Podcast Summary
Modern marketing organization: A specialized, technical, data-driven, and creative powerhouse: The modern marketing organization is a crucial role player in enterprise sales, specializing in demand creation, content marketing, digital marketing, account-based marketing, marketing operations, and analytics to educate the market, generate leads, and drive sales growth.
The modern marketing organization is a specialized, deeply technical, data-driven, and creative powerhouse that plays a crucial role in enterprise sales. Jeff Samuels, COO of Iterable, explained that this organization is essential for educating the market about the need for a product or service and generating qualified leads. He highlighted six areas of specialization within modern marketing: demand creation, content marketing, digital marketing, account-based marketing, marketing operations, and analytics. These functions work together to create effective marketing strategies, educate customers, and drive sales growth. The modern marketing organization is no longer just about creating ads or writing white papers; it's a complex, strategic function that requires a deep understanding of customers, products, and data.
Understanding Different Marketing Areas: Robust product marketing is crucial for effective campaigns as it sets the narrative for a company and its products, while other marketing functions promote these messages.
Marketing encompasses various areas, each with its unique focus and importance. Product marketing sets the narrative for a company and its products, while system and operations develop the technical platforms for measuring performance and growth. Corporate marketing strengthens the brand, customer marketing focuses on expansion, and field and channel operations connect to markets. However, product marketing plays a central role as it shapes the messages that other marketing functions promote. Neglecting robust product marketing can lead to wasted resources on ineffective campaigns. By recognizing the interconnectedness and significance of each marketing area, organizations can optimize their marketing strategies and drive growth.
Product marketing as the central nervous system of a company: Hiring a top product marketer leads to improved recruiting and a clearer understanding of the intersection between product and buyer, resulting in a better customer experience
Marketing, product, and customer experience are interconnected and cannot be modeled in silos. Product marketing plays a crucial role as the central nervous system of a company, shaping brand alignment and creating a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. Hiring a world-class product marketer is challenging due to the scarcity of talented individuals, but it can lead to better recruiting and a clearer understanding of the intersection between product and buyer. Companies that get product marketing right can see improved recruiting and a more effective engagement with their customers. The customer journey is an essential aspect of marketing, and it's important for all functions to work together to create a cohesive and consistent experience for every customer interaction.
The importance of passion, understanding, and effective product marketing for successful marketing efforts: Hire individuals with a deep passion for the problem and domain, create a strong message and value proposition, define clear roles and responsibilities, engage with the community, and ensure effective communication and collaboration between product and marketing teams.
Passion, understanding of the problem domain, and effective product marketing are crucial for successful marketing efforts. The speaker emphasized the importance of hiring individuals with a deep passion for the problem and domain, who can create a strong message and value proposition. Product marketing is a mission-critical function, and finding an experienced product marketer is a challenging search for companies. The speaker also highlighted the importance of defining clear roles and responsibilities, or "swim lanes," for product and marketing teams to avoid friction and ensure success. In today's market, community engagement is also becoming increasingly important for companies, especially in developer tools and other industries. The speaker, who had a long career at Microsoft, shared his perspective on the evolution of product marketing roles and the importance of clear communication and collaboration between product and marketing teams.
Understanding Marketing Roles and Organizational Design: Define marketing strategy, desired outcomes, and available talent before organizational design. Ensure clear responsibilities to avoid duplication and silos. Consider community as an impactful aspect of marketing, but avoid overlap in responsibilities.
While there are various functions within marketing, such as developer and product evangelism, it's essential to have a clear understanding of each role and its responsibilities to avoid duplication and silos. The organizational design should be the last consideration after defining strategy, desired outcomes, and available talent. Community, for instance, can be an impactful aspect of marketing, shaping point of view, contributing to customer marketing, and even aiding in category creation. It can sit within different departments, but the key is to ensure that there's no overlap in responsibilities. Ultimately, a modern marketing organization requires intentional staffing and organizational design to optimize for efficiency and effectiveness.
Building and engaging a community is crucial for business growth: Engaging a community beyond just marketing products can foster brand loyalty, drive sales, and serve as a powerful presales and post-sales tool. It's about creating a space for users to grow, learn, and share experiences.
Building and engaging with a community is a crucial aspect of a business's go-to-market strategy. It goes beyond just creating and marketing products; it's about fostering a space where users can grow, learn, and share their experiences. For some companies, like Apple and Cisco, community building has been instrumental in creating brand loyalty and driving sales. Others, like the speaker's company, focus on elevating users and creating spaces for them to share best practices. Measuring and moving customers through the life cycle journey is also essential, but community engagement can be a powerful presales and post-sales tool. The speaker emphasized that community is not just about the product but about the capabilities and responsibilities users gain, making the tool a catalyst for growth.
Creating a community accelerates sales and fosters growth: Building a community can generate awareness, provide expertise, and foster growth for both the business and its members, ultimately leading to increased sales and customer expansion.
Building a community can significantly impact a business at various stages of the customer journey. ChartHop, for instance, focuses on creating a community called Results Foundry, which has become an essential part of their net new business strategy. It starts by generating awareness and excitement about their product, even among those who are not yet customers. The community offers certifications, job boards, and events that help professionals develop expertise and find new opportunities. This not only accelerates the sales process but also enables expansion within existing customer accounts. The community's impact goes beyond sales, acting as a force multiplier for the brand and fostering a sense of belonging among its members. The community is about more than just the product; it's about connecting professionals and enabling them to grow in their careers.
Building a community around your product: Engaging existing communities or creating new ones can help tap into influential end users, create emotional connection, and define new roles and responsibilities. Founders should consider their audience and strategy when deciding which approach to take.
