A thorough go to market (GTM) plan can provide incredible clarity for the many, many stakeholders who are involved in a launch. That’s why it’s so important for the GTM plan to be self-serve when you don’t have the luxury of walking your colleagues through it. The goal is to align your core team, plus answer the top questions for anyone else who needs to be looped in. I suggest using these 9 sections as your core elements: 1. Business context, goals and projected impact → why is this launching? 2. Product experience → what is launching? 3. Audience insights, definition and targeting strategy → who is this launching for and what need(s) are we solving? 4. Marketing brief → what are we saying and how? 5. Channel plan → where are we sharing this? 6. Campaign creative → how does it look, feel and sound? 7. Launch timeline → when is it launching and how is it being rolled out? 8. Measurement plan → how will we know what success looks like? 9. Roles & responsibilities → who owns bringing this to life? There are plenty of times when this list expands or contracts, but as long as you are answering why, what, who, where, when and how, you’ll have a solid starting point to create a successful GTM plan.

I think about Go-To-Market plans being comprised of the following work: * Understanding the product and its value proposition * Gather feedback from current and potential customers * Understanding the competitive landscape * Identifying the total addressable market (TAM) * Setting objectives and the goals of the GTM plan * Developing a pricing and sales strategy * Crafting a messaging strategy by including the value propositions * Choosing marketing channels * Creating a launch timeline

We break down product marketing’s work into four buckets and work with product as follows during each of the phases: 1. Market Strategy, Customer Insights & Product Roadmap. PMM leads market, competitive, and customer/prospect research to uncover key customer problems. We analyze market data, hone competitive intelligence, and draw on prospect and customer insights to illuminate product/market fit. We collaborate with the product team throughout this whole process to identify and prioritize big questions to answer and then share all the intel with them to influence and inform the product strategy and roadmap decisions. Product of course wants to solve customers’ biggest problems, so most find this research invaluable and welcome the thoughtful, data driven influence. 2. Positioning, Messaging, Packaging, & Pricing. PMM develops a customer-facing strategy to uniquely differentiate our offer in the marketplace. Product provides inputs on features, COGs, considerations, etc to help inform pricing and packaging - we generally co-pilot pricing with them. We also have them review drafts and provide input on the positioning and messaging, ensuring we’ve done a good job of highlighting all the ways we provide value and appeal to prospects and users. 3. Go-to-Market Strategy. PMM partners with product on defining the product market readiness criteria. We’ll present our GTM strategy, getting alignment on the level of the launch as well as goals and KPIs. Finally, we’ll make sure we’re aligned on all of the associated launch activities before handing the plan off to marketing and sales teams to help bring the campaign to life and execute against the strategy. 4. Amplification, Feedback & Refinement. Post launch, we’ll work with product to monitor campaign and product adoption metrics as well as check in with xfn stakeholders like CX, marketing, sales, rev ops, and data science to get the fullest picture of launch success. We’ll jointly strategize on how to make improvements, and host a retro so that we can be on a continual path of improvement.

We’ve developed a few of our own frameworks over the years based on jobs-to-be-done. It’s an approach that runs counterintuitive to classic, persona-based marketing, and does so purposefully. Focusing on customer attributes really means focusing on what you want to sell, rather than what your customers actually need. Those customers come from a variety of backgrounds, industries, and verticals, but their one commonality is their motivation, the Job-to-be-Done. I had to fundamentally change my approach when I joined Intercom. For me, the easiest way to grok the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology was by watching Clay Christensen’s famous milkshake video and understanding what “job” people buy milkshakes for. You can read more about Jobs-to-be-Done on the Inside Intercom blog here: Focus on the Job, Not the Customer: https://blog.intercom.com/when-personas-fail-you/ And, here’s a recording of a talk and podcast I’ve given in the past about how we apply JTBD to our go-to-market strategy. How to market the Job-to-be-Done: https://blog.intercom.com/marketing-the-job-to-be-done How Jobs-to-be-Done Informs Intercom Marketing: https://blog.intercom.com/podcast-intercoms-go-to-market-strategy/ As we continue to grow, our products mature, and we learn more about the problems we’re trying to solve and for whom, we’re constantly adapting our frameworks. As an example, we’ve recently created an internal document called the “Solution Guide” for each of the solutions we take to market. The guide answers the following questions: Foundations * What problem are people looking to find a solution for? * What will a solution to this problem improve for them? * Who is looking for it? * What are the keywords they are using to search for it? Solution Positioning & Messaging * What do we call the solution we provide for this problem? * Why would someone be interested in Intercom’s solution? * Which Intercom products are required to solve this problem? * How does Intercom solve this problem? * Which must-have features for this problem does Intercom have? * Why would someone want to use Intercom to solve this problem? * Who is successfully using Intercom to solve this problem? In addition, as we think about how to best position ourselves against alternative solutions (products) to the problems we solve, we make use of the 4 Forces model. You can learn more about that and our approach to comparative marketing here: The right way to challenge your competitors - Inside Intercom: https://blog.intercom.com/comparative-marketing/ Of course, there are many other, more established frameworks available to you. One thing I have heard good things about is Pragmatic Marketing (https://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/). My advice would find a framework that feels good and adapt it to your business because everyone is different. :)

Great question - you'll see the answer is some of the my other answers. I'll add a few other steps here: First, be intentional about the core working group. Go-to-market can be vast, so it's important that you have key functions (sales, customer success, marketing, revenue operations, and more) represented. Second, align the team on the stage of the business. Sangram Varje and Bryan Brown recently published MOVE: The 4 Question Go-To-Market Framework which offers a maturity assessment of where your company is in its evolution from defining problem-market fit, product-market fit, and platform-market fit. Third, make sure that your go-to-market strategy is aligned. I recently worked with a coach who helped us develop our market vision (our sense of where the market was headed) and then the company, product, GTM, and operational strategy to respond to the changes that we saw in the market. It was an exercise that helped me sync GTM with the broader company strategy.

