to the marketing team the process of GTM execution via
go-to-market project management, kick-off meetings, alignment docs (project
briefs), etc.
Director, Product Marketing, Gong • December 7
Here are a few considerations and actions you can take to build support across
the team:
1. Tie your launch goals to the greater Marketing team goals. It’s important to
connect the dots on how your launch can help your marketing teammates
accomplish their goals as well. For major initiatives, make sure your
marketing leadership team is bought in and understand the potential impact.
You have to PMM your product internally first :)
2. Make folks feel like thought partners. I love holding brainstorm sessions
and pre-kick offs with content and channel owners. Not only does this get
them bought in, but you get a bunch of creative ideas out of it. People are
much more compelled to execute a plan if they've been brought in throughout
the process.
3. Be organized and make folks feel recognized. As PMMs we often quarterback
huge multi-channel launches, but we rely on others to execute much of the
plan. Come to your kick off prepared with a clear GTM strategy, workback
schedule, and customer journey & bill of materials (that you’ve already
co-created with folks ahead of the meeting!). Create a great culture around
launches, and folks will be more excited to work with you in the future.
Head of Solutions Marketing, Iterable • January 4
Get buy in EARLY, and share "excitement" around WHY the strategy was decided on
and the potential value/opportunity it brings for the company and that specific
marketing team! Once I have my messaging, positioning, and overall vision, I
like doing a "kickoff call" with the marketing team to go through the "Why,
What, and How"--I find that explaining how each person plays a critical role in
the success of the strategy is key to getting buy in.
When I deliver a market strategy to the marketing team, I think about it through
the lens of "What's In It For Me" (WIIFM)--speak their language and personalize
the market strategy to what they care about and how it will improve their area
of marketing. For example, if you are working with the Demand Gen team, how is
this new market strategy going to improve their MQLs? For the content team, what
might be some topics they can think about writing for related to this new
strategy?
And to continue driving success of the market strategy, I follow these steps:
1. Listen--reguarly check in with your marketing team. What do they feel like is
working/what working? Set up regular check ins! I really enjoy using Slido as a
way to collect feedback live during a meeting and even after. The questions in
Slido can be upvoted and asked anonymously, so it's a great way to do effective
and productive Q&A.
2. Stay organized--I use Asana to keep track of what initiatives are being done
to support the market strategy and results. If you are looking to do a GTM plan,
you can get more tactical for roles and responsibilties.
3. Course correct as needed--determine goals and KPIs up front (that are
realistic and achievable), and make adjustments as needed. Do you need to add
campaigns, or a webinar? Does messaging need to be tweaked? Do you need to find
a customer story? For me, win rates is a massive focus for Product Marketing, so
I keep a Salesforce dashboard that looks at win rates by sales teams, regions,
and verticals.
4. Share wins--what new logos have been obtained as a result of the market
strategy? What are website visitors looking like? How is the industry
responding? I like doing QBRs focused on what market strategy, as well as
sharing weekly/monthly wins in our Marketing All Hands Meeting related to that
market strategy. I also like to share Gong calls to marketing and sales team for
where that market strategy is working well.
Using a consistent and standiardized process and templates can really help teams
stay streamlined, focused, and empowered to all move to the beat of the same
drum!
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
I typically back up departmental asks with customer sentiment (qual) and data
(quant). This makes it easier to rally team members around our why and cultivate
influence towards a new GTM initiative. For example, recently we decided to
issue a new survey that required cross-functional and leadership support. We
created a charter for the initiative and documented why the program was
necessary, then built a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) to
clearly outline responsibilities among stakeholders. The RACI framework helped
to build trust, buy-in and accountability across teams while the charter rallied
the group around one clear north star.
I've found in my career that when I create the strategy on my own, it's much
harder to convince everyone else to buy into it. However, suppose I include
those other marketing teams much earlier in the strategy, getting their input
and setting goals/strategy/plans together. In that case, they're much more
vested in the plan's success, and it takes little convincing.
In the absence of being able to do that, the next best option is to understand
the goals of everyone else on the marketing team and how your market strategy
helps them achieve their goals. When other people can picture executing your
strategy and achieving their team's goals, it's easier to "convince" them.
