Mike Greenberg

This is probably one of the toughest problems we face as marketers. A lot of times, teams will look at a combination of leading quantitative indicators (clicks, conversions, time spent, etc.) and qualitative signals (from buyer interviews, listening to sales calls, etc.), to take a best guess at what’s working and what’s not. There are lots of problems with this. It’s tough to isolate messaging as the primary driver of these results, and assign quantifiable measures that will clearly indicate improvement if you make changes. Qual feedback takes a lot of time to gather, especially if you want to validate your messaging across a number of buyer personas. A/B testing can help, but you and your GTM team need to be pretty careful not to change anything else (including upper-funnel stuff like ad copy and targeting) that might impact results, which can be paralyzing. Worst of all, while you’re doing all of this, you’re already in-market: the train has left the station and you’re losing opportunity if you’re not sure your message is connecting. Instead, my recommendation is to validate your messaging before you go to market. (I won’t do too much self-promotion here, but it just so happens we make a Message Testing solution at Momentive, and it’s one of the products we leverage the most internally.) With a message testing solution, you can get a number of messages in front of your target audience — we tend to target a broad array of business buyers — and get real data on which messages resonate across a attributes like overall appeal, uniqueness, and, importantly, desire to learn more (as well as segmentation across buyers if you like). This is the kind of thing that, a few years ago, you’d probably need to engage a research agency to run, but modern survey-based tools like ours have purpose-built methodologies built-in, and you can get a clear signal on your key messages in just a day or two. We ran one of these recently to test new headline messaging for our Momentive homepage and it paid off in spades. It validated a messaging direction with our target buyers that was different than what internal leadership was advocating for — so we had some data to bring to the table justifying our positioning (see another of my AMA responses on gaining XF alignment on positioning). If we hadn’t tested, there was a strong risk of going to market with a losing message on one of our most important properties. Instead, we were able to go live on Day 1 with a message that we already know will resonate. In fact, two of our test messages performed strongly, so we were able to run an in-market A/B test to find a winner without really risking any traffic to a poor performer. tl;dr: I recommend using a survey-based solution to test your messaging before you go to market. You’ll get quantifiable information about what works and what doesn’t, aid internal buy-in, and gain a lot of launch day confidence. You will influence other performance KPIs driven by the GTM team, but PMM’s biggest responsibility is ensuring you have messaging that resonates with target buyers.

I'd describe positioning as how we want to be perceived in the market, and messaging as the customer-facing language that proves it. But in practice, I've rarely (if ever) had this specific conversation at Momentive outside of PMM: it tends to be pretty marketing-centric. What I've learned from internal stakeholders is that what's most important to them is to be able to look at a messaging document and know what's internal framework vs. something they can use in external-facing materials, so we tend to mark things clearly in those terms when putting a new messaging resource together.

Great question (and there are a few others around messaging development process that I’ll use this response to cover). We have a few processes and frameworks in place that really help with XF alignment. First of all, if you don’t have one, I recommend developing a messaging framework or template that the entire PMM team will adopt consistently, and that you’ve socialized with partners in advance. That way, your cross-functional team knows what to expect from PMM whenever they receive a new messaging brief. Over the past year, I collaborated with my fellow PMM leads to create a fresh messaging framework template at Momentive, and we brought our frequent internal customers into that process to provide feedback (primarily folks in Marketing/Communications and Sales Enablement roles). As a result, we’ve now got a template that partners agree — in advance! — will contain all the key information they need to be successful, and this cuts down greatly on any XF friction that might occur when it’s time to deliver a new messaging doc. Additionally, it’s important to show your work so that you’re bringing partners along for the ride as they read what you’ve got to say. The opening third (or so) of our template is dedicated to summarizing (with data!) the market opportunity, buyer pain points, the competitive environment, etc. We also show the building blocks of our positioning — the target audience, problem statement, competitive differentiators, value statement, and benefits — as separate elements before weaving them into customer-facing copy. If we’ve done any message testing (more on that in a different AMA response), we’ll include the results of that, too. There’s little room for “we don’t believe you”-type statements, because we’re drawing a pretty clear map of how we arrived at our positioning. Lastly, we’ll usually do a first pass with our creative team of writers to ensure our tone and voice are on point, and customer-facing messages are compelling, before briefing in the GTM team. Ultimately, your writers (if you’re not writing all copy yourself) are on the hook for translating your messaging doc into an array of wonderful collateral. The extra bit of preview and polish has everyone ready to run with your messaging and start creating as soon as you hit “go”.

