Build Platform Messaging Like a Blue Manta PMM

23:21Jonathan Pipek:One thing which I notice is when I work with founders and startups that come from a background of really knowing their industry, they almost see customer research as either slightly secondary or potentially even a bit redundant because, hey, I used to do this job. I come from this background. I get it. I understand that. We don't need to talk to customers. It would be great to learn what online social media channels they're on so we can target them later but what i always say is yeah you understand 95 of it but there's five percent of stuff that you don't know and also things have shifted since you started your your company so customer interviews is always something that i say to founders look it's time consuming and often the most difficult thing is getting people on the phone that you're looking to speak to but get the perspective of both your existing customers and then also buyers that aren't your customers because buyers can tell you what are they researching right now whereas customers will sort of have the bias around like this is why i'm staying or i decided to stay with you and i can think back to my previous problems but you're still getting two very interesting perspectives that uh that can be very helpful uh and very insightful so yeah so they've kind of the first piece really around um customer research i'm i would say is uh sort

24:39Craig Brown:of non-negotiable as far as I'm I love that and like you just as you were speaking because I've had that I've had that happen in my career so many times where a leader in the company or a product leader felt like I know this just as well as the customer I don't need to talk to the customer and it's so frustrating as a PMM because I'm like that's great but you don't know everything and you've been in now this job for however many number of years not that one so it can be really frustrating. So it just made me think of a pro tip. If you're PMMs out there who are interviewing for their in-house role, you should ask them, how are you getting your customer insights?

25:18Craig Brown:Where do they come from? As a question that you should be evaluating them to make sure that they have an alignment and understanding around supporting you being a PMM and wanting to do that customer insight and customer interviewing. So anyway, more questions for you though, Craig and Jonathan, about this. When you're doing the customer insights and the customer interviews, sometimes they talk and talk and talk, which is great. But how do you separate what's actually meaningful versus just like noise and info that you're getting from them? Yeah. So I think part of it is just having comprehensive research to begin with.

25:50Craig Brown:So of course, customer research is important, but beyond that, like competitive research. So we did a lot of competitive research. We forced, you know, Craig talked about the limited votes, right? So we forced the team to say, okay, who are our current competitors based on data. So if you do a win-loss analysis, which they had done, who are top three to four competitors? On top of that, who are future competitors? So we're here today, we're one product shop, we want to move to this platform positioning fair, but that opens us up to new competitors, right? Okay, so who are the two to three competitors we're going to see in the future?

26:23Craig Brown:So doing that competitive research, we did a ton of other research on customer surveys, sales calls, We looked at the industries and the market. So different markets had different legal needs, legal requirements, et cetera. So as we started kind of amassing all this data, to your point, it was overwhelming, right? There's just so much data. If you look at just the U.S., like 50 different states with 50 different laws, so on and so forth. So what we really looked for were kind of recurring themes. So are there like three to four topics that keep coming up in terms of jobs to be done, right? Maybe it's the same two jobs to be done with like a slight variation for this other segment.

27:00Craig Brown:We also looked for differences, right? We talked about Aaron Brockovich and kind of like, hey, there's document A, no document B, and there's document C. So same thing, like, you know, internally we think A, but customers are tone is B. So is there kind of that misalignment? Are there differences between that customer feedback and internal direction? As we start looking at competitors, are they all moving in the same direction? What was really interesting for us is we could literally, like we literally mapped out our, I think it was what, top seven competitors, something like that. So we looked at the top seven competitors and said, hmm, interesting.

27:32Craig Brown:Here's who they're, like the segment they're approaching. Here's the persona they're targeting and how they position. And we saw a lot of commonality, which made like the white space for us like super obvious, right? You know, that opportunity for differentiation. So I think for us, it was really look at the white space, look at the common themes and look at for those differences that to spot that misalignment because that's where the money is. That's where the insights are. Okay. I got a question for you guys. I'm guessing based on just like when I think you guys conducted or had this engagement with a client, probably didn't use any.

28:06Craig Brown:But like, did you use any AI tools when you're doing some of this analysis and research and like trying to identify the themes? And if you didn't, if you were going to do this again, would you? And if you would, what tools would you use? Or if you wouldn't, why wouldn't you use any AI tools? Yeah, so I think the answer is it's complicated. I think Craig and I will both give you some examples. One, like client privacy and client proprietary information, et cetera, is number one. That's the number one thing we respect with both of our companies. We're both very, very serious about that. Number two, there are some things that are public.