It certainly depends on the launch tier along with other market factors/customer dimensions, but typically I am looking at the data to inform next steps. Did we hit our product usage target? Is the narrative landing in sales calls (listening to gong recordings)? Is the pitch deck working (checking deal velocity in SFDC)? I am continually tweaking to ensure we are landing in a place of impact and not stagnation. Aside from this, the mission critical post-launch activity should be - the RETROSPECTIVE! Get your GTM teams together to chat about what you should "start, stop, continue" so you're even better next time. It's important to look in the rearview to inform where you're headed. 

Whenever you are starting a new role, it's critical to understand what's important to your manager and what the objectives are for your new organization so you can align yourself well to them. Every company has a different onboarding plan, and for PMMs I think it's critical to get the lay of the land through meet and greets with the people you'll work with to hear first hand what is on their mind, so you can start to understand how you will work together. I also work with my manager to define what I can deliver as soon as possible to show impact to the organization. This is not PMM specific, but there is an app that I use called the "The First 90 days" which I use to help me think through different elements of my new role. The information is useful enough that you can adapt it to a PMM role. 

There’s no one typical product marketing career path. Product marketers are often utility players, and get into product marketing from a wide range of backgrounds like content, campaigns, sales engineering or enablement, or even product. Once you’re in a product marketing role, you can expect to put in your time as an individual contributor for several years. The next step might be to make the leap to leading a team of product marketers, then a broader team of marketers. Many VPs of Marketing and CMOs are starting to come from product marketing backgrounds because of the focus on strategy, messaging and positioning. Other product marketers transition into product management or strategy roles or strike out on their own as consultants.

Ideal customer profile (ICP) is a great way to focus on the most valuable prospects likely to purchase your product and align all areas of the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy on targeting those accounts. I recommend taking a three-pronged approach when it comes to collecting data for ICP. 1) Do the quantitative analysis 2) Conduct internal interviews from sales and account managers 3) Talk to customers. You’ll then start to see some trends across several attributes like industry; use case; tech stack; regions, growth rate; etc. It’s always good to think about your future ICP as well when designing and implementing and ICP so you’ll have some room for growth. Ask yourself what your most valuable prospects will look like in 6 - 9 months? Is your product changing? Is your company entering a new region? Launching a new product line? All these will have an impact on your future ICP. And always, always, always identify key stakeholders early on in the process as implementing ICPs is a cross-functional project and requires collaboration to get an ICP successfully implemented across many GTM teams.

There are a few different ways to go about creating personas (which may be more closely aligned to “archetypes” or “segments” depending on the terminology your organization uses). The way you source the data largely depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. But the short answer is you can use qualitative data, quantitative data, or a mix of both. Either way, you’ll usually get the best results with primary research data - data you collect as opposed to insights you find in published research. Methodology: 1. Using qualitative data is a good choice if: 1. Your target audience is difficult to reach (e.g. HR professionals or executives of large companies) 2. You don’t have the budget or tools to conduct quantitative research 3. You already have a strong sense of who your user/buyers are and are looking for a deeper, richer understanding of these folks 4. You need to complete the research on a short timeline 2. Using quantitative data is a good choice if: 1. You want to better understand the total addressable market (TAM), which kinds of attitudes, wants and needs make each segment unique, and which segments are most aligned with your offerings 2. You want to learn more about your existing user base by leveraging behavioral data (e.g. platform usage or purchase behavior), and segment them into groups based on their behavioral patterns 3. You have the resources and time to fully develop the research methodology to accurately meet your needs Research Objectives: 1. You’ll also want to consider your primary research objectives. Are you looking for personas that will primarily impact current or future strategic initiatives? Which teams will be leveraging these personas? Will they need to be operationalized in a way that will include algorithms and formulas to track their behavior? 1. Whether quantitative or qualitative, personas that are primarily based on attitudes, wants, and needs tend to be more future-focused because they highlight unmet needs and areas of opportunity. If your goal is to grow your user base or create new, innovative products, this is a good place to start. 2. Personas that are rooted in current behavior help optimize for the present and shorter term strategies. For example, if you’re creating presonas to learn more about your most engaged users, or users of a particular product, this could be a good place to start. Protips: 1. Bonnie’s (Director of Market Insights) Pro tip: Prioritize the jobs to be done with your personas. If it only does one thing well, what should that thing be and who will leverage it the most? 2. Patti’s (Head of Consumer PMM) Pro tip: Get the most out of your personas by engaging all potential stakeholders before you finalize your research plan. 3. Sophia’s (Product Marketing Lead) Pro tip 3: Use what you have! Get scrappy and connect with whichever teams have the best access to your target audience (e.g. sales, customer service, data science, UX, market research, PMM, etc.). Take initiative to get in touch with customers, work with teams that have dedicated research resources (like UX and market research). 4. (For more, check out our answer to the question about persona framework!)