Claire Drumond

Customer proof. The real question you're asking is how do you get consensus around a lot of opinions. Getting messaging approved can feel like being stuck in a wave pool. It's because messaging uniquely forces uncomfortable reflections like what do we stand for and why will anyone care? You can't know the answers without deeply understanding your customer. And that deep customer empathy is what makes a great PMM. I always go back to the customer's pain points when trying to drive exec alignment, not just on messaging, but everything. At the end of the day -- no one's opinion matters more than the customers. Some tips: * Bring execs & stakeholders to the table during the outline/ideation phase to uncover what they think are the most important value pillars and angles. * Test your main points with customers before writing anything. Use customers' own language when writing. * Show your process, supporting customer feedback, and why you are confident this is the right messaging when presenting.

My PMM team is built like a funnel. Our focus is to land new customers, which we only count when those customers start to pay. Therefore, the job of my PMM team ranges from raising awareness of our brand to getting new customers to upgrade to our paid editions. I have three groups focused on the following parts of the funnel: * Buyer Journey: This team focuses on connecting our marketing efforts at the top of the funnel through to the product. This team is goaled on Day1-6 Daily Active Instances to ensure high-quality sign-ups come into our funnel and they are happy when they get there. The teams' activities include running marketing paid campaigns, SEO, website optimizations, messaging & onboarding. * Core product: This team focuses on keeping our customers informed of new product releases, updating our core product messaging, and partnering closely with our product counterparts on product & GTM strategy. * Monetization & Expansion: This team is focused on driving our upsell motions within the product experience, driving customers from free to paid licenses, and cross-sell driving users to try and use other products and apps in our ecosystem. It's important to note that my team is primarily focused on SMB self-serve motions.

You have a very tall order ahead of you! These two motions aren't nuanced differences -- they are completely different playbooks. Most of my AMA questions are about comparing the two, so I'll summarize the key differences here: The buyer * Often a self-serve buyer is a team lead/director level or an end-user, looking to try out the product to see if it could work for themselves or their team. They are rarely thinking about their entire company's needs. These buyers want to validate the product fast and implement it even faster because it promises to solve an issue they are facing right then and there. They care about quick-time-value, self-driven learning & documentation, community support, and ease of setup. * An enterprise buyer is thinking about the opposite. They are looking for solutions to organizational challenges they are facing now and long into the future. They are often willing to: spend more time vetting all the best solutions through RFPs etc.; to pay for someone else to configure and manage the product; and they care deeply about customer service, not just product experience. Their decision has more lasting implications, like dealing with procurement, a task that no one takes lightly ;) The buyer journey * A PMM building a self-serve buyer journey connects the top of the funnel through to product and everything in between. You only have seconds to tell a compelling story and the feedback you get is a mix of data insights and customer responses. * An Enterprise buyer journey has to take into account human interaction as a content delivery vehicle. There are more direct feedback loops and more room for robust and detailed storytelling. The tactics * Self-serve marketing activities will include paid marketing campaigns, website optimizations, SEO content & blogs, Youtube, PR, online community engagement etc. all focused on driving traffic and signs ups. * Enterprise activities are most focused on that human touch through events, analyst relations, sales, channel, webinars etc. all focused on driving pipeline.

"If targeting entreprise customers requires ABM and a heavy sales movement, is it still possible to do PLG?" It's possible, but it's hard. PLG requires a company commitment to how you build products. A PLG product is focused on user experience for the end-user first and foremost. In a Sales-led company, your product is focused on meeting requirements for your buyer, getting them to install, and keeping them happy (less about the end-user). Think Workday vs. Trello. When it comes to ABM vs. Self-serve -- the same friction applies. Self-serve marketing is often targeting the end-user so they can land, then expand. ABM is targeting a very different buyer (see my previous answer). I say it's hard because how your product team prioritizes feedback from the field is where the rubber hits the road. Are they taking feedback from Sales about how to make the product more compelling to the CTO? Or are they looking at end-user feedback to make the product more engaging, resulting in MAU? As a PMM, you have to prioritize that feedback as well -- what's good for the C-Suite is not always good for the end-user.

A lot of questions about self-serve PMM vs enterprise PMM activities, so I'll summarize here! A self-serve PMM's day looks very different from an enterprise PMM. Some might even call you a cross between a growth marketer and a product marketer. Here are three of the biggest differences: * Metrics Self-serve PMMs look at funnel metrics. Funnel metrics can (and should) include things like website traffic, sign-ups w/ activation, and purchase (especially in Freemium, your job isn't done with a signup, you have to get people to pay!). These PMMs work with data scientists on understanding data trends to make optimizations to the digital buyer journey. Enterprise PMMs look at pipeline. Enterprise PMMs measure MQLs and SQLs. They work with traditional analysts, sales, and customers to understand trends and make adjustments to their messaging, offerings & GTM activities. * Messaging Self-serve PMMs test fast and fail often. They look at website traffic trends & digital marketing trends, customer feedback, feedback from the field, market trends, and the competition to build and optimize their messaging. Self-serve PMMs know quickly if their messaging doesn't resonate, but the reason why is often hidden within a data trend, forcing these PMMs to validate with customers, while also being data literate. Enterprise PMMs analyze a lot of manual feedback. They rely on the field, customers, competition, analysts, and other more manual inputs to learn and make optimizations to their messaging and enablement. The lead time for trial and error is much longer, but often more clear. * Content Self-serve PMMs build content for our customers (and Google). The primary way to get content in front of the right people at the right time is through Google and the web. If we want to get our message out, we have to optimize for the robots as well as the end viewer -- the customer. Enterprise PMMs build content directly for customers. The primary way to get content to customers is through nurture campaigns and sales. You're optimizing for direct customer behavior vs. what the robots think is useful.

