I'll focus on the creating great messaging, because frankly that's the most challenging part of the job. Especially given the noise out there with so many products, and so many companies being funded, it's really hard to stand out. I think there are lots of ways to create great messaging, but it all comes from the same place: * Great insight into your customers drive great messaging. That's it. So then the question is, how do you get there? For me it means holistically understanding the environment around your user, and then being able to connect the most differentiated value of your product to their world. That means your product marketers must have a deep understanding of the customer as well as the demands and challenges they face, combined with a deep understanding of your own product, and finally the overall environment (competitors, legacy products, substitutions). When this comes together, messaging must be defensible (it's true) and must be differentiated (you couldn't slap a competitor's name on it and have the market believe it). Finally and most importantly, it must matter. The customer must care about your why's and how's. Over time as a marketing leader you develop a sense if a product message meets these requirements, but the only real proof is testing it with your customer base and proxies for the base. Proxies include product managers, good sales people, and analysts. Use them! And then when you're ready test with willing customers, and then finally with prospects who don't know they are getting the new stuff. Don't be afraid to get the message out there. Finally, I would say that I'm not a huge fan of A/B testing messaging through ads or web pages in the early days. While you may see which one gets more clicks, you won't know why. Having real conversations allows you to ask the follow on questions that give you the insight needed to improve your messaging.

Good Product Marketing OKRs really depend on the business and what the company is trying to achieve. For example, if there's no unified launch process, you may set an objective to develop a launch program. Or another example: you're starting to lose deals to a specific competitor. You may kick off a competitive program to mitigate losses on competitive deals. It really depends on the business. For product launches: * Did I reach my intended audience for this launch? How many people engaged with our launch materials? Read the blog post? Watched the video? Engaged with the landing page? * How many existing customers adopted the new feature or product within a reasonable amount of time? * Were we expecting a certain amount of leads or pipeline from the launch? * Did we brief the analyst community properly? * Is our sales team enabled on what's new and why customers should care? For campaigns: * Content delivery * Gated content downloads * Webinar registrations and number of viewers * Lead flow For sales enablement: * What % of reps are certified on the pitch and demo? * What % of reps have gone through persona training?

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

My first question is: what's the reason for not relying on your revenue org? Is there a lack of trust, challenges with prioritization, or something else? The best, most differentiated positioning means nothing if it's not being used throughout the customer journey – and since the majority of marketing orgs are focused on driving leads to a sales team, that messaging better be consistent at every stage of the marketing funnel. I view our sales partners as essential in building, validating, and activating our messaging. Since much of the intel we gain from sales teams is rooted in the present challenges our target audience is facing, I tend to work closely with them to identify key pain points, then validate with new and existing user research (both in-house and sourced with third parties), broad customer surveys (key trends based by audience), and by talking to customers any opportunity I have. To that end, I'll often volunteer to present a product pitch, volunteer for booth duty, or present our roadmap, just to have face-time with customers; we're providing direct value, so folks rarely object when I ask a few additional, discovery questions, or drop-in new messaging just to observe their reactions. The best messaging, though, doesn't just address the current problem, but future problems (and in an economic downturn, economic opportunities) that we are best positioned to address. So, vision-building is often more of a conversation and ideation exercise with my product stakeholders. Simply, intel from sales/customers is great for messaging that gets heads nodding, and the product vision conversations are what I use to get people excited about the future. Together, that's the peanut butter and chocolate of messaging. While this question was specifically about quant tools, it's essential to start with that qual research. Some really talented UX partners taught me that qualitative data is essential before building out quantitative research – I treat messaging the same way. On the quant side, here are a few things I've seen work: * Message testing with friendly customers/customer-facing teams (either via an ad hoc or existing VOC community – ask them for quant and qual feedback in exchange for swag, donations to a cause, or access to new features) * Painted door exercises (A/B test landing pages and ad copy with variations of content to measure CVR) * Sales training & correlative win/loss rate (train teams in new messaging and observe changes in win/loss and customer segments over time using tools like Gong)

Growth Product Marketing focuses on driving feature adoption, activation and retention while Product Marketing is focused on the initial product launch and go-to-market moment. The primary goal of Growth Product Marketing is to help customers achieve the "realized value" of the product and maintain "ongoing value" to prevent customers from churning. This is accomplished through ongoing tactics such as implementing growth experiments, executing adoption campaigns through channels like SEO, SEM, email marketing and in-product adoption, creating viral loops (like a referral program) and using data and analytics to optimize their efforts. While a Product Marketing Manager is responsible for leading the development of the go-to-market strategy for a product, which includes establishing product-market fit, creating positioning and messaging, competitive analysis, content creation, sales enablement, pricing and packaging, and basic product adoption measurement.