2 answers
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
These are typically small launches with functionality that maintains market
position, parity, and performance. Communication channels should include but are
not limited to: internal - slack announcement with positioning brief, external -
cs/sales outreach template, targeted email announcement, newsletter, help docs
update.
For small piel updates, you can think of these as your soft/quiet launches that
don’t require broad messaging/awareness. (Pixel changes). Communicaiton channels
should include but are not limited to: internal - slack announcement with
positioning brief, cs outreach comm if relevant, help doc update.
Director of Product Marketing, IRONSCALES • February 2
I've partnered with PM to assign a launch level to a release based on a grade
(is it new/innovative, is it going to match the market, impact to customers,
impact to the market, etc.). If something doesn't fall into the launch level
threshold, it's an opportunity to release it, collect data, and see if it makes
sense to package the feature announcement with future releases to help tell a
bigger story.
What are the best paths into PMM for early in career folks? What do you look for when you're hiring?
4 answers
I've been hiring entry-level (and higher) PMMs for 8 years, and beyond the
typical things that are in the job description, here are the differentiators
that separate the great candidates from the so-so candidates:
* Comfort with ambiguity: The problems we deal with in product marketing are
inherently ambiguous. There's no "right" answer, but there are answers that
are "better" than others. If you're looking for a role that has step-by-step
instructions or a checklist, PMM is not your job.
* Have a point of view: Your job as a marketer is to articulate a story. You
can't articulate a story if you don't have a point of view.
* Demonstrate Impact and Influence regardless of your role in the organization:
Ultimately marketing is a persuasive endeavor. We may not have authority over
our audience but we still must influence them. This goes for internal and
external stakeholders: Can you influence a product team to make certain
roadmap decisions, even though you are not their boss? Can you influence
sales enablement? Can you influence customers?
Fortunately, these skills are transferable: Even if you are an entry-level
product marketing candidate, you can still provide examples to show you have
these attributes.
As a PMM leader, I am looking for the product marketer who has the following
skills - curiosity, open and empathy.
Yes, disciplines and your signature skill in PMM - from positioning to launch to
enablement are key, but having empathy for your customer, your team and yourself
is critical to be a rockstar PMM.
Sharing my experiences with PMM career path and job search
https://divmanickam.substack.com/p/pmm-pm-career-path
President, Giant Stride Marketing Group • January 26
Exciting that you're considering product marketing as a career! One good thing:
you’re not competing with 100 graduates from Product Marketing University
because no such school exists. I have seen successful transitions to product
marketing from product management, sales engineering, consulting, corporate
marketing, consumer brand management, and customer success. I have also seen
people come straight from an MBA program. (occasionally directly from an
undergraduate program, but IMHO it's better to gain experience in another
discipline first.)
Qualities I look for:
* An interest and ability to understand the product you’re marketing. You don’t
have to know how to code it; you don’t always have to be able to use every
capability; but you have to be able to demo it and deeply understand the
problems it addresses.
* Empathy, especially when it comes to being able to look at the world through
a customer’s eyes. Product marketers also need to have empathy for their
sales teams, development teams, and the rest of the marketing organization.
* Strong communication skills, both written and verbal. No matter how big the
organization is, product marketers are constantly having to win over
customers and internal stakeholders, verbally and in writing. And they’re
constantly having to align their stakeholders on competing priorities.
* Perseverance: Success in product marketing depends on the success of others
in the organization—sales, demand gen teams, product management, and
engineering. You’re often fighting some strong headwinds.
* Critical thinking: Product marketing has to be able to turn “what” into “so
what.” It can be like solving a 3D puzzle with 10 people handing you pieces
from different sections in random order.
So happy you found product marketing and it interests you! I actually wrote
about this topic years ago:
https://medium.com/projectproduct/10-skills-traits-youll-find-in-exceptional-product-marketers-12fccfd35e2a
Now, today, I can narrow it down to just a few traits I look for as I find these
skills very difficult to teach/train in the workplace. I can help and teach
those early in their careers how to overcome public speaking fears, how to price
and package a SaaS product, or how to go about competitive research, but I find
these 3 traits difficult to teach:
1. Curiosity: If you're not a person who is curious, product marketing is not
for you. A willingness to research, dive deep, and ask questions is
critical.