28:40Craig Brown:So for example, one of the things we did was look at G2 reviews, Capterra, et cetera. So what we did is we basically grabbed the pages for our top seven competitors and for our own company, our own products, and said, okay, chat GVT or Perplexity or whatever LLM of choice, find the top five themes of positives and top five themes for negatives. So we didn't have to look through hundreds of comments, hundreds of reviews. The LLM did that for us. That was huge. And that gave us a sense of like, hey, when these customers are buying this product, sure, they're buying it for all these 15 ,000 features or this price point or whatever.

29:15Craig Brown:But what are the top three to five things that actually move the needle? And by the way, what are the top three to five things that are just a major pain where we could potentially position ourselves competitively? So that was one way where AI came in super handy. Craig, not sure if you want to dive in a different example.

29:29Jonathan Pipek:yeah i mean i have well we have strong opinions about this because um you know and we and we've we've tried it we we've tried ai to see what it can do and uh i mean one example was around competitive analysis i'm i'm a little bit nervous about using ai for for certain kind of strategic research exercises because it's just like the hallucinations are crazy i mean we did you know a few examples where we said okay can you compare you know these tools and uh you know do do they have particular feature sets and either they would say they do when they they don't or they say they don't when they do and so you know the follow-up prompt is by the way that competitor does have that oh yes you're absolutely correct thanks for pointing out a much you're welcome i'm here i'm here to help you you know thanks han oh awesome so i'll just do this manually and then again with you know, competitor analysis.

30:24Jonathan Pipek:It's not just saying, do they have these features versus us? You know, what is the depth and the quality of this? What are the capabilities, right? Like that's so crucial. And again, I think it's quite difficult to rely on LLMs to really capture that in the fullest. So I think, you know, Jonathan makes a great point, which is to say for certain things, it's great. For other things, be careful. And so the really strategic positioning stuff once you've got the information and you're confident on the information and then you can plug it in cool but once you're asking an llm to go and do the research and go and find the information and then interpret it i'm that's when i get nervous agreed yeah i think that the scalpel

31:09Craig Brown:analogy is a good one here like you don't want to use llm as like kind of the mallet or you know the hammer to just like do it all but in addition to that g2 example right so we're trying to find pricing for one of our competitors that didn't display publicly, I'd go into chat, GBT or perplexity, whatever, search for it. And it pulls up like this obscure blog. That's like, I don't know, a year old. And someone in the comments said, Oh, I actually paid this. So that like amazing, right? Like huge, uh, finding pricing on like random websites that we would have never found, never like it would have been on page, I don't know, 300 of Google.

31:43Craig Brown:that was really helpful or i don't know um competitor like we think the competitor this competitor specifically targets enterprise is there any mention of them targeting mid-market oh they actually did a webinar last week which we didn't see anywhere but it like it caught it on their linkedin social post right which is like things like that where we can just like find stuff out really really quickly and really interestingly yeah exactly new and haystack situations where honestly it's just more efficient like could craig and i go and look at a linkedin and like go through the last 15 posts over the last 20 days?

32:16Craig Brown:Sure. Will perplexity find it faster or chat GPT? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's helpful. That makes a lot of sense. I totally agree if I had like really similar experiences with those tools. Okay. So a big turning point for this and this poll initiative that you guys pursued with this client was that you moved from single product to platform storytelling. So talk through that shift and we'd love to hear like what is like good platform messaging

32:42Jonathan Pipek:actually look like so when it comes to this it's always a very interesting point in any positioning and messaging exercises when you're starting to shift towards messaging but you're you can't really entirely run away for this you know positioning's done messaging right they're they're both always going to to be influencing each other so the first thing we consider is okay at this point from what we know and the work that we've done what do we identify as the most important jobs that we should be solving for the segment and this is where a lot of the research that we've done starts to get pulled together so for example you know one thing to consider is even when we want to prioritize key competitors that we're considering those competitors are more relevant depending on the job that we're talking about if you're doing this job here are a set of tools and alternatives that you're using so actually the the positioning context will slightly change because we're saying we're comparing you to this for this job actually we're comparing ourselves to this other different job or um alternative or or competitor right so like this is where you know often i see startups talk about like okay we're going to frame our messaging around core benefits or get really hung up on the phrase value propositions and i really try and avoid the phrase value propositions and this this might be a slightly controversial point But I think it gets so distracting and it moves us out away from being a bit more mechanical about how we construct messaging.