Short answer: we use our own (Momentive) message testing solution since this is the market we're in and we have a market-leading product. Not to toot our own horn too much, but here's what I like about our offering that I would look for in any solution you're considering: * The respondent panel is built into the product, so you can target virtually any global audience you like without having to purchase and integrate a panel separately * You don't need to be a research scientist to use it: research and analysis methodologies are built in and driven by AI, so the solution will tell you in a clear way what's important and significant in the results so you know which message(s) resonate * The product works to filter out unreliable responses (for example, a respondent who speeds through the survey or always chooses the first option) to ensure good data * It's fast, delivering responses in a matter of hours Overall, a Saas-based solution is worlds better (and cheaper) than the time and cost of outsourcing this to an agency. Attributes I'd look for are the built-in panel, ease of use, results that will clearly tell you what to do next, and speed to ROI.

I won’t sugar coat it: localization is hard. While I’d love to give you some magic advice that will ensure your messaging resonates globally, the reality is that geographic segmentation and market insights are as important as any other work you may be doing to personalize your messaging and GTM strategy if you want to be successful. We’re actually working on refreshing our global GTM strategy now at Momentive. That being said, it’s unlikely you’ll need to stand your messaging completely on its head to resonate with target buyers across geos. You do need to be in tune with local buyer preferences and the competition. There are a couple pieces of research that might help your messaging development. First, conduct some buyer research across the geos you play in or are considering playing in (a usage and attitude or similar study, or if prohibitive, get super close to your sales channels) so that you can understand any significant differences in purchase drivers or buying behavior and reflect that in your localized messaging. For example, you might find that having a local data center is a big purchase driver in certain geos — if you have one, you’d want to amplify that in any messaging targeting that part of the world. Also, conduct geo-specific competitive analyses for your top-tier target geos. I’ve found a number of smaller, local competitors this way who are unknown here in the US but nonetheless successful at capturing significant market share by deeply tailoring their messaging — and in some cases injecting a little F.U.D. when it comes to the international/multinational competition. It usually goes something like, “we’re local, therefore we understand you better.” You need to be able to combat that by demonstrating your understanding of local buyers with value statements and proof points that combat those ideas, in addition to your typical competitive approach. One of the projects I’ve undertaken to this end is gathering customer case studies and social proof from top-tier markets so that we’ve got local insights and customers backing us up. Lastly, the world is a big place. Make sure you understand where your biggest opportunities are, and choose carefully which geographies to prioritize in your GTM motion, as resources aren’t limitless. If you don’t have a tiered and prioritized list of target geos that’s adopted throughout the organization (including when it comes to product support), champion this project so that all teams are aligned on where in the world you want to gain marketshare. Hope that’s helpful!

Thanks for sharing that article! Though I can’t speak directly to Slack’s land-and-expand tactics, we follow a similar strategy at SurveyMonkey, and I'm happy to share some insights into what makes it work. In a bottom-up SaaS expansion strategy, the end goal is typically to get to the IT buyer by growing an installed footprint in an organization that’s too large (for IT) to ignore. This is how Slack has grown, and it’s fundamentally different than a top-down strategy where you’re more typically targeting departmental buyers directly with a sales-assisted motion (though you can certainly do both!). Some thoughts to this end: * A freemium, self-serve model helps if you want your users to bring your product into their office environment (usually as an alternative to something that is too expensive, too complex, or simply not provided): your product should be as accessible to people as possible (“land”) * Leverage surveys, interviews, and other feedback to know your users and use cases deeply so that you can tailor your messaging as you make the case for growing your product’s footprint in their department, and then their organization * Influence your product org to adopt PLG tactics and inherently viral features in your product roadmap, and drive adoption of these as a key part of your marketing strategy: collaboration and sharing features are a great way to use your product to drive expansion * If you don’t already offer one, consider a self-serve, multi-user offering that sits between individual accounts and an organizational (enterprise) deployment to encourage adoption by small teams: create an expansion “ladder” of offerings your customers can climb as their usage matures toward companywide adoption * Maintain and make available great data on organizational usage that customer-facing teams can leverage to make the pitch for shifting from self-serve/ad-hoc to IT-led organizational adoption: for example, a sales or CS team should be able to speak to how many self-serve users are in an organiation, how active they are, and even how much money the organization is currently spending on self-serve / “bring your own” users * Package your offerings smartly so that organizational deployments add value for both end users and IT buyers, so that the entire organization benefits from moving up the ladder. * Remember that end users and IT buyers don’t care about the same things, so you’ll need to adopt your “expand” pitch based on the audience: end users care about value that makes their job easier. IT buyers care about buying down risk and maximizing ROI from their technology spend, and may never actually be end users of your product. Your messaging and teams will need to be adept at speaking both languages. Hope that’s helpful!