2. Solid writer: Product marketing is all about communicating the value of what
you're selling. If you cannot clearly articulate your message and the value,
a career in PMM will be tough. And you might work at places where there are
no other strong writers to lean on, so being able to clearly write is a key
skill.
3. Project management: As with many professions, there is plenty to juggle and
competing priorities. And a core responsibility for a PMM is launching
products, which can be large, complicated projects with many stakeholders.
All this requires the ability to manage projects, stay on top of deadlines,
and remain organized.
Hope this helps!
10 answers
Product Marketing, Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2
There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM
plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of
labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.g., decide, influence, escalate)?
When do you scale?
There are two broad options: launch-and-learn or test-and-scale. In a
launch-and-learn model, scaling happens first as the commercialization comes
online across the enterprise at once. Learning then occurs after rollout and
across the enterprise. This type of GTM implementation makes sense in a
low-risk, high-resilience situation.
In a test-and-scale model, the innovations come online in pockets and pilots.
Pilot learnings inspire changes to the plan, and the finalized plan is rolled
out in waves. The test-and-scale model makes sense for implementing a
commercialization strategy when external and internal resilience is low. It also
makes sense when resilience is high but risk is also high.
And, last you need a framework.
In either scaling framework, what is the cadence of activities over the course
of the implementation? I've used a 4-step process successfully:
1) Act on the plan
2) Measure the actions’ results
3) Share and discuss the results
4) Adjust the plan
Director of Product Marketing, HubSpot | Formerly Early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • April 7
One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common
understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally.
Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at the same time, the more time and
advance notice marketing has, the more we're able to enrich, adapt, and
customize a GTM plan appropriately. A GTM playbook is a best-case scenario and a
guideline which has to be adapted rapidly and practically to the lead time
available.
The marketing team for WordPress.com is relatively new (around 5 years old for a
product almost 15 years old), and speed is very important to product development
and serving millions of existing customers. Our engineering teams are pushing to
production several times or even dozens of times a day, and so we have to work
together to make sure we give sufficient time to amplify the great work they're
doing with existing and prospective customers.
Ideally we're involved as soon as it's known the product team is preparing a
feature or change for launch, so we can identify the channels, messaging, and
timing needed to market the work as soon as it's ready to ship to production.
We don't use formal documents like a market requirements document, but I've
documented and communicated top elements of that process the engineering team
should be thinking about when they're preparing a feature for development, and
it's an exercise they can go through at kickoff instead of when the feature is
ready to test or launch. We can partner with them to identify any gaps, or help
answer those questions, and then come up with a realistic GTM strategy with the
time available.
Here's an excerpt of the exercise I shared internally:
We’re building a feature or product to solve a problem or do a job for
customers, and then tell as many of the right customers as possible that we’ve
solved it for them.
- What product or feature is being developed? Focus on user perception and usage
– features, needs, usability, methods of usage. How does it apply to customers
of the entire family of Automattic products?
- Who are the target customers? What user behavior, demographics, or other
attributes do they have? How might they be different? Does this apply to current
or prospective customers, or both? A subset of customers?
- Why are customers likely to want this product/feature? (aka: what problem does
this solve for the user? Why would they ‘hire’ it to do a job?)
- When will the product be available? How much detail can you share about the
timing? Can you include any ballpark dates or checkpoint dates which could be
helpful for those involved to know about?
- Any pricing-related information? Is the feature being added to a plan? Does it
replace a paid feature, lower a plan price, or change the potential revenue from
a sign-up?
Vice President Product Marketing / GTM, Wrike • April 8
I'll answer this from the aspect of a GTM plan for pricing and packaging
changes. The top 3 areas to identify and mitigate risk around include:
1) RISK: Did you get the Price/Packaging right?
* Does the price and what's included in the packaging resonate with the buyer?