34:16Jonathan Pipek:So, you know, Jonathan and I were very purposeful in saying, look, we need to get clear on what we're actually helping our customers solve. So the situation for us was very unique. We had a tech startup that was catching up with other competitors. And so there were lots of new products that they were developing, which was part of the reason we were moving from single product to platform. So we sort of had to both consider the product first as well as the job. So it meant that we were appreciating both perspectives. Typically, I would say job, right. What are the key, most unique, most impactful product capabilities solving that?

34:55Jonathan Pipek:We sort of had to make sure that we weren't ignoring other products as well. So it was just part of the psyche, but it didn't fundamentally change our process. So making sure that, you know, at the top, we were highlighting the key jobs that we're solving. Now let's start to consider, OK, how are they currently solving those jobs? What are the downsides? And then what are the upsides of them using us instead? And how can we prove that? So that was really a big shift in how they thought about messaging as well. And so as much as we were doing the mechanics around reconstructing their messaging approach, it was also a bit of a cultural shift as well that we had to that we had to take into account

35:38Craig Brown:yeah so you had these like jobs to be done and it sounds like you mapped them to both like the um your product or platform the company your client and then also what's the alternative to doing this job like if i had to do this task task my option is to the status quo or you know this platform. So, which I think is so smart. And I know you mentioned that a lot of like startups in your experience, um, they do this where they get hung up on the benefits and the value propositions. It's not just the startups. It's not, I've been at these big, big companies. They do it too. Yeah. Okay. So when you're trying to build, when you're trying to build if I was a PMM and I was trying to build out this like jobs to be done framework for my, you know, working on my platform story, I guess, like, do you literally create like a table?

36:34Craig Brown:Like, do you plot it against? Is that how you do it? I guess, like, talk a little bit more about that process, just so I make sure I'm understanding how to do it. Yeah. So one caveat for this client, though, just to make sure, because there's what we did for the client, and then what's the best practice, and those aren't always necessarily the same thing, right? So for this client, they already had, like, products in market, and then they had products that were coming down the line in the next, what, three to six months. And then we also had competitors that had a combination of products. So the way we approach this, I think Craig and I always, always, always say start with jobs to be done, like 100%.

37:06Craig Brown:The reality in this situation was if you did that, you would only consider the current product set. You wouldn't consider future products, number one. Number two, you wouldn't consider what competitors have done, right? The different products competitors have done. So it's almost like we're comparing, I don't know, we're comparing, this is going to be food analogy. So for anyone who knows me, that's, that's kind of my go-to, like you're comparing burgers to burgers, which is great, but our competitor, they actually sell fries and a drink. So we need to start thinking about how do we like, what is the way in which customers or prospects want to buy, right?

37:42Craig Brown:In terms of yes, combination of products, right? Burger and fries, but also how do they get to a decision, right? Are they going and asking like their local food blogger, where's the best burger and fries, or are they just going out themselves and try in different places. So again, it's kind of like taking a holistic approach to this process. But beyond that, like, yes, of course, started with the jobs to be done, looked at competition, worked with the product management team to identify like, hey, here are the key products for not just current, or sorry, key features, not just for the current product, but for what's coming down the pipeline.

38:16Craig Brown:And then tied kind of the customer interviews we had and those jobs to be done that were mentioned, you know, to those products. Of course, we asked for technical aspects of their jobs, their goals, outcomes, status quo for folks who aren't familiar with jobs to be done. Those are the big things we did. And then we mapped those features to the products. I love that. So helpful. Okay. So then once you have that framework and you have – did you have to get buy-in from senior leadership on that? Like when you showed it in that, I'm guessing you had some kind of readout or discussion, were they like, no, that's not right?

38:49Craig Brown:Or were they like kind of what was the reaction? And as a PMM, how do you how do you handle the reaction if it's not what you want it to be or hope it is?

