Vertical Product Marketing

In establishing segments, it is critical to get cross-org alignment so that all functions are working off of the same definitions. Methodologies for defining segments can vary depending on how you plan to use them, so I would recommend investing heavily in the upfront phase of gathering requirements from all internal customers, establishing a shared understanding of how your segmentation will be used and getting buy-in on the methodology.   From there, research on the needs of those segments can take various forms depending on the type of question you are seeking to answer. I always start...

One thing worth adding to Laura's great reply is that "systematically influencing the product roadmap" can be viewed as an ongoing process. Once you have a set of segments and persona needs per Laura's playbook above, it's important to regularly reinforce this as the "single source of truth." As a critical internal product evangelizer and voice of the customer, it'll be on you to keep beating the drum. Two specific examples of what this can look like in action: * During quarterly/annual roadmap planning sessions, point out where the group's thinking does/doesn't align well to the ne...

There are a variety of low touch and high touch research methods we've used over time. Most recently what's been on my mind has been the value of Closed Won/Lost interviews for earlier stage products.  As companies scale they're likely to have existing products that have been in the market for a while (I think of these as graduate students or grown ups depending on how mature they are) and others that are new kids on the block (I think of these as toddlers or preschool children). Each of these requires a different degree and type of attention to make it successful. We've recently laun...

Research has to be an ongoing, continual process -- if you aren't continually talking to market experts, customers, and prospects, you lose credibility both with your sales organization and with your product organization.  True standardization is less critical than repetition and at-bats, and building the muscles to produce high quality results quickly. If you can do that well, you'll have earned a seat that the product leadership table to influence roadmap because it won't be "so-and-so the product marketer said so", but "this specific market research said so, and here's five quotes ...

During roadmapping, each product team articulates the "understand needs" for their product area and what we will do with the information to improve the product. This process is often led by the PMM.  From there, we work with the product team to document hypothesis to test based on information we need to know and detail the best approach to prove of disprove those hypothesis.  At that point, it's all about execution and pulling together what we learn in a compelling way.   With regard to systematically influencing roadmaps, I feel like this is an "always on" job. First, I try to bring the...

We establish multiple listening channels ranging from our field to direct customer conversations to engagements with analysts. The insights we receive from these channels allow us to then identify the general areas of opportunity which we then partner with engineering on researching further through qualitative and quantitative research. This allows us to priortize the highest areas of opportunity which get added to the product roadmap.  

It first starts with identifying who your target buyers are, and building a set of “persona packs” that establish a baseline of key information in understanding buyer needs and evaluation criteria. This is critical to have so that you can properly educate your sales teams to have more effective conversations with prospects. At a high level, they include: * Distinct buying roles that exist within an organization * Desired business outcomes driven by each role * Sample org charts within each function * Your products/solutions related to their business goals and objectives * Key customer...

You must first:  * Identify overall approach for alignment with brand and company priorities * Identify primary target segments for programs * Determine program-specific messaging * Communicate plans to stakeholders From there an Industry marketer must then define: * New market opportunities  * Define overall messaging & positioning & personas * Win / Loss analysis * Market segmentation and sizing * Competitive intel gathering + analysis From there you then execute on the measurement and reporting:  *  Training: Messaging by solution and sub-audience *  Messaging: Messaging ...

This one depends on company stage and maturity of the market.  At Cisco, we're incredibly mature, and I'm very fortunate to work alongside Sophia Danvers and her amazing Audience Marketing team. They eat industry intel for breakfast and turn it into not just persona insights, but messaging, content, and campaign ideas that keep our top industries growing, even 15 years later.  In earlier stages, this process is a lot more ad hoc, and really depends on how much time you can spend with customers and sales. When you're building, it's less a formal process than it is a habit or a practice...

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 into industry buyer personas, building up internal and external influencer marketing programs...

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 solutions are an amazing fit for anyone in the broader construction industry, but the way we the s...