* Is the price point in the ball park of what the customer is looking for and
relative to alternative solutions?
MITIGATION PLAN: Get input from customers, prospects, analysts and advisors in
advance of the change and GTM roll-out.
2) RISK: Are your revenue teams (sales, CS, renewals, etc.) properly enabled?
MITIGATION PLAN: Make sure that you have all the mesasging, positioning and
sales tools ready for the teams. Ensure that you have enablement/training time
setup with all the teams. Certify them on the new packaging/pitch/pricing. Makes
sure they are ready for objection handling and questions from customers and
prospects.
3) RISK: Impact to existing customers (vs. net new)
MITIGATION: Map all of your existing customers to new packaging and understand
difference in existing pricing and new pricing. Ensure that you have a plan for
the timing of when existing customers will go to the new packaging? Will they
transition immediately, or wait for renewals? Will you let existing customers
grandfather on the old packaging and/or pricing? Are there contractual
limitations on what you can change?
Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs), Amazon • April 21
Great question. There could be many reasons why a GTM plan is deemed risky.
Perhaps because a lot is hinging on a product launch, or a risky marketing
campaign and the riskiest of all - you as a PMM are not completely on board with
the product. (The later should not happen but it has happened to many us, I
assume)
IMO, the key is to
1. Over-communicate: Define a DRI, make sure every stakeholder is involved,
follow a decision-making model such as the one I mentioned above (RACI model).
2. Plan plan plan: Have a mitigation plan B ready if your original plan fails,
or perhaps even a Plan C if Plan B fails. For a recent launch campaign we did on
Indiegogo, we had Plan Bs for every major marketing activity.
Head of Product Marketing - Security, Integrations, Mobile, Salesforce • April 4
1. Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early
in the process
2. Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its an
ongoing partnership where PMM needs to lean in quite a bit to help
3. Not factoring in global requirements VERY early on and discovering late in
the game that its not just a 'localization' issue that will handled by the
'local' teams
4. Not factoring in migration or EOL requirements and just focusing on the new,
shiny products. Customers have more heartburn about migrations than
marketers account for. Be ready for that, and factor that heavily into
operationalization
Director of Product Marketing, Matterport • May 3
This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a
surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time
comes, then you’ll be successful in solving those last minute snafus.
Assuming your marketing brief and GTM plan are finalized and approved, a
successful GTM execution comes down to organization, stakeholder alignment and
(the hardest one!) seeing around corners.
Here are the riskiest components in each of those categories and how to mitigate
that risk:
1. Lack of organization:
* Misaligned plans
* Losing track of documents and creative files
* Overly tight timelines
* Rehashing previous conversations
How to mitigate: Keep a source of truth document (or spreadsheet, my personal
favorite) where you track every single launch component, including status and
timeline, meeting notes, resources, channel plans and assets, launch day tick
tock and more.
2. Missing stakeholder alignment:
* Vague R&R
* Lack of resourcing
* Unclear expectation-setting
How to mitigate: Bring your cross-functional and marketing partners along for
the journey by pulling them in at key strategic milestones when you’re creating
your plan, then holding regular status meetings up until launch through to a
post-mortem.
3. Not seeing around corners:
* Lack of familiarity with the deployment tech
* Broken user journeys
* 11th hour feedback
How to mitigate: This one tends to be company-specific, so ask your colleagues
about unexpected day-of discoveries on previous launches and then prepare for
those specific scenarios. Also, it never hurts to build a buffer into your
timeline and have an extra set of eyes on the creative before it goes out the
door.
Vice President of Product Marketing, GitLab • July 12
Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s
a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and
executing the strategy in the market. Here’s my list of the riskiest elements
and how I solve for them.
First, team alignment. In my experience, aligning the team is the trickiest
element because the amount of stakeholder voices expands seemingly exponentially
the closer you are to launching your GTM activities. This is just as true for
the early stage pre-product market fit startup as it is for the hyper-growth,
more mature company. My solution for this is constant cascading communications.
The job of the Product Marketer is often to ensure that everyone is rowing in
the same direction, so make sure that you are communicating often and bringing
people into the process early.