38:59Jonathan Pipek:I think we were really determined to avoid that reaction. And so we thought, what what do we have to do to make sure that that that doesn't happen? And the thing is, there were a lot of eyes on this project and a lot of opinions. So we knew that we had to go back to the one-on-one approach way before any kind of final recommendations, final messaging, positioning, you know, kind of presentation or delivery. We almost wanted that final piece to be a formality. We actually wanted everyone to know everything about it before everyone jumped on a call to say this is what we've decided and what we're going with.

39:42Jonathan Pipek:So we identified the key stakeholders, the most influential folk that we knew we needed to get that buy in. And so we organized one on one calls to kind of talk through our thinking. And I think Jonathan and I were clear on the components to both positioning and messaging where we felt we have to stick to our guns on this because this is just right. especially where the data was was proving that that we were correct though there's always a point where you have to consider okay this they're suggesting i don't know a change for example to a specific phrasing or uh they want to highlight a particular job more than the other and uh etc etc sometimes you have to accept that it's not a hundred percent to what you would like but if this it helps move things forward and you can contextualize positioning and messaging as a journey as as a process you will go to market you are going to validate this and you are going to get feedback that will ultimately tell you whether the decision you're making right now is correct or incorrect and in fact what we're saying is the way forward then then so be it and let's just agree on this approach now and just go to market straight away the thing that we don't want to do is just make this a really academic discussion and argument about why this way and we just need to kind of move on so um so the one-on-one calls were really important the other thing as well that we're really big on is when it comes to a final presentation that really talks about the new direction on positioning and messaging that we are equipping those senior folk to then deliver those presentations internally because as much as we're fine jonathan and i doing that internally it's not going to have that impact and so this is where you have to look at where is that soft power internally and how can we ensure that we leverage that as part of the dissemination

41:38Craig Brown:process yeah and and the the one big thing like as consultants is like you have first of all you're brought in right like someone is paying you for your opinion literally like your expertise but also your opinion. So kind of L to your question of like, you know, how do you get that buy-in? Yes, of course, it's like bringing up all the insights, bringing up, you know, what the market said, you know, kind of getting an internal alignment, et cetera. But it's also playing the role of consultant, which is, look, L, if you want to launch with a platform, that's fine. But here's, here are the negatives, right?

42:10Craig Brown:One, you're gonna have more competition, right? You're going to be competing with point solutions and platforms. If you go with a lead product positioning, you're more competing with point, you know, individual point solutions. that's a kind of you know consultative approach that you as a consultant have to take with your clients and when you do that then you get a lot more buy and a lot more trust because you're saying look at the end of the day like let's say l you're the ceo you're making the decision l right like we're not going to tell you one way or the other but what we are going to tell you is hey here are the pitfalls with decision a here are the pitfalls with decision b and the benefits of a versus b and how that stacks up in the market right so a lot of what we do is like it's not just an internal decision.

42:48Craig Brown:It's what is the market telling us? What are competitors doing? And what are the pros and cons of the entire kind of situation? So when you go in with that kind of consultative approach, you have the one-on-ones, you talk to the influential people and kind of get them, like get their pre-reactions and incorporate that into your final presentation. Then it becomes, hey, we're all kind of gathered here just to kind of like talk about something we already agreed on versus like, hey, let's do like this big reveal, right? It's like, we're not like magicians doing this big reveal. Everyone's seen the act.

43:18Craig Brown:Everyone knows the bunny comes out of the hat. We're just, it's a formality at that point. I am so glad that you mentioned that and explained it that way. And it's funny because I actually advise my team to act like a consultant whenever we're doing, wherever we're embarking on a new product initiative, new research initiative, whatever it is. And they're kind of afraid to go to the, it's usually the product team to go to the product team and to say, here's what we think. And I'm like, you need to look at this as if you are an outside consultant. Don't be biased as the PMM for company X. Go do the market research and come with your data.

43:57Craig Brown:Here's what I found from customers, from competitors, from analysts, from the market. So I love that. I think it's such a practical approach. Okay, so let's talk about the final step of this playbook. I guess you've got this amazing research that you've done. You've brought everybody along for the ride, doing all of the one-on-ones, doing the workshops, doing the investigation, doing this job to be done. Like, wrap us up here, bring us home. What happens in the end? The beautiful thing is that we created kind of a two-step approach. One is we had all the artifacts. So, like, of course, we created a position in Canvas.

