Eve Alexander

I've tried so many tiering methods! One that's working really well for us right now is something we made up based on the audience that "needs to know": Go Big, Tell Sales, Tell CS. Every quarter, we propose one story line to put in the Go Big bucket (typically several capabilities that ladder up to a unified story). That gets 80% of our efforts -- or at least, that's the goal! That's what we rally our marketing team around in terms of PR, social, analysts, content. If there are additional capabi ...Read More

I don't know about you, but I think there's so often a tendency to jump right in and start delivering. I encourage everyone that starts working on my team to spend their first 30 days learning! If you can work with your boss, try to buy yourself some time just to soak up knowledge and develop a point of view. The key things I try to get to know as much as possible when starting a new job are: the product (spend time using it, get certified if that's an option), customers/prospects (listen to Gon ...Read More

Here's my go-to:  Initiative objectives and targets (bookings, adoption, whatever you've aligned on) Opportunity size and costs Customer challenge Brief product strategy (MVP + 1-2 releases out) Positioning/Value Prop Target audience Distribution strategy (e.g., are only a subset of your sales teams going to be selling it? Can partners resell it?) Pricing & packaging (including Services) Competitive set (do your traditional competitors have a similar offering? Are there non-traditional compe ...Read More

I won't share the full list -- there are some great resources out there like SiriusDecisions -- but here are a few that I've learned through trial and error are really helpful. PRFAQ: As soon as possible, I work closely with PM to craft a "PRFAQ" (fake press release, customer and internal FAQs). Then, we circulate that to cross-functional stakeholders from sales to legal to finance to customer success to enablement. It's a killer way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and flag items that ...Read More

I'm a huge fan of Donald Miller's Storybrand framework. I typically like to use a simplified version of it, as I find that the full framework can be onerous and heavier than we need it to be in our fast-moving company: Define your hero (your customer) and what they are trying to accomplish. For example, at Seismic our hero is an enablement leader, and she wants to improve her ability to impact business outcomes--and demonstrate that her team directly contributed to those outcomes. Articulate the ...Read More

One thing that has been wonderful at Seismic is we have someone on the product marketing team that is in a program management role and who is responsible for driving and faciliating organizational readiness for launches (shout out to my colleague, Steve!). He pulls together "tiger teams" for our major launches with representatives from around the company, leads weekly meetings, and manages our project plan. This takes some of that organizational readiness weight off the PMM. The PMM lead may sti ...Read More

Love this question! It's funny - the first one that comes to mind was not actually a traditionally successful launch; it was the one where I learned the most, got to spend a ton of time with customers, and really got to flex my creative muscles. What I loved was having the space to conduct deep qualitative and quantative research. I had the chance to go on a few multi-city roadshows to pitch it live, and refined the storyline after every conversation to craft a compelling, customer-centric, vali ...Read More

My biggest failures have typically come down to unsuccessfully driving behavior change with the field. Even the best stories, which are grounded in research and validated with customers, aren't always adopted by the field. I've learned that working closely with enablement and sales leadership is crucial to driving success. A few specifics: Include well-respected members of the field in crafting your story. Ask for their help and support not just in developing the narrative, but in lending their ...Read More

It can be challenging to navigate articulating differentiation when a capability is highly technical and your audience is not. As I mentioned in another response, focusing on differentiated value can be really helpful here. Rather than try to do a lot of messaging or education around the algorithm/technical capability itself, focus on what it uniquely delivers in terms of the outcome for the customer. For example, at Seismic, our product includes a unique architecture for organizing sales conten ...Read More

As is the case for most of the work we do as PMM, I often try to think about metrics across three altitudes: outcomes, behaviors, and inputs. For a new narrative (e.g., evolving the company pitch) I often look at: Outcomes: Some of the measurements I have looked at include win rate, increase in market share (e.g., if you're entering a new market), increase in deal size, and increase in multi-SKU deals (e.g., if the narrative is designed to help move from single product to multi-product sale). It ...Read More