Once there's not only product market fit (which almost all companies prematurely declare victory around - sorry but it's totally true) but also determination and commitment that a given industry or industies are the decided way to GTM. If products are horizontal and sales teams are horizontal then having just the marketers aligned vertically spells trouble. An industry-first approach has to be resourced beyond marketing, dabbling's not going to get anyone anywhere.  

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 accelerated growth instead of a one message approach across industries that falls flat. Once you ...

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 driving more than 50% of your sales, it's time to focus). You'll need that industry credibilit...

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 ...

Data should always inform decisions, though it’s OK to supplement it with some qualitative insights driven by observations of market trends. It’s not good enough to simply let the most senior person define the segmentation. Segmentation is relatively easy if you are focused on one specific vertical but gets much more complex for companies that serve across horizontals. This is where the value of data comes in to drive your decision.

This is largely industry specific. Definitely research your market and listen to the data. An extremely important data point that should come your way is from your sales motions and how your plays work with each audience. It's important though to resist the tempation to over segment - that's a rabbit hole that is hard to get out of. In a vertical marketing strategy the most basic of segmentation comes from which audience in the ecosystem you're speaking to. The most basic example would be if you're marketing a Marketplace you'd segment based on Buyers and Sellers. However, segmentatio...

First, it's important to know why you need a segmentation. Is it about go-to-market and creating more effective messaging? Is it about changing your channel / sales strategy? Is it about product development? Media Targeting? Once you have an objective or objectives, a method for segmentation often becomes more obvious.  When thinking about messaging or product development, I often find it helpful to segment customers based on common needs. In B2B organizations figuring out what types of customers have common needs might mean talking to experts on your customers like sales people, doing d...

There are many ways you could segment your market for your marketing and sales motions: from industries to personas to company size to geographies (and for B2C companies, major demographics like age, gender, etc come into play). The questions you need to ask are "Do these groups of customers have fundamentally different needs for our product?" and "Would we acquire these groups of customers in different ways?". Wherever the differences are greatest, you'll want to start there. Another key consideration is resourcing: do you have enough people to create focus areas among your marketing/sa...

I believe the best way to segment your market is to do initial high-level qualitative interviews to get a broad understanding of the market, followed by a robust quantitative segmentation, and then follow up with in-depth qual with what you believe are your priority segments. A quantitative segmentation leverages a cluster analysis that considers: * company/customer demographics and technographics (size/industry/revenue/region etc.) * Attitudes - how they think/feel/pain points and perceptions of you and your competitor set * Behaviors - what they do, how they buy, purchase journ...

I’ve been in consumer businesses during my career as a Product Marketing so I can only speak to working with Product. I’ve had a lot of great experiences with Product partners. First and foremost, when starting a new business relationship I find ways to add value before I start offering criticism. Figure out what the team needs that you can help with and start there for at least the first few weeks. Next, make sure you’re picking your battles, and make sure your rationale for picking your battle(s) is anchored in some kind of insight (ie. this is the most important thing to our users and ...

In short, neither. I wouldn't look at this as "harder to work with" as much as I'd suggest investigating how you set up your goals and expectations. Both product and sales are invaluable partners.  Both generate compelling user insights. Product happens to generally generate them earlier during the development cycles while sales (especially in B2B) can get them to you rapidly once a product is in market. That being said, one needs to be careful not to use insights from product or sales too much as a crutch since each team has it's own natural bias that could influence how they interpr...

In most companies I've worked in, Product Marketing is often vastly outnumbered by Sales teams. The challenge is not usually in personalities or conflicting interests - but in sheer numbers. For me, managing PMM-Sales relationships comes down to understanding their goals (keeping large customers happy, hitting sales quotas, etc.), while also taking care not to become an unnecessary bottleneck for their work.  In the past, I've used the following tactics to avoid/work through issues: * Take time to walk Sales team members through the product strategy and marketing plan. Treat them as...

In my experience, it depends more on the actual people you work with vs the function. I have had both incredible sales and product partners that understood the big picture, were always down to collaborative and problem solve together, and where we could openly talk about areas of disagreement. These folks came curious to learn other people’s perspectives and kept users' experience at the heart, making it easier to get alignment. I’ve also had experiences where that was not the case. If you are experiencing friction, my advice would be to address it early and often. The more you can get e...