44:35Craig Brown:Of course, we created messaging Canvas, so on and so forth. But we also had presentations that explained the logic and the thought process and the data. So we always talk about storytelling when it comes to product marketing. And I think, and Craig and I have very strong feelings about storytelling, but storytelling in product marketing, especially like you look at LinkedIn or any kind of like the quote unquote gurus, they always talk about storytelling in terms of like, oh, what we present to customers or to prospects. That's great. And that's definitely needed. But internally, when you're pitching, hey, we're going to shift, we're going to do like a fundamental company shift.

45:08Craig Brown:Like this is a, like a literal, like the world is, is tilting a different direction kind of shift. You need to say why you need to tell the story and like data points are great, but what is the story? What is the rationale? Why are you doing this? So that was a really big part of what Craig and I did. I think we complimented each other well. And then we did a combination of data, story, customer insights, market insights, competitive, et cetera. That was a really big part. The other part we did, which I think was really helpful, is we kept spotlighting the product marketing team and saying, look, this is step one, but if you want this to actually work, execution is where this comes to life, right?

45:51Craig Brown:And you're going to have to entrust and kind of leverage your product marketing team to steer the ship here. the the other part we did was we we we told them like look this is again part one part two and three is go test this with demand gen see what works what doesn't and then i really craig if you don't mind like i was really blown away with um a messaging guide that craig created um i i like we've all created messaging guides in the traditional sense of like hey here's your messaging but what he created like really enabled the team i'd love for you to talk about because i thought that was so unique thanks jonathan i'll give you 20 later pounds it's just not a bribe this is how

46:28Jonathan Pipek:i get people to compliment me i just pay them but um look i think um so the thing is i think when you have experience working with product marketing teams and you have in-house experience like jonathan and i i think you can almost get to a point where you sort of dismiss frameworks and templates as being you know kind of slightly unimportant and we we get so philosophical and we get so deep into you know the the cultural importance and the politics of it of like why is why is the product marketing in this organization really not driving forward but sometimes there are still some kind of practical gaps in the implementation and so something which i notice is when we have put together a position in canvas here is a messaging framework you know to us probably because we're so in it all the time we go yeah like that's all we need like sure we like go to town but then it's like okay but how do I write copy how how do I translate this to you know to some copy that I put into a campaign on on this landing page on the home page uh for cold emails to prospects and so you know something i wanted to do is to say look if you don't have a copywriter internally because by the way i also have a very strong opinion around like how underrated b2b copywriters are and also how underrated the opportunity of uh kind of brand differentiation is and how much product marketers and brands should be collaborating on that process within positioning and messaging that's another tangent and i could go to town on that another the day but in the meantime if you're a smaller startup or you're a growth stage um scale up you and you don't have an internal copywriter like what do you do and so i wanted to put together a guide that was quite formulaic so how how do you write a headline how do you take a capability and add a benefit what does that look like um if you want to talk about specific outcomes how can you ground that outcome by also speaking about the product in a way that makes it easy to understand because often i look at messaging that really it's either very vague and it's very ambitious and i understand that because it's the sense of keep on asking why why is this thing important why why why because the company wants to grow faster and people want to be happier you go great oh that's a great lead message you know let's sell this brand new disruptive crm make people happier with right so yeah there are building blocks to a message that lands with a buyer and so start with a capability or start with the thing your product does that is unique then justify how there is a benefit to using that and to me i see benefits as what is this short-term positive impact that is sort of measurable calculable palpable that you can see straight away then the outcomes are slightly longer term more strategic right then we can build those steps to get to that point but not unless you've grounded it and so i wanted to really explain that in the messaging guide and provide like formulas in how you can use the components of this messaging framework to actually write clear compelling copy that is so brilliant if you

49:48Craig Brown:have that messaging guide in a template.

49:53Jonathan Pipek:We'll drop it into your DMs. There you go.

49:56Craig Brown:We can use it as a lead gen tool for your consultancy and we can put it in the show notes. Good idea, Al. Yeah, there you go. I'm just throwing it on there. Sometimes I got good ones. Okay, so you guys have delivered some really golden advice here and I just want to summarize what I think I've heard as the playbook. So tell me if I've got it wrong. there's the the big investigation that you guys did right and diagnosing the misalignments getting the big data dump um around around how the company views themselves in the market and what the product can do and all that good stuff and then you did the internal workshops maybe the external homework maybe that maybe there was like done in parallel some of those things maybe like the all the research and maybe there are a couple workshops but there were workshops and there was investigation internally and externally.

