Platform and Solutions Product Marketing

I came from a background in brand and so my natural instincts served me most well on the outbound side of product marketing. I had my fair share of imposter syndrom in the early days when I looked at my peers and realized that I'd never done the traditional inbound work of a PMM. I spent more time than I should have in those early days being afraid to ask for fear of not being able to meet the bar. It took building a relationship with a peer whose work I admired to admit that I was really learning on the fly and to my surprise, they were too!  We all have strengths and areas where we ...

I spent a lot of time in my early career worrying about getting to the next promotion and how I was progressing versus my peers. Looking back now, this was all wasted energy. I wish I had been more focused on learning and picking up as many skills and experiences as possible. I also wish I had been less worried about making mistakes. I think I would have been able to take more risks and push myself to try new things that would have ultimately helped me to build more skills. I also wish I knew how to prioritize better early in my career. I worked a lot of late nights and weekends in my earl...

One thing I wish I learned earlier is the most powerful product marketing you can do is always centered on a shared human truth. When I look back on my very early PMM GTM work, I focused primarily on communicating about the product and the benefit derived from the features themselves. But the product features, however innovative, were only half the story. Connecting the Product to the Customer Need is where the true magic lies. Find the truth we all share (an experience, an emotion) and connect that to the new experience the product provides -- that’s where your message takes on real meanin...

There is one key learning: Actively plan & manage your development. Here is what is involved: * Know the menu: Since Product Marketing is such a broad discipline, its important to understand the various functional competenices that comprise it. This way, you can assess where you have strengths and where you want to develop. These competenices span target segmentation definition, messaging & positioning, content development, sales enablement, pricing/packaging, PR/AR and more, they are quite different and require different skills. * The market will evolve: There are als...

When you're starting out your career as a PMM, it is very important to remember that your value promise is to customers and not internal stakeholders. I don't mean to say that internal alignment and buy-in isn't important but it should never take priority over serving your customers. In my early days, I spend 80% of my time trying to understand what were the needs of my internal stakeholders and ensuring I was supporting them fully, leaving little focus on the customer. The moment I started prioritizing customer needs over internal stakeholder needs, when I started to champion customers int...

* Don't box yourself, ever!  * Don't always stick to how things are always done.  * And ask questions more.  * And observe and take notes.  * And don't pretend to know it all!  Here's the thing: When you are early in your career, you are often embarrassed to ask questions or ask "why?" But asking those questions more would help you understand things wayyyyy better. Some of my best learnings have come from asking questions to understand things better. Think about it — if you can't understand a feature as a marketer, chances are that your customers won't. That's your biggest advantage; ...

As someone with a tech background and self-education in marketing, I learn everything in practice. I wish I knew more about the importance of user research and CI at the beginning of my PMM journey: - User research: back in 2015, we released our first startup product which dramatically failed. We spent one year of development without proper user research, without defining the customer journey, or even having personas. That taught me the importance of knowing your users and their needs :) - Constant competitive analysis: somewhere in 2018 a competitor copied our startup features and ad...

I have taken the certification offered by Pragmatic institute foundations and launch certification. I found them to be good courses for PMMs in enterprise companies. They have used their generic framework for GTM. I got some clarity on a few concepts, but overall I was expecting to come back with many more actionable frameworks, learnings from instructors' experiences. I am looking to engage with an alternative program that may be focused on PLG and low touch sales programs where we can learn about how marketing has influenced growth more comprehensively.

I am aware of just a few 1. Pragmatic institute - I took it. However, I found that to be specific to B2B enterprise sales. 2. 280 Group: I recently found out about this institute, I am looking to connect with someone who has been to this program. 3. AIPMM: Seems to offer courses similar to Pragmatic Institute. I am looking to connect with someone who has been to this program to understand more. Outside of these, I am looking for more engaging courses, especially where we can learn how to influence PLG in low touch product environments, and contribute to strategy comprehensively.