Building a community around your product can be a powerful way to tap into influential end users and create emotional connection and investment. When your product becomes someone's job, it indicates that you've reached the right level of influential customer. For some companies, it may be more effective to engage existing communities where they are, while others may need to create a community and guild to attract and train potential buyers. Founders should consider which approach aligns best with their audience and strategy. Additionally, the creation of a community can help define and popularize new roles and responsibilities within industries. For example, ChartHop found success by engaging existing HR communities, while Daydream is creating a community to educate and excite people about OKRs and making data actionable. Companies like Orbit.love, which helps build and manage online communities, can be valuable resources for founders looking to build and engage their communities effectively.
Orbit: A CRM for Community Management with Advanced Features: Orbit is a CRM designed for community management with advanced features like identifying key members, measuring engagement, automating engagement, and ensuring authenticity. Marketing teams can benefit from it, but require technical expertise to build and implement the necessary growth stack.
Orbit is an innovative tool that functions as a CRM specifically designed for community management. It offers features such as identifying key community members, measuring engagement levels, and converting community interaction into actionable metrics. While there are tools that help track community data for marketing and sales purposes, Orbit sets itself apart by allowing for the automation of engagement and even retargeting, while ensuring the community's authenticity is not compromised. However, to fully leverage the potential of such tools, marketing organizations require access to engineers and technical expertise to build and implement the necessary growth stack. Marketing, with its focus on data, math, and testing, can benefit greatly from these advanced technologies, but the lack of technical knowledge can hinder progress.
Effective data utilization in marketing and sales: Implement a hub and spoke design with a core data team serving all go-to-market teams, including marketing, to enable self-service and experimentation, ensuring data is shared and utilized effectively, leading to better decision-making and improved performance.
Effective data utilization in marketing and sales requires a well-designed data organization and seamless communication between teams. Companies should aim to have a data team that serves all go-to-market teams, including support, sales, and marketing. This team should consist of core engineering capability, analytics capability, and data science capability. The marketing team should be treated as a core stakeholder, enabling them to self-service and experiment with data. By implementing a hub and spoke design, companies can ensure that data is shared and utilized effectively across teams, ultimately leading to better decision-making and improved performance. The journey to becoming truly data-driven and data-actionable is ongoing, and companies like Figma and Airtable serve as great examples of organizations that have made significant strides in this area.
Productizing data teams for better business alignment: Productizing data teams can lead to more effective and less tension-ridden operations by aligning priorities, making trade-offs, and releasing value in a coordinated manner.
Treating marketing, sales, data, and other functions like product teams, with clear priorities, trade-offs, and releases, can lead to more effective and less tension-ridden operations in a business. This idea, pioneered by growth teams, is becoming increasingly common in industries. It's essential to understand that not everyone can get everything done and that trade-offs must be made as a team. Data teams, in particular, are undergoing this transformation, moving from a reactive, IT-style service to a product-oriented approach. This shift can help alleviate tensions and misunderstandings between teams, leading to a more cohesive and productive organization. Additionally, focusing on teaching product management principles to non-technical teams can help bridge the gap and foster a more unified approach to business growth.
Understanding the customer journey is crucial for early-stage founders building a marketing organization: Start by mapping out how new customers find the company, identify unique differentiators, and hire a domain expert for product marketing. Ask fundamental questions to set a strong foundation for marketing efforts.
For early-stage founders looking to build out a marketing organization, it's essential to start by understanding the customer journey and mapping out how new customers find the company. This foundation will help in entering the conversation with customers in greater detail and depth, leading to the identification of unique differentiators and solving problems. When hiring for product marketing, it's crucial to find someone with a deep understanding of the domain, acting as a subject matter expert. Founders can also consider staying in the product marketing role themselves if they possess the necessary skills, and hiring a brilliant visual person to bring their thoughts to life. The three fundamental questions a product marketer should ask are: what problems are you solving, how are you uniquely differentiated, and what happens when a customer uses your solution? These answers will set a strong foundation for marketing efforts, whether the company is a 10-person team or even a larger organization.
Hire a product marketing manager or data person early on: Focus on hiring a PMM or data person based on core strengths and needs, or handle the role if competent. Measuring data from the start sets the foundation for informed decisions and improved strategies.
In the early stages of a startup, it's essential for founders to focus on hiring a product marketing manager (PMM) or a data person, depending on their core strengths and the current needs of the company. Product marketing is a specialized function, but if the founder can effectively handle the role, it might be more efficient to delay the hire. Measuring and tracking data, even in its incomplete form, is crucial to understanding market fit and making informed decisions. Starting to measure data from the beginning, even with just one coarse-grained piece of information, sets the foundation for an iterative loop to improve marketing efforts and other aspects of go-to-market strategies. As Deidre, a world-class product marketer, pointed out, complementing team members with diverse skill sets is vital for a startup's success. Founders can fall into three categories: those who are excellent product marketers, those who know they're not, and those who believe they are but might not be. The sooner founders start measuring data and focusing on their core competencies, the better positioned they'll be to make informed decisions and build a successful business.
Exploring Business Growth: Product Marketing, Community Building, and Data Analysis: Understanding strengths in product marketing, community building, and data analysis can help businesses in the middle category grow.
The middle category of a business, where it's not failing but not yet thriving, can cause prolonged pain for founders. Measuring and understanding where your strengths lie can help alleviate this. This discussion touched on the importance of product marketing, community building, and data analysis in business growth. We'll continue exploring these topics every two weeks on this show. A reminder that we record these sessions, and your profile image may be used if you participate. Send in your ideas for future guests, topics, or companies to feature. A big thank you to those who sent in questions, and a special thanks to Steven, Jeff, Deidre, Boris, and Ian for joining. And a big thank you to everyone who listened. A special mention to Uskine for being part of the conversation. Thanks a lot, everyone!