50:49Craig Brown:And then you worked on the actual, okay, well, what is the story here? How are we moving from a single product to a platform story? What are those jobs to be done? And what are the alternatives? How would the competitors come into play here with these jobs to be done? And then you had another discussion and aligning that with the senior leaders. And I I think, Jonathan, as you were saying that you wanted to give them a here that option A, option B, option C, whatever they are. Here are the pros and cons to those as coming in as that consultant. And then you brought it home by empowering the PMM team and the marketing teams on with a messaging guide.

51:29Craig Brown:And like, here's how you do it. Here's how you can take all this wonderful stuff that we gave you and take it to market. Did I miss anything? Mic drop. Yeah, I think that was great. 10 out of 10. It was amazing. Makes me want to go write a platform story now with the framework. Okay. So such a powerful process. I have one more question for you guys before we move on to the next segment. What is one piece of advice that you have for PMM who's never done this before and they're just getting started on moving from a single product story to a platform story?

52:07Jonathan Pipek:I can kick off. Yeah, go for it. it's going to be one of these annoying, it depends. The land of nuance here. I think one question I ask sometimes to founders is, does this need to be a separate product? Or is this really an extension of your existing tool, existing platform? Sure, we can have conversations around what the pricing strategy looks like. What are you offering for free? what is a bolt on it right but if we park that to one side i think sometimes there is a tendency to want to build out a product suite because it it sort of just feels like the the next step without quite understanding the the use case and also what is the the journey of existing customers or prospective customers so the first thing i would ask is are you at an early stage are you at a later stage like what does what does your product roadmap look like and it does this make sense as a separate um product you know um i think other things as well like what what is the goal are you acquiring new customers potentially are you moving into a new segment with this new product is this for existing customers and so is the opportunity more cross-sell upsell um and i think these are really important questions to consider before you go all right we want to go to platform positioning because platform positioning doesn't necessarily make sense and like to be really frank it's it's more difficult as soon as you go to platform positioning it's hard it's harder to to stand out right and i say this with a lot of sympathy with product marketers and tech companies that that are platforms it ultimately it is something that that is part of the long-term growth story look at stripe right like when they started out it was simple online payments for software developers working at some online store like it was a really simple use case and proposition today stripe is financial infrastructure i mean what does that even mean what is yeah but but i am sure that their product marketers have done the research to go like this really encapsulates it when you when you go and and look at the the headlines for um you know salesforce and hubspot and they're saying grow better with us grow faster with us you just you know it's easy i think for product marketers especially those of us that have some experience in the early stages to go oh come on be more specific so i really do have sympathy with it but it really makes the point of platform positioning only makes sense if it's part of a broader strategy where building out a product suite to serve new segments new markets is actually a natural progression in your growth story now so do it when you almost have to yeah and the other

54:59Craig Brown:nuance is like because i love that you talked about like think about the strategy first the other part of that is what is the business strategy? Meaning if you're a startup, for example, is your goal to raise the next round of funding? Is your goal to blitz the market and like hit up market penetration? That's your goal. You want to increase ACV. You're trying to get acquired. So you want like NRR or GRR to like, you want to maximize those because guess what? When you shift to a platform, generally speaking, your ACV goes up. What does that mean? It slows down your sales cycle. Yes. So, right.

55:31Craig Brown:And then also potentially it means more cross sells and upsells for your current customers to Craig's point. So from a strategic lens, like you not only have to think about why are we making the shift, but what is the impact it's going to have on our financials, on our sales cycle, on our, on our sales team. Right. Because the other component is, and I think Craig and I, I'm sure Al, you, you as well have been at many startups where you had a customer success team, not an account management team or vice versa. And those are very different scenarios where you're like, hey, we're selling this one product.

56:01Craig Brown:We need customer success folks just to help them adopt the product. Cool. And then you suddenly shift to this platform positioning and you're selling multiple products. And these folks that are good educators are not good salespeople. And you're telling them, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer Success Manager, you need to sell this cross-sell product. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not a salesperson. You need an account management team. So again, like these are all nuances and considerations that as a startup or scale up or whatever company, honestly, like you really have to think about, does this make sense?