The most challenging piece here is that you're flying with little internal data. You're operating based on assumptions. You can create pretty business plans with ideas of traffic, lead, and demo conversions but you're only in the game once you get your first sale. From there you can learn more intimately of why they bought, how they made their decision, who was part of it, and what needs they are looking to meet. My advice here is to always build an MVP, test, validate your hypothesis before you code or create the product. Create a mock, get some feedback, make changes, gauge intent to b...

Building an audience. It's hard when your company is new and people don't know what you're about, why they should care and often very little credibility. Best way to combat that is to start building an audience earlier than your launch. Start talking about the problem you are solving with your product. You don't have to talk about your product. But you can establish thought leadership for your brand by doing this. Maybe it's just LinkedIn, or maybe a podcast or maybe something else. But your launch won't work if you don't have an audience to go share the news with. 

Most often when you're launching the company's first product, you're most likely launching the company as well. The challenge there is its the first for everything. So, make sure you have a comprehensive launch plan as there are a lot of moving parts. Plus, make sure you define the key metrics to define success, often times this can be a challenge for team.  How do you think about: Awareness: organic search traffic, PR/comms strategy, social engagement Growth: KPIs for the business around MQLs, demos, website conversions, etc Impact: Revenue, retention, etc.

I think this one all comes down to your framework. If you have a good framework that you've used in the past and a task management tool (like Asana, Jira, etc.), you're over halfway there. But the biggest thing is to socialize the framework with execs and your cross-functional launch team early. Get buy-in on the process and make sure that each launch contributor has a clear understanding of their role and responsibilities as part of the launch. Since it will be your company's first product launch, this will be new to everyone so you need to be flexible and may have to do a little extra han...

Getting all teams to hum along is the hardest part. A successful product launch is not just a product marketer’s job. It’s a team activity. Product marketing plays the quarterback, with support from Customer Success, Sales, Product, Support, and the rest of marketing. Getting everyone on the same page and sending a cohesive experience to your audience is a tough challenge. Influencing other teams and leading without authority is an important career skill for product marketers to develop.

The biggest thing I see when companies develop a product, service or build a brand, is they get stuck on the “what” of the thing. What the product does? What the company does? This thing. And this thing. And this. And that’s great, but the bigger question is why? Savvy consumers/customers look past what a product does; they want to know what makes it authentic? What’s the backstory? Why should they believe in you? People are not just buying products; they are buying better versions of themselves and they want to know how it shapes their lives and their narrative. Consumers don’t want to ...

Most early to growth-stage tech companies have 1-2 products. For those companies, product marketing and brand have a significant overlap. Their product identity makes up most of their brand identity. For larger orgs we see more distinction between brand and product messaging where there are multiple products, services, and solutions in place. Though my experience has mostly been in startups and growth companies, the approach I have seen work for my peers at larger companies is to start with a core brand architecture. There will be multiple stakeholders to convince and KPIs impacted with ...

You want your ICP to give you a good sense for all of the above. Its hard to give you specifics, because this will vary by org.  We defined our ICP per product (we have 8 products in our B2B portfolio), pulled sales data for the past 365 days, and did an in-depth analysis on that to define a few things such as: * Top segments we win in (and trends over time) for each product (SMB, Mid-market, Enterprise) * Top industries or verticals where we have been closing the most deals, with the highest AOV (per product) * Top geographies (with the most deals closed or highest AOV) (Per p...

I would argue that, if you think the "buyer profile is the same" when there are so many important differences, that you need to refine (or redefine) what the buyer profile actually is. Properly defining the buyer profile in and of itself should account for many of these factors. Often, answering (or partially answering) the question of what problem you solve for each stakeholder is instrumental in developing that profile because you'll discover certain patterns that help in doing so.