Like the above question about GTM plan fundamentals, I find that writing out the
GTM plan in narrative form is extremely helpful, both for clarity of thought and
as a handbook for new people joining the GTM process. I also find that
consistent adoption of OKRs is a great way to help ensure the alignment of
activities. Like many companies, we use OKRs at GitLab as a way to align our
team activities with the company strategy and with each other. The process of
creating, debating, calling out dependencies, and tracking progress is, itself,
a way to create clarity on both what we are trying to achieve in our GTM
strategy, how we will accomplish it, and who will take ownership of which roles
and responsibilities.
Second, data data data. A key success factor is ensuring that everyone on the
go-to-market team (marketing, sales, customer success…everyone) is using the
same data, is following the same KPIs, and is looking at the same dashboards.
Third, the market is not a constant – just as you are evolving and
operationalizing your GTM, so are your competitors. It’s like when you look at a
star in the sky, you are really seeing the light that emanated in the past. So
too is the case with your GTM plan that was based on where your competition was
at a previous point in time. My solution: tight feedback loops throughout the
GTM team. This is an area that small companies have an advantage - since their
teams are small, they can more easily have all the people in the room or zoom
giving feedback on every aspect of the GTM process. While easier in a small
company, tight feedback loops can work at scale if they are engineered into the
process. I once rolled out a new positioning strategy in the market and learned
that it was ineffective (see metrics answer above). While it was a bummer that
the original positioning wasn’t effective, I was proud of the team for
developing this insight quickly, rapidly rolling it back, and then iterating
based on what we learned.
Group Manager, Product Marketing, Lyra Health • August 3
Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan.
To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust
post-launch.
1. Making sure there is product market fit is make or break. By that I mean,
the buyer you've identified has a clear pain point and the product that was
build addresses that pain point. I've seen launches across different
companies struggle because a product was built before fully understanding
the buyer need.
2. Lack of alignment on decision makers can derail a launch plan. If decisions
makers and decisions that have been made aren't clearly communicated, you
could accidentally move forward with the wrong GTM plan without even
knowing. I've used the RACI matrix structure to define rolls as well as
RAPID. It's not a very sexy topic, but can be highly effective.
3. Pricing is another risky item. If you don't properly research and test your
pricing, your product could be underpriced (losing you money), overpriced
(causing adoption issues), or could even have the wrong pricing model.
Head of Solutions Marketing, Iterable • January 5
The biggest risk I typically see in GTM strategies is that it doesnt work.
Somewhere, something was missed, or the messaging, product, etc. doesnt resonate
with prospects and customers. '
I have found that your webiste is a great place to experiment to ensure this
doesnt happen. It has historical data to anaylze various aspects of your GTM
strategy including verticals, personas, messaging, sales motions, customer
marketing, etc.
Training the org is another big risk. If there is a new revenue-driving feature
that CS/CSMs/SEs dont know how to technically talk about or sell, that new
feature will fall flat.
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
The most risky operationalizations in a GTM strategy to me are spray and pray
(homogenous) campaigns, broad (not segmented nor sophisticated/suppressed, not
segmented (targeted) and not timely (saturated). Basically, if you are not
intentional with your outreach that is a huge risk and you'll end up as noise,
spam, or worse - blacklisted (and that is a huge risk).
11 answers
Global Head of PMM and Content Marketing, TIDAL, Square • March 24
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.
Product and marketing consultant, former industry strategy PMM at Adobe, Founding Team and VP PMM at Livefyre (acquired by Adobe), Adobe • December 29
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.
Head of Product Marketing, Notion • February 4
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.).
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Twilio • December 2
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?
Product Marketing Lead, Google | Formerly DocuSign • January 18
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.
Head of Product Marketing, VR Work Experiences, Oculus, Meta • February 3
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.
Head of Product Marketing - Security, Integrations, Mobile, Salesforce • April 4
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
Vice President of Product Marketing, GitLab • July 12
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.
Group Manager, Product Marketing, Lyra Health • August 1
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.
Head of Solutions Marketing, Iterable • January 4
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)
Senior Director Product Marketing, Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
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).