Savita Kini

May be I am baised, but in the large Global 500 space, infrastructure -- I would say my experience at Cisco was the best. For me thats kind of the benchmark now - both in terms of strategy and execution cadence that I learnt. From products to solution to positioning platforms, working with ecosystem partners, ISVs, Channels. Website alone to me is not a good indication, yes, today it is, but the real value is in business that is driven and impact product marketing is having in driving that. In the Saas space, I would agree Salesforce is probably the benchmark. It is easier when you have 1 or 2 products, but positioning a broader portfolio and bringing a holistic message, to multiple verticals -- thats hard in Enterprise. My 2 cents.

Love your above answer. Even campaign plans have to be defined together because demand gen team will need guidance on - who to target - type of customers - segments, size, revenue, etc - what type of campaign - lead gen, awareness, account-based marketing campaign, nurturing existing customer contacts in the database etc - Messaging and positioning briefs so demand gen can creative derivative pieces of content (infographics, banners, social media teasers etc). On the campaign front as well - PMMs can and should have a view on campaign strategy because a lot core content they have generate/ create. 

I am writing this perspective from my recent experience on what was missing and how I would lead in the future as a product marketing leader. Given that most demand gen folks are well versed in campaign orchestration tools and mechanics, and less on the market/customer/segment/product fit, they need lot more guidance from product marketing leaders. Also, given the content is now consumed 90% digitally, it would be more meaningful for product marketing needs to know what kind of content is needed for effective campaigns. Working backwards to produce a content strategy and reusable content. Product marketing leaders need to work with demand-gen teams as 2-in-box so they can figure out the campaign strategy together, who they want to target, what type of personas, the nurture cycles and type of content needed in each stage - whitepaper, webinar, blogs etc to promote the POV. The other hat product marketing also cannot loose sight is sales enablement. So if you can reuse the BDM decks for example on Slideshare as well and use it for a campaign nuture - that will also help immensely and increase ROI for your time/$$ in content.

I haven't seen a method per se at my previous companies, but going forward, ideally a internal dashboard, collaborative wiki which has the details of why we won, why we lost would help everyone. I have not seen a good internal collaboration tool which also has a website/wiki kind of look / feel for editing/posts etc. Slack not so good, I am realizing. Linking this to SFDC would also be helpful. Ability to research by segment, region, competition etc. Remember that every region, Win/loss might be for different reasons. 

Bulk of my career has been in mid-to-large enterprise solutions -- from engineering to marketing and sales enablement. I agree with Mike's commentary, it is super important to understand what is solution selling and the challenger framework can be very helpful. There's other tools that have come in -- I recently heard about MEDIPPIC at my previous company, believe SAP uses this methodology. It is less about content because many of the folks you are targetting like senior executives (CIOs, Managing Directors) are less likely to come to your website and even give information for gated assets. I have said this so many times, I feel like many PMM leaders and even campaign managers don't get it. So you have to find their watering holes -- aka Thought leadership pieces in industry magazines, like NEtwork World, CIO World or something of that nature. I also advocate, PMMs being on sales calls and visiting customer sites to see how the product is being use post-installation. Because the deployment cycles can also be bit longer than when your product is selling into SMB space.

In addition to above, since all content is so closely tied to how/where it shows up and who needs to see it, versus 10 yrs ago when product marketing would created a set of standard content and post on the website. I would recommend sitting down with Demand Gen team, PR/AR to figure out what is needed for a successful campaign and nurture stream. Then consider one or 2 core pieces of content - whitepaper, webinar or customer video -- which then can be further marketed across the campaign with derivative pieces. Kind of like the core piece becomes the "neuron" and each of the streams that emerge from it in social media banners, webinar based on the topic, a partner video on the topic - all reinforce the thought leadership/essence of the story. It helps to reinforce the message continuously and makes integrated marketing really come to life. 

I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If PM team is strong enough to own end-to-end product responsibilities including how to build for new verticals etc, -- then PMM under marketing would well. This gives lots of advantages as highlight above by others - budget, go-to-market, campaign alignment. The normal human behavior of "being in the same tribe" :-). also because most marketing organizations are dominated by women..... > If PM team is however not strong especially on the outbound strategy, market analysis, customer segmentation etc -- ie. they are more user design and engineering folks - then there will be a big gap. PMM reporting to product org where they own this analytical piece can be a huge help. But then it results in hand-off issues with campaign team, access to budget, clarity on owning the go-to-market channels and decisions around them. Campaign team - if in-experienced - can end up dumping / putting more work PMM -- its a complete disaster for PMM team in such a scenario. Kind of being in a lose-lose situation. I have seen this as well. So my idea recommendation is that PM, PMM and Marketing leader - understand what kind of skills is needed for a end-to-end successful growth of the product and marketing efforts. You could potentially have specific PMM leader/person in or aligned to the PM organization to fill the gap in the PM org, and other PMMs focused on the outbound. Basically someone has to do the strategic effort, else marketing will be quite wasteful and there will be big gaps in sales enablement as well.

The transition from products to solutions requires a company wide buy-in from the top otherwise PMM's cannot make any impact. The reason we move to solutions in the first place is because the customers prefer a more holistic solution to their problem/pain point versus a point-product. To build a solution -- it can be a combination of products in your company's portfolio or with technology partners. Solutions can be vertical or horizontal specific. I have come across 3 different ways of how solutions marketing is done -- * loosely coupled products being positioned as a solution to offer a discount to customers -- more like a blueprint * Tightly coupled solution with a specific vertical or horizontal partner * an actual SKU for the solution -- ie. customer buys a single SKU instead of multiple SKUs of products. In the latter 2 cases -- you can also extract more $$ by providing higher value to the customer and pre-integrated solution, which relieves them from having to customize or find a integrator etc. In terms of the role of product marketer versus solution marketer -- having done both and always putting customer first -- it really is about figuring out the pain point, and how you communicate the value / benefits / ROI. There is actually not much difference when you get into the details because for a solution also -- you almost productize the offer -- especially when you want to extract a higher $$ from the customer for the enhanced value you provide. Content marketing, content strategy, collaterals, messaging frameworks -- all reusable. The harder job is to figure out the packaging and pricing -- that's the real devil in the details.

Product positioning is really a complex thoughtful approach, requiring perspectives on brand, pricing and packaging coming together. I believe strongly that its starts day-one when you build the product, define product features, who and where you want to compete with especially the type of customer segment. I find the exercise of positioning when done later as a PMM task gets muddled with "messaging". Because "messaging" can only do so much, if we don't get the first part of "why this product" is right for this "customer". If I am a small startup, going after large enterprise customers -- the question I would start with is -- is anyone else solving this problem, why would my solution be different, are there complementary solutions in the market, how do I want to price it -- premium or low cost, or fast access. Doing this exercise early in the product development cycle will not only help in clarifying positioning but also help in figuring out / predicting sales velocity as well. Messaging then becomes an easier exercise. Product marketing can then work towards bringing alignment on messaging. I often see content marketers focusing on messaging and positioning as "positioning statement".... I find that exercise becoming a futile exercise in "word smithing" . 

Just a feedback on the last comment, as I reacquaint myself to the "new" bay area. I have noticed more emphasis on demand gen skills amongst many startups. If there are stakeholders in the company already like product management and technical marketing who are also good at writing, messaging, positioning - then this might work. However, a good product marketer who has enough knowledge of demand gen mechanism is probably a better fit versus demand gen being forced into product marketing. Easier to pick up demand gen skills versus the opposite - in my view. It offers a career growth path for product marketers, who also make for better CMOs as messaging and positioning is critical and also drives brand strategy downstream.