This is a tough one. Each market will need to have a tailored approach but don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. At PayFit, we have similar pricing and packaging structure across all our countries, but the actual numbers will differ based on local dynamics. We also include some service add-ons specific to each market when needed. However, the overall target market (SMB) and product (payroll + talent management) will be the same.  It's also easier for monitoring business performance. If you have too many different pricing plans across countries, it will be a hassle to under...

Even when you may be servinf different markets or segment with the same type of buyer. The needs of these segments are going to vary.  A VP of Ecommerce at a D2C 200 person startup is solving for inherently different needs than a VP of Ecommerce at Nike.  The D2C startup has a smaller budget and many SMB/Mid-market competitors to choose from. The MNC can pay a lot more and its likely that it is considering only a handful of vendors to solve its problem. The startup requires agility, perhaps an ability to self-serve the product, more simplicity and good support. The big MNC may need relia...

Not sure what you are trying to accomplish. Could you elaborate? Companies like Oracle, IBM, Microsoft have to deal with what I think is your challenge: come up with a corporate level message even though they serve very distinct market segments.  What is the common thread the 3 distinct segments have in common?

Messaging that speaks to everyone rarely speaks to anyone well. I’d prioritize your top segment to focus on, make sure your brand messaging resonates with them, and ensure your other customer segments can find messaging for them via pathing on your site or other targeted campaigns. I've seen most marketplaces have their first message be targeted toward the demand side and then have the supply sides be secondary way at the bottom.  Examples: https://www.doordash.com/ https://www.instacart.com/ https://www.imperfectproduce.com/ If you're really supply constrained, you might change y...

It is recommended to start with one segment to test/iterate, to completely understand the buyer needs/value proposition and then build messaging for the other two segments. If it’s not unique for each segment, then it will be hard to position one overarching message. It will be challenging at first, but once you have the value proposition for each segment, you will naturally see the synergies and patterns. If the message is too broad, it wouldn’t mean anything to any specific persona. Always test the message with Competition. If you change your company to a competitor, can they say the sam...

Work backwards. Develop very targeted (10,000 foot) messaging for each of the three. Then analyze those stories and find the idea(s) you can use to tie them together, or reconcile them with one another. That is now your 30,000 foot story. As far as the market is concerned, that's what you started with, and from there the targeted messaging was derived, instead of the other way around. That 30,000 foot story can be where your brand message comes from, whithin which you have distinct value propositions for three segements. 

I assume by segments you mean industry/vertical and/or company size (SMB vs large enterprise, for example) - in that case I’d consider running methodical research work (see the other question answer on 4 recommended approaches) in different tracks aligned to each of the 3 segments, ensuring there’s a common umbrella message and thread through it all so it doesn’t sound like 3 different companies. Anchor in each segment and bring the message about your brand to each segment rather than the other way around - you’re too susceptible to confirmation bias that way IMO. Also, brand messaging is d...

When constructing your brand and messaging hierarchy it's valuable to have a 50 thousand foot view of the position for what your company represents, that helps anchor all of your audiences to what you do and what you represent. It also helps align the unique value prop for each audience to a central set of company values. For instance, does your brand represent innovation, vertical expertise, ease of use, etc. But when you dig in a layer deeper it's important to consider how that messaging will be used in your demand gen and sales plays. It's extremely challenging to be all things to all...

Great question! We faced a similar challenge a few years ago for one of our suite of solutions. It may boil down to how critical each of those three segments are to your business. Based on your question - sounds like all three are important (otherwise I'd recommend optimizing for the most critical segment). Assuming you have to address all three segments, you have a few choices: Craft your brand messaging to include (1) the lowest common denominator for all three segments (2) the most critical components for each of the segments. Clearly pros and cons to both approaches in terms of breadth ...

Simply put, it's marketing to a niche audience centered around a specific set of needs. Examples include developing a deep focus in industries such as Real Estate, Education, Healthcare, or others. By comparison, a horizontally focused product marketing strategy aims to find how a given product can be used across these industries and how they may value that product differently. That being said, a vertical strategy doesn't mean there's one marketing playbook. Within these verticals you're more likely than not to have a diverse set of groups that interact with the ecosystem differently and...