The Product Marketing Awards 2020 are in full swing! We’ve been announcing a winner a day for the past week, and what a truly worthy bunch! You can catch up with all of the winners of our awards here.

Elsewhere, on Tuesday, October 6th, 12.00pm - 14.00pm EST, April Dunford is sharing her positioning prowess with a batch of very lucky PMMs during a live Q&A.

This a mega exclusive event and tickets are selling fast, don’t miss out! Secure your place here.

While we were busy launching awards and exclusive events, the Slack community has been doing what they do best... asking and answering informative, thought-provoking questions, so let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?

Q: Have any other PMMs been tasked with redoing their company's website? If so, did you lead the full initiative or just a piece of it? I've been asked to write the product/solutions pieces of our new website and figure out the layout/flow between the two and I’m curious how others have approached it.

A: “We did a website re-launch earlier this year to incorporate new solutions and products pages. The PMMs (myself and colleague) were tasked with producing the copy for both solultions/products pages along with accompanying visuals that outlined the benefit-forward aspects of our solutions. Our language was validated and approved by VP Marketing and then sent to the President, VP of Sales and VP of Success for feedback and input, with final decision making from Marketing.

“The rest of the initiative (website wireframe, aesthetic, tab order, programming) was done by other members of our content team and an outside firm.”

Ben McNelly, Product Marketing Manager at Ellevation Education

“If budget allows, a UX assessment or SEO consultant would add a lot of value and help shape page design so you can have that best practice before you begin to draft content. Failing that checking some of your industry leaders helps inform the elements you might want to consider beyond copy - some nice use of video, gifs, etc out there!”

Louise Dunne, Product Marketing Manager at Linnworks

“Redoing the website or even just pages on it is a complicated project. As PMM I have led this in my previous two jobs and that has meant copy, design, development and testing. Of course you do copy but oversee the rest and ensure it's on point for messaging, positioning, design. It's a very iterative process where you will need to work with everyone to agree to get feedback, iterate etc. For copy and design feedback it makes sense to involve the marketing head and even the CEO if it's a small company. On the layout and flow, you can make suggestions but your design team will provide inputs on how to make that happen in the best way, or if there is a better flow and layout to begin with.”

Kirti Sharma, Head of Product Marketing at SignEasy

Q: My company is moving towards the enterprise segment and asking for a GTM strategy. I've never worked with enterprise (SMB only), so what are the differences? And does anybody have any useful materials on this topic?

“I'm sure there are many books on this topic, and so many in this community who can comment very helpfully. But, here are a few starter thoughts;

Define what enterprise means to you. Number of employees? Revenue? Etc. This is critical. It will define your segmentation as you reach out via various channels.

More and different personas. The bigger the organization, the more potential personas you may need to influence, but more importantly, those personas will have different titles, roles, etc. So you’ll want to do persona work and understand how you sell top-down and/or bottoms-up, but most likely both. PMA have great materials on this.

The persona work will help you understand which venues, physical and digital, your target personas congregate at. How do they learn about new solutions? What is their preferred way of being influenced? This insight into venues and approaches will help you craft the most effective programs and content.

Branding matters even more. The larger the organization, the more risk averse it is. If you haven’t created strong branding to that segment, you need to think how your brand identity communicates to that size of organization and your target personas.

Thought leadership and enterprise references/case studies. The larger the organization, the more they look for intellectual and social signals from others like them to ensure that they are making a low-risk/high-reward decision when choosing a solution.

Overall, get into the shoes of your target persona. Develop an empathic understanding of their concerns and in principal that will lead you the rest of the way.”

Alex H-I, VP Marketing/VP Product Marketing for B2B IT SaaS

Q: Does anybody work with sales cycles longer than six months? I’m looking for content to share on strategy and tactics for complex products that take an average of two years to sell.

A: “Six months would be a godsend in my world. Enterprise sales are never quick and usually are a year plus.

Work backwards, who are you selling to? Why do they need it? What is in it for them? Anything you can do to speed it up. What is the buying/budget cycle or process? Create a plan and market it but maintain new streams so it seems like you are always up to date.”

Keith Brooks, Product Evangelist, Speaker & Mentor

“I think the only real difference is in the pipe. i.e. to help with long cycles you need more deep dive assets from marketing and a process to get those to prospects at the correct timeframes. You also need a different sort of coordination with sales since a few deals could make or break your quarter/year.”

Martin Bakal, Product Marketing Director and Evangelist, OpenLegacy

Q: I'm awaiting an offer for a Senior PMM job (very excited!) in a highly competitive org, I'm wondering if you might be able to suggest some questions I should ask the hiring manager that would help me hit the ground running, show interest and engagement, better familiarize myself with available resources, and processes? Thank you.

A: “Here are a few to get you started.

  1. Do you have a reading list I can get started on to get up to speed more quickly?
  2. Are there specific folks I should reach out to on LinkedIn before I start to get acquainted?
  3. What are the biggest gaps on the team that I can help to fill in my first 30 days?
  4. Which of my skills are you most excited about bringing to the team (so you can over-index on that when you start).”

Perri Maxwell, Product Marketing at Ada

Q: We are getting ready to run a survey to validate some potential packages and we’d like to offer a few prizes as an incentive to complete it. We have a set budget for the giveaway and I’m wondering if it would be better to give away 1-2 bigger prizes vs. multiple smaller ones. Can anyone offer any learnings on this?

A: “I do think it’s dependent on your persona. However, we rolled out a user survey (after the biggest launch in company history) and received 10 responses.

Added in twenty, $100 VISA gift cards and our responses increased by 4,000%. But our primary persona was recruiters.

If it had been C-Suite, we probably would have focused more on charitable gifts, a discount, or a free trial of one of our solutions. To answer your question directly, if you can do volume and a hefty amount ($50 / 10 gift cards minimum) that's your best bet in my experience. But the only real way to find out is to test it out and see what happens.”

Jonathan Pipek, Product Marketing Manager at CareerBuilder