When we had one product marketing manager (2015), we had the product knowledge to articulate business value and simplify technical concepts. With addition of solution and industry marketing managers, we evolved to product and solution marketing(2017), and we started to focus on buyer personas and customer pain points. This led to the evolution of portfolio messaging as the anchor for our team to help showcase our value and differentiation as compared to product management or marketing, where we own product, solution, and industry messaging. Today(2019), I am honored to support a team of 12 high performing and mindful team members that are driven to be the voice of the customer. Our team responsibilities include portfolio messaging and positioning, buyer persona research, product and solution launches, and competitive intelligence as well.
When we are developing product messaging, we focus on the product and the features and capabilities that simplify the life for the user. Our messaging/positioning leads to assets like product briefs, technical whitepapers/ebooks, and demos that focus on product awesomeness.
When we are developing portfolio messaging (product, solutions, and industry), we are looking through the buyer persona lens. A buyer exists in a specific industry and their pain points may be unique to that industry. When we conducted our buyer persona research, our interview responses were loud and clear - everyone wanted to see use cases and scenarios that are relevant to their industry, not just a horizontal solution. This helped us to look at our top 5 buyer personas and we are developing messaging and positioning that is relevant for a specific target segment.