Ivan Dwyer

Senior Director of Product Marketing, Material Security

Content

What companies have product marketing that you really admire, either overall or particular elements?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

I’m not allowed to say Stripe. Everyone says Stripe. So I’ll say…. Stripe? I kid, I kid. I’ll always have a soft spot for Heroku – they’ve always stood out to me as a company with a unique brand presence that never compromised on technical value and authenticity. Some of the Product Marketers I ......Read More

3812 Views

What level of hard/technical skills should someone aim to develop to thrive in product marketing?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

I’m a huge proponent of Jobs To Be Done, both for building products and for marketing products – in product marketing, though, you don’t necessarily have to be able to do the job of your audience, but you most definitely have to get it. I often joke that I’m just a good enough programmer to know......Read More

2238 Views

Do you have a CTO, CIO or developer persona profile that you can share?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

I have a fairly extensive persona methodology which I wrote about here (https://www.workinproduct.com/blog/elements-of-a-positioning-system-part-2-customer-personas). Rather than get prescriptive with an explicit example here, I’ll share something I run i nto a lot that I think gets it wrong – b......Read More

1851 Views

What differentiates a technical Product Marketer vs nontechnical/traditional Product Marketers?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

Good question – it can depend on a few things. In many companies, you’ll have to wear both hats... I know I sure have. As Product Marketing teams grow, where it starts to break out into dedicated roles is at the target persona level – your more traditional PMM may focus more on the executive ......Read More

1437 Views

What KPIs would you look at to evaluate the success of a technical PMM program?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

Great question that's very top of mind! The broader GTM organization will own the growth targets, while the broader Product organization will own the adoption targets. I believe where tech PMM can make the most impact on both sides of the house is with velocity targets. On the GTM side, that's......Read More

1304 Views

I am hiring for Developer Advocates / Developer Evangelists. Any suggestions or a good group / community to tap into for this talent profile?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

I should have a better answer to this than Twitter, but I haven’t actually hired for that role in a long time, so might be out of touch, sorry! One thing I’ll say, and this might be a bit controversial, but I’m personally cautious of high-profile developer evangelists. There is absolutely a ton ......Read More

1221 Views

What are the best ways to accurately convey what you do to technical buyers on your website? Many technical buyers complain that vendor websites just use buzzwords and don't make it easy to understand how the technology works.

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

Great question… this is easy to over index on either side – too much buzzword bingo or too deep in the weeds. Personally, I like to follow a narrative from top to bottom – anchor to “the what”, hook with “the why”, and win over with “the how”. But each section in that narrative has to be punchy......Read More

1132 Views

For a highly technical product offering, how much messaging emphasis should be placed on technical value versus overall business value that your solution provides?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

[Insert “Why not both?” meme] :) The best thing you can do is bring these stories together – when technical value solves business value, you have yourself a winner. (I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the inverse of that, now that I think about it) This manifests itself in a number of ways, bu......Read More

1052 Views

For a heavily dev-centric product, how do you approach the balance between classic content/SEO, product marketing, and sales enablement - and how do you find the right channels to reach out to developers vs. commercial audiences?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

Great question, I get in arguments about this all the time! Heh. You ask the question the right way - it’s about balance. Starting with my least favorite topic – SEO! The benefits of SEO isn’t lost on me, but for technical products, authenticity trumps all IMHO. I always cringe when I come acros......Read More

877 Views

How does sales enablement change when your company is b2d (business to developer) vs traditional enterprise?

Ivan Dwyer

Material Security Senior Director of Product Marketing • February 17

Great question, something I think about a lot. I’m a huge proponent of specialization with technical products. I wouldn’t expect every member of our enterprise field organization (which is in the thousands) to be able to carry a highly technical conversation from end-to-end, nor would I want them......Read More