The best analyst briefing decks that I've either seen or helped build are not filled with marketing messaging. They clearly layout what analysts typically care about, which could include the following: trends you've observed in market you operate in, the challenges your product(s) solves, overview of your growth trajectory, industries you touch plus key use cases for each, unique differentiators, and insight into the product & (high level) GTM strategy and company vision. Other elements I'd suggest: Include customer success stories, lay out the ecosystem that supports your products (ie. partners, integrations, develop engagement), and share how you support your customers. Also, it may seem obvious, but I'd caution against including stats/proof points that were produced by another analyst firm. In general, have a clear agenda that includes space for Q&A and listening to their feedback. 

This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time comes, then you’ll be successful in solving those last minute snafus. Assuming your marketing brief and GTM plan are finalized and approved, a successful GTM execution comes down to organization, stakeholder alignment and (the hardest one!) seeing around corners. Here are the riskiest components in each of those categories and how to mitigate that risk: 1. Lack of organization: * Misaligned plans * Losing track of documents and creative files * Overly tight timelines * Rehashing previous conversations How to mitigate: Keep a source of truth document (or spreadsheet, my personal favorite) where you track every single launch component, including status and timeline, meeting notes, resources, channel plans and assets, launch day tick tock and more. 2. Missing stakeholder alignment: * Vague R&R * Lack of resourcing * Unclear expectation-setting How to mitigate: Bring your cross-functional and marketing partners along for the journey by pulling them in at key strategic milestones when you’re creating your plan, then holding regular status meetings up until launch through to a post-mortem. 3. Not seeing around corners: * Lack of familiarity with the deployment tech * Broken user journeys * 11th hour feedback How to mitigate: This one tends to be company-specific, so ask your colleagues about unexpected day-of discoveries on previous launches and then prepare for those specific scenarios. Also, it never hurts to build a buffer into your timeline and have an extra set of eyes on the creative before it goes out the door.

Every launch is different, but here is a good starting point! 1. Identify key stakeholders - I like to do a kickoff before a big launch wiht a POC from key teams including legal, pricing, CS, etc. as needed 2. Align the team around the product - talk about WHAT the product is, WHY it matters, and the opportunity this brings for the company 3. Develop a story behind the product launch and define your messaging 4. Prepare a launch plan (and find a streamlined way to track progress) 5. Define your success metrics 6. Identify marketing channels for launch - work with demand gen 7. Complete beta (if applicable), and use customer feedback to tweak story and approach as needed 8. Select your product launch date (clearly communicate tech ready vs. market ready if there is a difference) 9. ENABLE! Communicate the product launch with all the employees--the WHY this is happening, and what their role in the success of the launch will be 10. Plan EXTERNAL communications 11. Create an ongoing adoption strategy and check in points Most importantly (IMO), celebrate the victories, even the little ones. Did you get some awesome logos on your launch webinar?? Did you move prospects into a later stage opp? I find that excitement goes a long way!

You have a very tall order ahead of you! These two motions aren't nuanced differences -- they are completely different playbooks. Most of my AMA questions are about comparing the two, so I'll summarize the key differences here: The buyer * Often a self-serve buyer is a team lead/director level or an end-user, looking to try out the product to see if it could work for themselves or their team. They are rarely thinking about their entire company's needs. These buyers want to validate the product fast and implement it even faster because it promises to solve an issue they are facing right then and there. They care about quick-time-value, self-driven learning & documentation, community support, and ease of setup. * An enterprise buyer is thinking about the opposite. They are looking for solutions to organizational challenges they are facing now and long into the future. They are often willing to: spend more time vetting all the best solutions through RFPs etc.; to pay for someone else to configure and manage the product; and they care deeply about customer service, not just product experience. Their decision has more lasting implications, like dealing with procurement, a task that no one takes lightly ;) The buyer journey * A PMM building a self-serve buyer journey connects the top of the funnel through to product and everything in between. You only have seconds to tell a compelling story and the feedback you get is a mix of data insights and customer responses. * An Enterprise buyer journey has to take into account human interaction as a content delivery vehicle. There are more direct feedback loops and more room for robust and detailed storytelling. The tactics * Self-serve marketing activities will include paid marketing campaigns, website optimizations, SEO content & blogs, Youtube, PR, online community engagement etc. all focused on driving traffic and signs ups. * Enterprise activities are most focused on that human touch through events, analyst relations, sales, channel, webinars etc. all focused on driving pipeline.

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.