I am not aware of any one key certification for product marketers. I work with PMMs that come from backgrounds in campaigns, sales, engineering, and product management. Each of those backgrounds lend themselves to a specific function in product marketing.  In my experience, there are three types of product marketers:  1. Technical PMM 2. Market Programs PMM 3. Go-to-Market PMM.  An aspiring product marketer should identify their entry point into one of the aforementioned functions. If there was one skill that unites each type of PMM, it is their ability to diagnose a market, create ...

I'm a little biased here, but I don't believe that there are courses or certifications that are a prerequisite or requirement to jumping into product marketing. If you haven't done any marketing before, or worked alongside a good marketing team, Pragmatic Marketing by the Pragmatic Institute is a solid framework for twisting your head around what marketing is really about.  But the best way to learn is on the job. If you have a PMM function at your current company, get to know them. Ask about what they're working on, why it's important. What are the biggest challenges they're trying to o...

The most important thing you should expect from your new manager when you first join an organization is a detailed onboarding document with a 90-day plan. The document should provide background information on the company, industries, and competitors with links to source files and documents. It should also outline the company’s vision, the annual operating plan for the business and the department OKRs or goals.  As part of your orientation plan, your boss should identify a list of key individuals for you to meet with topics to cover in each meeting. The document should also contain links ...

Every time I join a new organization, I ask for the same things: * List of key contacts in the sales, marketing, and product teams * Key buyer/user personas * Existing product materials * KPIs for the team From there I construct a 30-60-90 day plan to meet people, learn the products, and craft a strategy for the products that will lead to measurable success.

I am familiar with this situation as I was here not too long ago. ;) Here's what worked well for me:  * As a new leader, establish your 30-60-90 days goals with your manager. Align on the big bets, so there are no big surprises.  * You are also likely to re-org the team to make it more efficient. Chances are that your manager might also have a few thoughts/ideas. Pick their brain earlier to understand more, so it can influence your plans.  * Ask your manager for the critical stakeholders for you to build relationships across the organization and genuinely pursue that.  * As...

Product marketing is the process of taking the right product to the right market with the right narrative to the right audience and at the right time. More specifically, a product marketer is the voice of the customer, helping organizations uncover insights that can inform product and marketing plans. The best way for you to convey the value of PMM is to fight for your customers. A lot of times, PMMs will face the dilemma of supporting internal goals vs meeting external customer needs. No matter what, always represent your customer interests, be their voice internally. It may make you feel ...

In smaller organizations, I've found this is much harder. The marketing team, sales team, and product team might all sit very close to each other. Small organizations essentially require everyone to have a technical/product expertise that just doesn't happen in larger orgs. The sales teams will just ask the PM directly, and the marketing teams will focus on the key messaging for the product(s) that drive the company. As the company grows, the roles required within marketing, sales, and product get more specialized and the spaces between them grow. There might be multiple products, geogra...

Product marketing is the core of any organization. We are the product experts, which means:  * We work closely with the demand gen teams to create compelling ads in the market.  * We partner with the awareness teams to hype the product / upcoming features. * We align with the product teams on feature prioritization and the right short-term and long-term product strategy. * We work with the field to arm the sellers with the latest product innovation and how to sell them.  * We work with the AR and PR teams to ensure we stay relevant in the market.  Can you name another team t...

You nailed why platform products are difficult to message. This is also why I think they are more fun than working on “point solutions.” (Please forgive me for using that heinous jargon.) In the best-case scenario, you can identify an overarching value proposition for using the platform that resonates with your primary audience and helps them quickly understand the space you’re in. Then you prioritize use cases/solutions based on how frequently customers adopt them or their revenue value to your company. You want to make it easy for each customer group to be able to find the relevant use...

