Andy Yen

The frameworks that I use for positioning and messaging have changed over time, as I've advanced in my marketing career in enterprise tech. Earlier in my career (when I was in product marketing), we would approach positioning and messaging for a major product launch. There were a few frameworks that worked well for me here: Elevator Pitch - tell me what your product does in (25 words, 50 words, 100 words) 9-box messaging framework - call out three benefits that your customers experience from you ...Read More

Honestly, having worked in both product and partner marketing, I don't think product marketing teams focus enough on partnerships. Product strategy to me is simple, it involves three components: "build, partner, buy". Based on my own experience, product marketing teams are great at executing the "build" aspect of the strategy - new product launches and adoption of new features. However, as companies and products mature, features in new releases become more incremental, so it's important to tell ...Read More

I've worked in enterprise tech for most of my career (SAP, Oracle, ServiceNow). To be honest, I think the biggest competitor that I've always come across is the status quo (doing nothing) since there are so many influencers and decision-makers in an enterprise tech sales cycle.  Here are the main sources I use to keep informed on what's going on in the market. Stratechery - great podcast on all things tech  WSJ + Bloomberg - I pay for both of these to stay informed on what's going on in the worl ...Read More

Focusing on the right partners and building an integrated co-marketing plan are critical. Sponsoring events is part of the game in partner marketing, but I'm not sure how much of your time should be spent sending out cold emails and cold calls to prospects.  It sounds like you're working with biz dev and alliance teams to identify the right partners to work with. I'd recommend starting with a handful of select partners, learn about how to leverage the resources within their ecosystem, and build ...Read More

Everything. Just kidding! It’s really important to communicate the impact you’re making with your partners across your internal teams. It's not always easy to find time to plan, execute, and then have to report out on all of the campaigns and activities you're driving. But if you don't advocate and promote what you're doing, no one else in the company is going to do it for you - and most likely they'll ask "what does partner marketing do?" From the outside looking in, partner marketing looks a l ...Read More

Generating buy-in, whether you call it alignment, influence, or trust is the most important skill you can build and master as a marketer. It's not a skill you master on a single project, it's a muscle that you master over time. After spending a few years In product marketing, I realized that creating polished content and clever positioning could only get you so far. The most senior leaders weren't necessarily the best marketers, but they were able to build empathy and relevance with others. So i ...Read More

This is a great question. The partner marketing approach for sales enablement is very different from the traditional product marketing approach of creating a BOM and enabling your own internal sales and GTM teams.  The best way I've found to teach partners about our joint offerings is to ask them to participate in the joint value proposition definition. Getting your internal marketing teams at both companies to participate in this exercise gives them skin in the game, and usually results in a mu ...Read More

One of the most exciting opportunities in partner marketing is to scale messaging across different channels. Some of these channels may be new to your company and your core marketing team, and you'll learn a ton by collaborating with other marketers across these channels. But it's also critical to make sure you select the right channels that are aligned with your brand. To start, you've got to get the basics right and ensure your core positioning and messaging is landing in-market through your c ...Read More

Not all partners are created or treated equal. Even if a partner has a really compelling and complementary offering on-paper, if there’s no executive alignment- your success in driving GTM with that partner will be very limited. So pick the partners you choose to work with wisely!  Given the number of internal and external stakeholders you have to work with across each partnership –alliances, marketing, product, corp strategy, sales, customer success – it's really important to dedicate most of y ...Read More