Marketing fundamentals are the same whether your growth strategy is PLG or traditional outbound marketing (and the two are not exclusive!): you still need to understand your target market, develop effective messaging, and get in front of the right people at the right moment. At SurveyMonkey, we engage in both PLG and traditional marketing as part of our overall GTM strategy. With PLG, we are thinking strategically about how the product itself can act as a channel for delivering our message, convincing customers, and driving product virality. Using SurveyMonkey as an example: * When somebody sends a survey, we can grow awareness with brand impressions made through email invitations, on survey pages, and even through the content we decide to display after a survey is taken * A freemium, self-serve pricing model and try-before-you-buy tactics help grow acquisition * Customers who want to leverage their own brand, instead of ours, can upgrade to a paid product directly through product-driven purchase flows — one of many levers that can drive paid conversion * Strategic feature investments, like in-product collaboration, paired with good promotion at the right moment, increase engagement and ultimately drive expansion and retention outcomes Lastly, consider how PLG and traditional marketing channels can be used together to increase effectiveness, and make sure that both product and marketing teams have access to key signals about user behavior so that you can reach them with consistent messaging across all of the channels available to you. For example, if someone hits a paywall in your product but doesn't convert in-the-moment, traditional marketing channels can take over to reinforce your message / convince even after they've left your website or app.

This sounds like the classic "leaky bucket" problem: your bucket is leaking (users), and you're not sure why, so it's hard to figure out what to do about it. Solving this requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative insights. As a starting point, make sure you understand exactly where and when in the customer journey you are losing engagement with users. This might be really granular: if people are signing up for your service and then never come back, there might be an issue with your post-purchase email communication. If people sign up and you can get them to log back in, but they don't go any further, the answer might be somewhere in the user experience. Having great data and being really specific about this can help you narrow down what is happening and where the journey is falling apart, so you can come up with the right strategy and the best channel for re-engaging users. Of course, you also need to know "why" users aren't continuing, and that's where asking questions comes in. These can be helpful: * Why did you stop using the platform? * How well does the product meet your needs? * What are your expectations for the product / what are you hoping to accomplish? * How would you rate the onboarding experience? * Are there any specific features you found lacking or missing? * How easy is it to find help? * Is there anything you would improve? (Self-promotional warning:) if you're stuck, SurveyMonkey has a "Build with AI" feature that will craft a survey for you based on your prompt. Try asking it, "Why aren't customers returning to our product after signing up?" and send that survey to your customers. Gather a mix of qualitative and quantitative responses so that you understand what you need to address, and capture some benchmarks so you'll know if you've fixed it. Whether the answer is better onboarding, product improvements, or something else, this type of insight and feedback will get you pointed in the right direction. Good luck!

As a partial answer, it's helpful to think about some of the things that Sales and CS roles might typically contribute to the customer journey or your understanding of customers, and how you can obtain that value in a proactive or self-serve way that's scaled and repeatable. As a self-serve PMM without the benefit of those roles, you need to be considering: * Do you have all the pieces in place to help people through the pre- and post-purchase customer journey without human intervention: Is your website clear and compelling? Are your conversion points helpful with decision-making? Do you have the right onboarding and tutorial content to drive engagement? Is your free > paid conversion rate healthy? Are you monitoring at key points to know where engagement is falling off? And so on. * How are you staying close to your customers and target market so that you can deliver valuable insights to your product team and optimize your GTM approach? Are you set up to measure customer satisfaction, solicit product feedback, etc., so you'll know what to do next? Remember, you can't go ask Sales. * Is your GTM strategy (and personal bandwidth) optimized for scale? Self-serve SaaS products tend to be at the lower end of the cost spectrum, so volume and virality are your friends. If my goal is self-serve business, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about webinars, for example, because they don't tend to attract enough viewers to move needles on a product that's priced at $50/month. PLG, SEO, and other scaled and efficient strategies are more effective at attracting the volume of users you need to sustain a self-serve growth machine at sub-enterprise price points. * On the topic of product-led growth tactics, work with your product team to develop a PLG strategy that puts your product and users to work for you driving awareness and expansion, and to ensure that your messaging reaches people at their moment of need.

The right team structure is going to be highly dependent on your business, so there's no one right answer. I've been on teams that have been organized by product, vertical, customer segment, and GTM motion (self-serve vs. sales assisted) with equal success and equal lack of success. Company-level priorities can provide a great North Star to align your team's structure and accountability to. For example, if one of your top goals is to improve NPS by 10 points this year, you might do well to have a PMM whose job it is to think about customer engagement and retention strategies. One thing that's been very successful on my team is bringing on a PMM dedicated to competitive intelligence, which is not a role that sits on a lot of product marketing teams. Our observation was that even though competitive insights are a core part of our job responsibility, PMMs get so busy we they really only go in-depth when a project or launch requires it. We wanted to drive more ongoing competitive visibility across the org, but also to be more agile in our response to competitive threats, so placing that role at the intersection of product influence, internal enablement, and GTM execution has really accelerated impact.