Thank you for some wonderful frameworks and inputs on messaging and positioning. I have seen a trend especially across many segments - particularly in enterprise - to move from products to solutions to platforms. I had written a blog last year what that means, especially if the goal is to position a "platform" versus point products or point solutions. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/products-solutions-ecosystems-why-what-how-savita-kini/  In order for a "true platform" -- there needs to be an ecosystem approach in the go-to-market where you can allow other companies / startups/ISVs to build...

This will depend on what your product/service/platform does and who the target audience is. For instance, in one of my previous roles, we had one product for one audience. Of course the platform was extensible, had different feature sets, but the value was easy to articulate to one audience. On the other hand, in my current role at Handshake, we have a three-sided talent marketplace with very different products and audiences. We tackle this by having one company value prop and then tailor specific messaging to each side of the business. Remember that messaging should not be a feature list....

Often times, we say our platform has unlimited possibilities, it's the art of the possible -- because it truly is. But it doesn’t help the customer understand our unique differentiator vs any other option in the market. Starting with themes has been helpful to simplify the messaging hierarchy. We need to simplify the message, so it’s memorable. If we cannot do that, no matter how great the messaging sounds, it will be forgotten the next second. We developed a messaging and positioning framework to help articulate customer needs and our value proposition across 4 main themes - Connect, Mode...

We now offer upwards of a dozen products on the Stripe platform that go way beyond payments processing—from products for incorporation and billing management to fraud prevention and managing corporate spending. To manage the growing complexity, we introduced the concept of Anchor Tenants at Stripe this year. (This term comes from American malls, where there may be a large store that draws customers and traffic for the smaller stores.) For us, those are our core products: Payments (payments acceptance), Connect (marketplaces and platforms), and Billing (recurring revenue and invoicing). The...

I generally look at it like this: Use Case -> Business Case -> Story. Starting with the use cases, I think about what people actually do with this platform (cue the "two Bobs" from "Office Space"). Then I think about how those capabilities translate into solutions to real problems, as different stakeholders experience them (that last part is absolutely critical, by the way). Those are my business cases.  Once I have my business cases, I can do one of two things. Either, I can see that one, more than any other, represents the primary value of the product, both now and likely into the f...

In my opinion, the most important thing in prioritizing your messaging is finding the common denominator across your platform. Does it create a new output, or solve a new problem, or enable a new style of working, for example. Then you prioritize that in your messaging hierarchy, and use the various things that your platform does as means to support that new narrative. For example, DocuSign's platform is composed of our ecosystem, our developer tools, our foundational infrastructure and our security and compliance. It allows a customer to control their own roadmap for agreements, because cu...

Great question! You can consider your target buyers and prioritize messaging based on your top personas. This will help your field tremendously too. You can also identify common customer outcomes and make sure you map your buyers to expected outcomes to the general vision of the platform. Aligning all of this will help you really synthesize the top value prop of your platform. 

Great question! I think about this one a lot...First off, it’s important to callout that there is no perfect org structure :)  In general, you have to identify what you’re optimizing towards and what structure will give you the highest chance to get there. For Eats PMM, we’ve always kept a fairly tight PMM to PM relationship, so we map PMMs directly to their Product counterparts.  Product is broken down by audience - ie., Consumer, Restaurant, Delivery Person so we have leads within each audience and typically, sub-groups within that focus on either Growth (getting users from 0 → 1 tr...

This all comes down to how is the rest of the business organized. If you're organizing in a way that's incongrous to everyone else in the org, you will not be setup for success. With smaller nimble teams it's likely just based on bandwith and who has room to take things on. With larger teams, or as a team is being built out, it's best to align with your core cross-functional partners such as Product. There is usually overlap with PMMs working with 2-3 PMs. I've organized teams by product area in the past which aligned well to how Product was organized. 

In general, PMM roles at Intercom are more of the 'full stack' variety - i.e we cover the whole journey from feeding into the roadmap to launch, including competitive research, buyer/persona/market research, GTM strategy, positioning and messaging, enablement, launch planning etc. Our team sits in marketing and reports into a Senior Director of PMM. Our team structure has shifted several times in the time I've been here, based on changes to the company strategy, product team structure and where we most need to focus resources,. Currently, we're split into 3 'groups' based primarily around ...

The structure of the PMM team is usually a function of the size of the company and it’s GTM model. The “typical” SaaS PMM team has a set of Core PMMs that are focused on product, and usually a sister PMM team in the form of Industry/Solutions Marketing that is focused on solutions for specific verticals or segments. At Atlassian, since we have a flywheel model, PMMs have a lot more focus on activities that deal with acquisition (self-serve), cross-sell, and upsell. So while our PMM teams are organized by product (e.g. Jira, Confluence, etc.) individual PMMs on a product team can focus on c...

The PMM team structure depends on the size of the company, how technical the product is, and the GTM model. * Company Size: As the company grows and scales, PMM tends to fall under the Marketing org and they may segmented by Core Product PMMs where they focus on the overall messaging and positioning, Industry/Solution PMMs that focus use cases for those specific industries ,and solution areas, and there may be PMMs that will focus solely on sales enablement, competitive intelligence, or pricing. For smaller companies, PMM teams will play a more 'full stack' PMM role. For...

Our team is structured by audience type and discipline. We have one part of the team focused on our end users and prospects, another part of the team is focused on our partners, and a third on market research and market strategy. That said, I strongly believe it's important for PMM teams at hypergrowth companies to be nimble in terms of their structure and be willing to redefine roles and responsibilities as company strategy and the needs of the business shift over time.

At DocuSign, there are product marketers across our main product categories, as well as industry and audience teams. Every company I've ever worked at has grouped their teams differently, so I tend to consider new roles based on mapping skills to company needs. If the largest TAM is in a vertical that is specialized, perhaps you'll need an industry PMM. If the biggest gap in company need is relative to product launch materials, maybe you need someone focused on building a great bill of materials. Etc. 

I've done it in so many different ways! Few quick pointers:  * The most important thing is to ensure every team member has a good swim lane and growth path.  * Take your revenue goal and slice that evenly across the team to see what makes the most sense — product line, segment, or objective.  * If you have a big product organization, try aligning your team with leaders. This will help you ensure PM-PMM alignment for a stronger product strategy.  * If you have several SKUs/product lines, it might be worthwhile to have a person or a team dedicated to overall messaging and nar...

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 pr...

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...

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...

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...

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 ac...

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 (dat...

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 ...

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 prod...

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 ...

Everyone’s definition of soft and hard skills differs, but here are the nine skills that I think are the most important for a product marketer to have. I've used these skills as a compass to help me grow in my own career and have turned them into a success guide for my team at Envoy to use: Soft skills: * Cross-functional excellence: As a PMM, you have the opportunity to lead without being a manager of people. A strong product marketer is someone who takes others along with them, rather than telling people exactly what they want them to do. They’re able to create strong relation...

The number one skill is influencing without authority. More specifically, influencing authority in a matrixed organization. By design, product marketing sits at the intersection of a multitude of functions, each with their individual KPIs. Your job is to balance the needs of your various stakeholders to drive revenue and adoption for your product(s). If your company has one product, then this task may be fairly straight forward. If your company has multiple products or multiple portfolios, then the task becomes exponentially harder.  The most important hard skills are positioning and mess...

Hard skills may vary by company, but I think there are two that are critical: * Insights. Know the difference between an anecdote and an insight. This is especially critical when you work on a service at scale. Your best (and sometimes most challenging) users tend to be the loudest, so make sure that you're helping the team hear from a diverse array of customer voices. I find that one of the most important parts of any study is the recruit/target audience. Spend time getting the team aligned on who you're going to hear from. * Analytics. Spend time not just understandin...

