Amanda Groves

VP of Product Marketing at Zywave

Allison Park

Hey there - I’m Amanda, but my friends call me Groves. I’m a marketing leader, athlete, military spouse, and mom. My journey has led me to hold roles across healthcare tech, fintech, insurtech, experiential learning, edtech, hrtech, martech and ecosystem intelligence. Along the way, I’m grateful to have learned from and contributed to company cultures such as 6sense, Crossbeam, Enable, JazzHR, SoftWriters, Appsembler, ImagineLearning and most recently, Zywave❤️. I'm privileged to have participated as a speaker/host for Slack Frontiers, Sharebird, Pandium’s Product Leadership Panel, Product Marketing AI Podcast, Product Marketing Experts, Between the Launch, and many more. PMM Superpowers include: strategic narrative, pricing and packaging, positioning + messaging, monetization, growth marketing, category design, voice of the customer, go-to-market, product-led growth, demand generation, team-building, customer marketing, strategy, partner marketing and marketplace development.

Amanda Groves

VP of Product Marketing · Zywave

👋 Hi I'm Amanda Groves.. Philly native (Go Flyers!), Pittsburgh transplant (Go Panthers!)

💼 I currently am the VP of Product Marketing at Zywave, an InsurTech company focused on helping carriers and brokers manage, protect, and grow their book of business intelligently.

👀 Topics of interest for me are managing M&A and integrating offerings... AI product innovation/roll out and building high-performance PMM teams.

🤝 Topics I am help with... adopting agile marketing, core PMM/Solution PMM, new product introduction process/tiering and pricing and packaging.

🍦 Favorite ice cream flavor.. mochi!

Content

What's the best, most turnkey framework to use for building Go-To-Market presentations for multiple stakeholder groups?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 4y

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.

4,490 Views

What does the separation of responsibilities look like between the portfolio marketer and the product marketer at your company?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 1y

Think about it as technical v. solution PMM. On our team, product marketers are mapped to product peers with dedicated remits. Our portfolio PMMs/Solution PMMs focus on positioning by persona, segment, and business type. This helps us stay focused while balancing going deep within owned product areas + targeting messaging by audience type.

3,940 Views

How should PMMs work in collaboration with product managers and the customer success team on product launches?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 4y

Wow, great question! Given these departments are measured on very different dimensions, it's important to keep their North Stars in mind and collaborate in a way that supports individual departmental goals. Let's start with collaborating with product. I often think about our orgs as a mouthpiece (PMM) and earpiece (Product). To be good amplifers of product's "market listening", we need to connect early and often throughout the product development lifecycle. To do this, I suggest establishing mil ...Read More

3,578 Views

I am transitioning into taking the complete responsibility of P&L for a new prod in nascent stages. In the first 3 months I targeted demos as metric (achieved it), now for next 3 months I am targeting proposals as KPI. Do you have any advice for me.

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 1y

I would caution on proposals as this seems like something out of PMMs control. perhaps a better metric is influenced SALs or handraisers for the product you're bringing to market? if you are drafting the proposals to be consumed in a way that's targeted, that could be a good PMM owned metric. In that way I would encourage you to have metrics surrounding proposal engagement which may require CMS software.

3,432 Views

What is your perspective on hosting transactional and marketing emails within the same platform?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 1y

totally fine and common! you just need to set up the permissions to run accordingly. most modern ESPs have this functionality baked in (HubSpot for example). you'll need to be clear about ownership and guard railing for different email types to keep things organized and within standard transactional email protocol v. marketing messages

3,090 Views

What is your go to market planning blueprint?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 3y

My blueprint usually consists of at minimum completing a product marketing brief that consists of:

feature name
description
value props
use cases
audience
packaging/pricing
how it works
help docs

Couples with tiering calculation (tier 1-4) you can build a scrappy GTM blue print and execute on tactics with key stakeholders across relevant communication channels.

2,761 Views

In making the transition from a traditional marketing role, into one of product marketing, what would you recommend as a key focus for learning?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 1y

One of the best skills you can hone-in on is messaging and positioning. I'd suggest reading April Dunford's Obviously Awesome and Emma Stratton's "Make it Punchy" to understand tried and true frameworks and methodologies to land how you frame a narrative. This skill unlocks many others and is a foundational principle of great product marketing

2,674 Views

When you think about product launch, what post-launch activities are mission critical?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 4y

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 RETROSPECT ...Read More

2,528 Views

What are the steps involved to create a successful go-to-market plan?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 4y

Define your why: Why does this feature/product matter? (value) What use cases does it solve for? (messaging) How does it compare to the "old way" of doing things? (solution statement) How does it compare to the competition? (competitive differentiator) What does good look like for launch? (KPIs) Define your audience: What personas will benefit from this feature? (audience targeting) What market segment/industry is it for? (ideal customer profile) How can my target audience get started? (activ ...Read More

2,432 Views

In tech companies where engineering has been the primary focus for a long time, what's your advice for a PMM building out a function, team, systems, and processes?

Amanda Groves

Zywave VP of Product Marketing | Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • 1y

Tech companies will always have a bias towards the tech. So it's your job to bring the perspective of the market to the room to level the playing field. Prioritize collecting, curating, and orchestrating field insights within the company so the voice of the market is represented and advocated for early and often. I'd also suggest creating a charter to educate the company on who PMM is, why we exist, how we operate and are measured. This will bring clarity to the functions and help establish more ...Read More

2,376 Views

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Credentials & Highlights

VP of Product Marketing at Zywave

Formerly Crossbeam, 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler