Matt Kaufman

This is largely industry specific. Definitely research your market and listen to the data. An extremely important data point that should come your way is from your sales motions and how your plays work with each audience. It's important though to resist the tempation to over segment - that's a rabbit hole that is hard to get out of. In a vertical marketing strategy the most basic of segmentation comes from which audience in the ecosystem you're speaking to. The most basic example would be if you're marketing a Marketplace you'd segment based on Buyers and Sellers. However, segmentatio...

There are a variety of low touch and high touch research methods we've used over time. Most recently what's been on my mind has been the value of Closed Won/Lost interviews for earlier stage products.  As companies scale they're likely to have existing products that have been in the market for a while (I think of these as graduate students or grown ups depending on how mature they are) and others that are new kids on the block (I think of these as toddlers or preschool children). Each of these requires a different degree and type of attention to make it successful. We've recently laun...

When constructing your brand and messaging hierarchy it's valuable to have a 50 thousand foot view of the position for what your company represents, that helps anchor all of your audiences to what you do and what you represent. It also helps align the unique value prop for each audience to a central set of company values. For instance, does your brand represent innovation, vertical expertise, ease of use, etc. But when you dig in a layer deeper it's important to consider how that messaging will be used in your demand gen and sales plays. It's extremely challenging to be all things to all...

Simply put, it's marketing to a niche audience centered around a specific set of needs. Examples include developing a deep focus in industries such as Real Estate, Education, Healthcare, or others. By comparison, a horizontally focused product marketing strategy aims to find how a given product can be used across these industries and how they may value that product differently. That being said, a vertical strategy doesn't mean there's one marketing playbook. Within these verticals you're more likely than not to have a diverse set of groups that interact with the ecosystem differently and...

In short, neither. I wouldn't look at this as "harder to work with" as much as I'd suggest investigating how you set up your goals and expectations. Both product and sales are invaluable partners.  Both generate compelling user insights. Product happens to generally generate them earlier during the development cycles while sales (especially in B2B) can get them to you rapidly once a product is in market. That being said, one needs to be careful not to use insights from product or sales too much as a crutch since each team has it's own natural bias that could influence how they interpr...