Top 3 Soft skills * Be collaborative: Be open to new ideas, raise your hand to help, lean in to new areas, and have fun while doing it.   * Build strong relationships: Invest in your cross functional partners, get to know them personally and professionally, know what is most important to them.  * Develop a point of view, clearly communicate your point of view, and influence others with your point of view Top 3 Hard skills * Analytical <-> Creative: Navigate this spectrum to be both analytical and creative in your problem solving, go to markets, and develop recommendati...

Strong PMMs are good writers, know their product inside and out, experts of the competitive landscape, messaging geniuses and storytellers, BFFs with the sales team, GTM architects and excellent project managers. I like to think about a good PMM as a: * A psychologist who can develop a deep understanding of the fears, aspirations, hopes, and dreams of buyers and target personas. * An explorer seeking to learn more, discover more, and do more; bringing curiosity and some risk taking to product messaging and positioning.  * A teacher who can inspire an audience with subject matter k...

PMMs are (and need to be) masters at many things but if I had to pick the most important: 1. (Soft) Cross-functional Collaboration: PMM is a highly cross-functional role. On any given project, you’ll work with Product, Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing Channel Experts, Operations, Legal… and the list goes on. A product campaign can’t get done without many partnerships. So you have to be great at working across different teams and getting them to share in your goals.   2. (Hard) Data Driven: Product and business decisions are most times made based on quanti...

1. Messaging and storytelling: this continues to be the hallmark of a great PMM. In particular, really leaning in on differentiation and value to the customer (not speeds and feeds) while also simplifying concepts down in a memorable way that makes it easy for sales to land, marketing to build copy and content, and ultimately, the customer to understand. I sometimes joke that PMMs like ALL the words...but we don't need to use them ALL the time. Being able to really tell a compelling story that connects with the customer, and romances the product in the way that ...

One of the main skills I see to success in PMM im Empathy. Empathy in the sense of being able to to put yourself in other people's shoes. You are the customer and market advocate internallt and the product advocate externally, so understanding those different perspectives can help a LOT in any PMM materials you are developing, from slides to demos to websites to campaigns.

Successful product marketers are both right and left brained. Thus, in addition to the hard skills, they must possess soft skills to rally teams behind their ideas. There are five fundamental soft skills that product marketers must demonstrate: * Passion * Adaptability * Cross-functional leadership * Prioritization * Executive presence I wrote a blog post about these key PMM soft skills here. For Hard Skills, from my experience the most important skills are: 1. Market Sizing - Total Addressable Market (TAM) 2. Customer Segmentation 3. Narrative Design 4. Go-to-Market Strategy...

I talked about soft skills in another question, so let's laser focus on the hard skills needed to succeed in PMM here. Here are 3 hard skills you can focus on right now:   1. Data-Driven Decision Making: I actually teach a dedicated course on this topic at Loyola Chicago because I believe in it so much! Data helps with identifying and speaking to your target audience, defining the value of your product and ROI, market sizing, predicting buyer behavior, validating success in the market, and so much more. Even if you don't fancy yourself a "numbers person" - it is important to get into eno...

This is an interesting question. In my experience, the most important soft skills needed for PMMs are influence management, and public speaking skills.   Influence management would be getting people from outside of your department or team to work on your project. Good influence management is not just asking people to help, but making sure they understand the value of the work they're doing. If someone says they can't help, going to their manager to help with priorities needs to be done with a soft touch. Being a tyrant to get your projects done won't get you far in the long term.   Pu...

Great question! You actually squeezed 3 topics in here, which are all inter-related and important to buyer journey maps. In my experience, I start with segmenting my audience (total addressable market by country, company, vertical/industry, etc), identifying personas within my target audience (buyer/user), mapping the journeys for each persona, and then testing which content formats/channels work best. This means if I'm selling to Enterprises vs. mid-sized companies, IT vs. Finance buyers, I should understand the different journeys, budgets, and decision making processes and plan my content...

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 su...

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 perfo...

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 p...

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...

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 lifet...

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.