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9 Takeaways From PMM Summit SF

I had a blast at the PMM Summit last week in SF.

Here are 9 takeaways from some of my favorite presentations👇

A big thanks to the fantastic speakers and Product Marketing Alliance for putting off another great event 👏

1️⃣

Never assume that other departments know what you do. A charter will help you create alignment across the org and ensure everyone clearly understands the roles and responsibilities of product marketing.

Indy Baines

2️⃣

Content - Context = Chaos

Content + Context = Confidence

70% of content goes unused by sales and 80% of training is forgotten. Your content needs to be paired with context in order for your sales team to use it effectively. Who? What? When? Where? Why?

Jarod Green

3️⃣

Don’t force your segmentation and personas. Let them evolve naturally. Instead of looking for roles, seek out people in an active buying decision. Align your sales cycle to the buying cycle, not the other way around.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy

4️⃣

When it comes to competitive enablement, PMMs need to think in terms of:

  • What — What intel is relevant to my business?
  • So what — What does it mean? What is the impact?
  • Now what — What are we going to do about it?

The real value of a PMM is connecting these dots.

Kapil Jain

5️⃣

In order to scale your team, you need to learn to give away your legos. An effective approach to training individuals:

  • I do, you watch
  • We do it together
  • You do, I watch

Christine Tran

6️⃣

Be customer-obsessed in your marketing. Understand the “jobs” your customers are trying to accomplish with your product.

Febreeze pivoted from a generic “fabric refreshener” by talking to customers and realizing they had two primary use cases:

  • Spraying it on furniture as a way to book-end household cleaning
  • Spraying it on hard-to-wash fabrics, like shoes

Febreeze pivoted its messaging to focus on these two jobs-to-be-done. The rest was history.

Sudha Ranganathan Daniela Bayon

7️⃣

Your competitive program needs to be rooted in reality. That means partnering with sales to support and understand the nuances of individual deals.

A lot of times we put out what we think is differentiated messaging, but the only way to know for sure is to talk to your customers and sales team. This gives you the confidence and credibility to enable every other department across your organization.

Dan Hamilton Chris Brogues Kyra Wonderland

8️⃣

Customers have a new default of distrust. 60% default to distrust until they see proof that a company is trustworthy. Building trust is a journey that happens over time. Like a bank — deposit often, and withdraw wisely.

Dave Steer

9️⃣

Brand Positioning is how you want your buyers to think about your product. It’s visceral, emotional.

Product Positioning is the space you carve out for your product, relative to your competitors. It’s relative to the market.

A Brand Opinion is your company’s overarching take or opinion, influenced by your brand positioning.

Dave Prager

#productmarketing #competitiveintelligence #marketing #inspiration