Product Marketing Life

<p>This week on Product Marketing Life we’re joined by Tamara Schebel, VP of Product at Klue. Tamara shares insights, examples of success, and foundational tools on where and how you should start building the right competitive enablement program that fits your company stage, plus top tips for PMMs embarking on their CI/CE journey, and more.</p><p>---</p><p><em>"The biggest part, I think of that planning that most folks seem to miss in the early days, as you slide into CI accidentally, is figuring out to your point what success looks like. It can be any number of things, there are lots of ways to actually measure your impact against CI over time, but you have to actually think about what that's going to be. </em></p><p><em>Because if you don't do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. And suddenly you find yourself two years from now with your boss going, what is it exactly you've done?"</em></p>

<p>We caught up with well-known positioning and messaging maestro Andy Raskin about the secret sauce behind his success, the difference between narrative positioning and descriptive positioning, the importance of getting CEOs bought in, and more.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/araskin/status/1232375840026980355" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"><strong>Here</strong></a>'s the tweet we reference throughout the show.</p><p>---</p><blockquote>"Narrative positioning seems to win every time. It's like who are the category leaders? What's the story they're telling? As we get more and more into this world where customers are bombarded by claims, it's the ones who are telling a story that is not about claims and that is actually about the customers."</blockquote>

<p>New to the world of Customer Advisory Boards? Or want to freshen up what you've already got? Either way, this show's for you.</p><p>We spoke to Bree Bunzel, APAC Product Marketing Lead at Dropbox, all about customer listening and what CABs look like over at Dropbox. From who's involved and how often they run them, to what agenda they follow and how they share their findings, expect tons of tips from start to finish.</p><p>---</p><blockquote>"We spent a lot of time in the early days building up this program defining the 'why'. Why do these people actually come to this? Why do they invest their time? What's in it for them? What's in it for Dropbox? And setting those table stakes at the beginning really makes a different experience in conversation."</blockquote>

<p>We got together with Product Marketing Manager at Google, and PMA ambassador, Vincent Xu, for a fascinating discussion on digital accessibility in APAC’s emerging markets. Vincent shares some of the major tech trends in APAC, the accessibility of tech in emerging markets as well as some of the biggest roadblocks, plus the role PMMs play in tackling accessibility, his personal approach, and heaps more. </p><p>___</p><p>other reason why digital accessibility has become increasingly important is because of an enduring post COVID era, essentially, where schools are forced to move learning online, or potentially having a lot of doctor tele-consulting services, which is not only helpful in terms of personal hygiene, personal safety, but also can have massive impacts in terms of mitigating the strain on over flooding hospitals. </p><p>--- </p><blockquote><em>The rise in digital accessibility, because of all the innovations taking place, and because of this enduring post COVID era where things are slowly moving online, or rapidly moving online, for that matter. This is something that I think is pretty important in emerging markets.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

<p>Global Head of Product Marketing at Uber, Laura Jones, takes us on deep dive into the world of design thinking as a bonafide expert in the field, including how she became interested in the concept, how it’s been a useful tool in her successful career as a PMM and how she continues to put it to use wherever possible in her role day-to-day, plus she shares useful tools and tips for beginners and answers questions from the PMA Slack community.</p><p>___</p><blockquote>"To me, design thinking starts with when you ask the question why? Why am I doing this? And then ask the question about who's it for? So who's the audience? And what do they care about? What makes this meaningful?"</blockquote>

<p>We caught up with Brandwatch's Director of Product Marketing, Phill Agnew, about three core components of consumer psychology - distinctiveness, anchoring and scarcity - and how product marketers can apply those concepts to their work.</p><p>---</p><blockquote>"25% of marketing budget is wasted, it gets no ROI. There's another brilliant stat from HVR, they did analysis of new product launches, and they found that on average 80% of new consumer product launches fail. If 25% of our budget's being wasted and 80% of new product launches fail, then clearly something is broken, something's not right."</blockquote>

<p>Aaron Brennan, the Director of Product Marketing over at airSlate, joined us on the show to get up, close and personal with active users. From what they are, how to measure them, and what tactics to employ to keep users active, we chat about it all - and more.</p><p>---</p><blockquote>"What I've found over my career is that most people will use a product the exact way that they use it. And they will continue to use it the same way over and over and over again. It isn't until you actually start to position them new and different ways that other users are starting to use the product, that they start to get creative in how they use the product in different ways."</blockquote>

<p>We got together with Shopify’s Product Marketing Lead, Irina Adriana Barbu, and picked her brains about everything from the importance of learning to say ‘no’ and context shifting, to her advice on what to do when you feel overwhelmed, and what challenges PMMs might face in the future. </p><p>___</p><blockquote>"there is no typical day in the life of a PMM. And no day looks the same as the last. We're such a cross-functional craft, and we're often shape-shifting to address the biggest opportunities for our products and for our customers. However, you're actually often gonna find us engaging with very similar teams, regardless of where our products sit."</blockquote>

<p>In the first Product Marketing Life podcast of 2021, we got together with Jena Donlin, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Snowflake, and discussed onboarding as a new product marketer. Jena shares how she prepared for her move to Snowflake, what she thinks helped her secure the role, expectation versus reality, personal KPIs, tips for nailing working from home, and more. </p><p>---</p><blockquote><em>I think we often feel this pressure to put on this act, that we're perfect at everything. I think one of the things that I really appreciate in colleagues and I'm trying to live is showing that vulnerability and being really open and honest about 'here's what I think I bring to the table and here's where I'm leaning in on you to be the excellent professional that you are'.</em></blockquote>

<p>We had a fascinating conversation with DocSend’s Senior Product Marketer, Chris Winkler, where he shared his tips on getting sales engagement following his background in sales, we discussed how no two days are the same in the role of a PMM and he absolutely loves it, plus the art of knowing when to say ‘no’, as well as how making mistakes can be a <em>good</em> thing, and tons more. </p><p>___</p><blockquote>"I absolutely love product marketing. I think it can be sometimes dangerous how much I like it, because a curveball sometimes if I find it very interesting, I need to make sure I don't go down a rabbit hole just chasing that specific thing, especially if it's not necessarily something that will drive the biggest impact. But, I think the variety and being exposed to essentially all the business units at my company is something that I really enjoy, because I'm a product marketer at heart."</blockquote>