Mary Sheehan

For each "Tier 1" launch, I typically create: * A GTM checklist (which is your Bible, includes metrics, links, as well as key drivers of the project) * A launch brief to share with creative in-house teams or agencies * A product communication doc with specs of the feature and any talking points (co-developed with product) * A messaging document that gives the core messages behind what we're launching

The best way to start with a GTM strategy is to assess your strategic readiness before building out the plan. For example, do you know the audience you are targeting, the positioning, the packaging and pricing? Have you assembled your core internal GTM team? Have you established the key goals and metrics for your launch? Once you have these key items answered, it makes it much easier to build out the plan.

Ultimately I think that every launch should have one "north-star" goal and cascading KPIs, and you might see that varies by launch. For example, your north-star could be increasing Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), increasing customer Monthly Active Use (MAU), or increasing net new customers. Once you've landed on that, you should be ruthless about developing a GTM strategy that helps you hit those goals, and choosing metrics that help you understand if you are on track for those goals or not. That being said, the KPIs that I've found most common to track are: * Total web or app traffic and conversion rate * Email sends / opens / conversion rates * Product usage & MAU * Attributed ARR * Digital marketing metrics like impressions and conversion rates * Contribution of the launch to Marketing Qualified Leads MQLs (for B2B)

* Practice some basic questions you will get using the STAR method (The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of the situation you are describing) * Do you have a product marketing philosophy? * What’s the biggest project you’ve led? What worked/ didn’t? * Challenge: If you had $5k to spend in any way you wanted, how would you spend it and why? * Will this be the same type of role you’ve done before or something different? * Have you been promoted in your previous role? * How did you manage success in your last role? * What new skill have you learned lately? (personal or professional) * What metrics are important to manage as a product marketer? * For case studies, here are some common ones I've seen to be prepared for: * Fill out a messaging & positioning doc for a product of their choice. * Create a mini go-to-market strategy for a product they like and present it to the team * Dissect a launch, and to tell you who they think it was positioned to (and why), the highs and lows, and what they would have done differently * Yasmeen Turayhi wrote a great book I'd recommend * I wrote a blog post for hiring managers a while ago where you can see the other side of the coin: https://www.productlaunch.pro/blog/zjinmm6iorhoxmpi7tp5dizallpbdo

Post-launch momentum, what I call "Rolling Thunder," is one of my favorite topics! I think a lot of times people throw in their hats when the launch moment is done, but this is really when it's just beginning. A good strategy is to take some of the "core" assets you've created for the launch (e.g. a case study, presentation with new stats, a blog post) and to chop them up and use them in many ways. A good way to frame it is: How can you reuse and improve the content over and over again to hit your launch goals? For example, take your "stump" deck and use it at speaking events, and webinars. Take your launch blog series and turn it into a gated whitepaper or ebook. Take those great customer case study stats and quotes and share them across your company's social channels. As far as owners, I see Product Marketers as the Driver (See the DACI model) but not necessarily the person building each individual piece of content. Hopefully, you have partnerships with the marketing team or external vendors. But as a PMM, you are responsible for the goals at the end of the day, so make sure you're driving that plan along!

Thinking back to the best PMMs I’ve worked with over the years – here are some things that make a stellar PMM: * Super organized with project management experience * Scrappy and able to try new things with a limited budget * Great collaborators * Able to lead and influence without “authority” * Curious and shown that they have learned skills outside of their core role * Nail the job specific tasks: positioning, messaging, content development, go-to market planning

Once you’ve interviewed and/ or surveyed your customers, prospects, and churned customers - it’s time to put the personas into a digestible format. I recommend Google slides (or PPT, if that’s your jam) and hosting them on a central resource so all teams can use them. For example, at last night’s PMM meetup, Shyna Zhang, Director of Enterprise Strategy at Marketo, talked about how they whiteboarded the personas in a common space for product and engineering to always be able to reference, making it part of their daily decision making process. The personas should include: * A brief synopsis of who they are - i.e. “Marketing leader of 5-10 person teams, usually in the B2B space. Checks analytics every day and is obsessed with getting the maximum ROI” (B2B - make sure to use firmagraphic information. B2C demo information is more relevant) * What motivates them to buy your product or a product like yours * What their decision making power usually is (i.e. do they have the final call? Are they part of a team that decides?) * Quotes from actual interviews * Their real challenges and frustrations * Optional: What they love / hate about your product * Important: A catchy name to define each persona segment that people will remember (i.e. “Jack of all trades” or “Silver spoon” were ones we used for a prior project) The last bullet might seem random, but it’s critical to getting the personas used throughout your organization. If you do good work, and the personas have value, it won’t be long until you hear your CEO referring to one of the personas during an all hands meeting (true story!)

Tell them about one! Just like any interview question, break it down into its components and relate your story. Start by explaining the product you launched, its purpose, and how it fulfilled a need in the market. Describe the process of planning and executing this launch - from ideation to execution. Talk about any challenges that arose during the process and how you overcame them. Finally, share some of the results that you achieved during the launch such as increased sales. Also mention any feedback from customers or stakeholders who were involved in the process. Most of all, be confident and provide as much detail as possible about your experience – this will help give the interviewer a full understanding of what kind of PMM you are. Good luck!

Ideally, before a launch, you have worked hand-in-hand with the product team to understand who the product is for, and what product it solves. But if you are coming into a situation where this is not defined, here are some ways to approach it: * Ask the "dumb" questions to your product and eng team (other people WILL want to know them too): Who is this for? What pain points does this solve? Why did we build this? * Develop a hypothesis on who the customer is and test it, stat. This could be in the alpha or beta process, or in separate user testing. As far as operationalizing the ideal customer as part of your GTM strategy, once you are fairly confident about the ideal customer, I'd recommend: * Reviewing your GTM checklist and making sure the channels align to where these customers are spending time. * Using results of the above-mentioned testing to make sure the messages align to what the customers care about. * Watch the results like a hawk. Are the customers you thought would buy actually buying? Why or why not?

Great question. When creating buyer personas, you’re ideally using data from current, prospective, and churned customers to create archetypes of your buyers. The goal is to understand more about your customers, design better products, create better marketing programs, and arm your sales team with the best talking points. The problem is, most personas suck! The ones I see most often have demographic info only (e.g. “Marketing Mary is 32, has a BA in Communication, and lives in a large city) or are really generic (e.g. “She’s hoping to increase her MQLs this year.”) Are these helpful? Not really. Understanding customer motivations is the key to better personas. I recommend surveying or interviewing 25 or so people and really trying to understand their motivations for using your product, or a product like yours. This will help you create much better personas. 25 sounds like a lot, but if you can train other team members, you can accomplish this quickly. Some questions to ask to uncover motivations: * What were the real pain points they had that led them to buy your product? * What were the alternatives to your product? * How did they get budget to buy this? Talking to existing and - even better - churned customers will give you the best insights. I wrote a blog post that dives deeper into this, and talks about a helpful framework to follow - “Jobs to Be Done” if you’re interested in learning more: https://yourgotomarketer.com/2017/05/01/why-traditional-personas-are-terrible-and-how-to-make-them-better/