Greg Hollander

VP of GTM & Strategy, Novi

Content

Can you share your experience about segmentation and personas definition?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

I’ve typically seen segmentation and personas fall flat in one of two ways: either they were purely based on readily available internal data (usually, transaction or product-focused), or they were purely based on external interviews and didn’t come with a perspective on how representative they we......Read More

2235 Views

How do you create competitive intel that is really beneficial to sales (i.e. they actually read and use it)?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

This is a little meta, but the best advice I have is to treat your sellers as your customers. What would you do to try to understand how to get a customer to use your product? Do some research - via interviews, observations, surveys, etc, and learn their workflows, their gaps, their pain points......Read More

1909 Views

How do you approach creating personas at Eventbrite? Do you have personas that the business-at-large uses versus personas just for launches? How often do you create/refresh the two?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

For a full answer, check out my response to the question above about approaching segmentation and personas. Specifically as it relates to launches, I try to keep of our "business-at-large" target customers in mind (ideally, we've already built product with one of those target customers in min......Read More

1318 Views

How do you see qualitative research differently from UX research, if at all, when it comes to product marketing?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

The best way I’ve learned to think about it is that as Product Marketers you should be focused on researching the buyer, whereas UX researchers are focused on the User. Sometimes this overlaps and results in different questions on the same content - for example, we might show the same landing pa......Read More

1204 Views

What are the different ways of testing the customer profiles and messaging for each profile?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

I have NOT found success testing messages out of context, like in surveys. It’s hard for respondents to truly put themselves in a buyer’s mindset. I’d recommend putting messaging into practice, in context, in ways that you can test and iterate. For example, look at lift in conversion on landing ......Read More

1201 Views

How do you make sure to get feedback from decision maker, researcher/influencer in buy GN process and user.

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

This one’s all about sourcing. In a survey, I typically ask the “who are you?” question directly, and make sure I get over-sample of each crucial role. In interviews, I try to make sure I’m talking to a mix of “above the line” (only cares about ROI) and “below the line” (product user) buyers, as ......Read More

1092 Views

How have you historically sourced people to interview while developing personas?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

If you’re looking for specific titles, I think the approach you laid out makes sense. The screener survey is super important for making sure you’re find representative folks to talk to (based on your customer base or intended customer base), and not wasting your time. For sourcing the initial ......Read More

1081 Views

How do you approach persona definition when you are targeting freelancers or small business web development companies? The market is fragmented so it gets difficult to define a persona and its attributes.

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

I don’t have any direct experience in this sector, but I’d encourage you to start by better understanding the segments of your market. Whether through interviews, surveys, or product usage analysis (ideally some combination), you’ll need to identify the common threads between segments of your se......Read More

1062 Views

Are you always aiming for a single persona? Or are there situations where two or more make more sense?

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

More than one persona can definitely make sense. It just depends on the business. Ideally you want to have one persona per “target audience”. The balance is having enough to create coverage across the segment(s) that are strategically valuable to the business, and not too many that they become......Read More

874 Views

Can you share your experience or advice about buyer research? I'm thinking of what you could learn from decision makers before they've become customers.

Greg Hollander

Novi VP of GTM & Strategy • December 20

This one’s a sensitive one, since it’s tough (and not necessarily good for the business) to get in the middle of a sales process. I’ve found most success reaching out to folks cold who are not in a buying cycle, and currently use a competitor, with the offer of just trying to learn more about......Read More