I think the most effective model here is the hub and spoke, (while remembering the wheel is the most important). * PMM is the center of the wheel, setting the strategic direction along with their product counterparts. * PMM should be aligning on business goals, developing competitive and differentiated roadmap & GTM strategy, and ensuring that your messaging and positioning is competitive and compelling. If PMMs are doing their jobs correctly, this direction should help all your general marketing functions build their own plans around the set direction. For example, demand gen should be able to take your set strategy to build and execute on campaigns that drive those goals. * Then each craft should have their own guardrail metrics that show if their work is effective in driving towards the north star. I find this model breaks down when the general marketing functions have their own goals that are disconnected to, or not directly driving towards the PMMs goals. For example, if PMM is trying to land new logos, and your brand team is trying to rebrand the company and using all of their resources to do that, it would be a good time to have a conversation with leadership and ask them to prioritize. If goals are clear and aligned, managing this relationship should be easy. Your marketing counterparts are an extension of your PMM team, bring them along for the ride, involve them in your planning cycles and team meetings, buy them drinks, especially the creative team because lets face it, they're usually the most fun.

I have a new hack for this: it's called Loom. I swear I'm not trying to promote this product, but marketers gonna market ;) Seriously though, Loom has been a game changer for us to keep tight feedback loops, stakeholders informed, and identifying when there needs to be a deeper dive on an area of disagreement. * Record your presentation on Loom and send it to your stakeholders for feedback. * Ask them to comment on the video directly and then either respond to their comments directly, or use the comments to set the agenda for your alignment meeting. * Never present live in a room full of lots of VPs. First, you'll never get the feedback you want, you'll likely never get consensus, and you'll probably stay in the feedback loop for 3x as long as you'd like. By sending the presentation ahead of a meeting, you'll be able to gather feedback beforehand, and use your meeting time to hash it out. * Another hack, if your stakeholders won't watch the video ahead of a meeting, use the first 15 minutes of the meeting for them to watch & respond to the video while you're all together, then the second half of the meeting can be focused on discussion. I hope this hack saves you lots of time and headaches!

Building a strong relationship with product requires level-setting on your goals first and foremost. Just like any relationship, you need to take the time to really understand each others strengths and look for ways to compliment each other. In my best relationships with Product, our mantra is One team, One dream. And we say this often to remind ourselves that friction is good, and we're all here for the same reasons. I've seen the following anti-patterns often in my career with this very important relationship: 1. Product not understanding marketing's value and how they drive impact. For example, thinking marketing is solely updating websites and sending emails, without fully understanding the deeply research & data-driven aspects that go into a strong GTM strategy, messaging, and understanding of competitors and the market. 2. Product marketing not understanding the technical complexities, dependencies, and flood of internal & external feedback that a product team has to manage in order to simply keep the lights on, let alone innovate. 3. Both parties having an incomplete understanding of how each craft is trying to drive towards your goals. For example, Product may be focused on driving MAU and building features to keep users active, where PMM wants to attract new customers with competitive and differentiated features. Both goals are important, but one drives new growth and one drives expansion. Simply understanding this will help you craft a more balanced roadmap together. I recommend re-setting or kicking off the relationship with a joint exercise where you review each others roadmaps and goals. Do this quarterly, if not weekly, discuss how you're tracking, blockers, wins and losses. This ritual can take place in a weekly squad meeting with the product triad and PMM. And if you don't have a weekly squad meeting... start one! And PMMs -- be noisy about being included in product rituals. Don't give up until you have a strong seat at that table. You can check out my blog for some more ideas on how to build and work on this relationship: https://medium.com/smells-like-team-spirit/why-my-team-is-killing-our-triad-86946b099b

I yell at them! Just kidding. Design is a visual representation of your positioning & messaging. If there's a disagreement, I find it often comes from a different understanding of either your positioning, your audience, or how you want to show up against competitors. To solve a disagreement with design, it may require taking a step back to look at those factors together to ensure you have a shared understanding. 1. Look at your competitors and see how they are showing up in the market from a design perspective. Is the design you're working on going stand out and be compelling? 2. Revisit your personas together. For example, we market to developers and when looking at design we think about the other tools that developers use and try to ensure that we're in the same camp. Dark mode everywhere! 3. Write a tone & feel section in your message house if you haven't already. What adjectives do you want your audience to come away with from your designs, and do the designs you're working on align with that? 4. Finally, be kind and respect each others crafts. The above are three ways to make design more objective, but lets face it, good design is art and strong reactions are usually what make it good. If you still can't agree, ask your customers!

Customer feedback and journey mapping. There's always data available, it just may not always be the data your stakeholders want. In those scenarios, I always default to customer feedback. 1. Customer feedback: I find that reviewing messaging & positioning, new webpages, you name it, with customers or potential customers often gives you the vital feedback you need to understand if you're truly solving their problems. There are lots of tools that can give you great customers feedback, like Usertesting.com or Withers. You can also tap into your own most active customer database and informally have them review your work. We have found that some of our biggest fans love to get involved in this way. Use quotes from those sessions to prove or disprove your idea. Make sure you show how competitors are positioning themselves, too! 2. Journey Mapping: You can do the same by showing a customer's experience (screens, content, in product experience) etc. of your current state vs. future state. Then do a secret shopper your top competitors to show what THEY do. Compare the two and use that as proof that your idea is highly competitive. Then see point #1.