56:29Craig Brown:And does this help us achieve our goals next quarter, next year, whatever? Because the worst thing you would want as a product marketer is to just nail the heck out of your platform positioning. Like just be honestly like an incredible job. Everyone goes to your website, they buy it, they love it. And then you realize, hey, so our sales cycle slowed down by 50%. we didn't hit our ARR targets for the quarters. So we're not actually going to be able to get Series B funding and the companies were going to run out of money. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yes. Such great advice. Awesome. Thank you so much, Craig and Jonathan.

57:06Craig Brown:I love this case study. Really appreciate you guys taking the time to dig through this. All right. And now it's time for our next segment of the show, the messaging critique. So this is the fun part where Jonathan and Craig, as guests on my show, you guys get to pick a company and we get to critique real world messaging as the product marketing experts. So before we get started, I want to quickly walk through the rules, as always. So once you reveal the company, you guys are going to talk through who they are, what they do, who their target audience is. Then you're going to tell me what you're loving about the messaging, what makes it stand out.

57:44Craig Brown:maybe something you wish the product marketer would have done differently as they were building out the messaging. And then lastly, we will do a quick creative brainstorm on how the product marketing team can take it to the next level. All right. So Jonathan, Craig, reveal who is the company we are critiquing today?

58:05Jonathan Pipek:Drum roll. So a startup that I've noticed recently, it's called Metomic. They're actually based in London. And it's a data security platform that basically helps companies within their own SaaS tech stack to automatically detect and secure or any sensitive data that might be in those applications. And so it would be sensitive personal data, kind of personal information. It could be health information, financial, but it also could be stuff like intellectual property. And so as you are a fast growing company, and especially because you are implementing kind of AI across the board, it just means that you can lose control of your data very quickly.

58:54Jonathan Pipek:So this very quickly identifies surfaces that data that is potentially risky, critical, important, needs to be protected. Some of the information is redacted. You can ensure that certain people don't have access to it, et cetera.

59:11Craig Brown:Very handy in today's day and age. So for those of you who want to follow along, it's metomic.io. It's M-E-T-O-M-I-C.io. Okay, so walk us through the messaging. So in terms of the messaging, so one, just for context, so they're targeting security teams at companies that handle sensitive information, right? Because there's just more opportunity there. So think like classic tech companies, you know, Revolt, Checkout.com, Oyster, et cetera. And then also just companies that are growing really quickly, right? Because they're going to feel the pain more of, hey, we have all this data. Now we have an influx of data.

59:46Craig Brown:Where do we save it? Or how do we protect it? How do we secure it, et cetera? So generally speaking, it's kind of tech companies that fit neatly within their ICP. and then most likely kind of like security teams, product management teams, that kind of thing. In terms of the messaging itself, they really lean on a specific use case, which is preventing data oversharing and AI deployments, which I think is something you can really, like a really specific problem that you can kind of imagine as you're rolling out AI. Of course, AI has access in an ideal world to all this data, but do we really want it to have access to all this data, right?

1:00:20Craig Brown:Do I want it to have my social security number? Probably not, right? So the messaging is really clear. It says detect sensitive data in your SaaS tools. And if you look at, if you kind of go down the page, the messaging is kind of like a story, right? So it builds over time. So it starts from that specific capability, and then it kind of goes to that broader outcome, which is accelerate AI adoption, which by the way, for folks looking at the page, if you flip that, if you start with accelerate AI adoption, isn't that the most like blase generic term, right? Awful. You're right. You would have no idea.

1:00:54Craig Brown:But the fact that it's at the end, now it's like, okay, we understand exactly what you're doing. And now it makes sense. And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah. I could see how you accelerate AI adoption with this tool because you're helping me ensure there are no security issues or data privacy issues, right? So I think that makes a lot of sense. And it just really contextualizes that value and those outcomes and benefits by starting with product capabilities and then going to the more aspirational kind of message. Not sure, Craig, if you had anything there.

1:01:29Jonathan Pipek:Beautifully said. Yeah. And it goes back to a previous conversation that we were having. when you start with the really big aspirational headline um the irony is that you are not just competing with so much within your existing category you then end up competing across categories so if you have you know accelerate ai adoption or you have another um you know lead positioning on your website that says you know um 10x 10x your growth what are you an accountancy yeah yeah like you could be anything and so you are pointlessly making yourself exposed to more competitors that have decided to be specific and it all that always comes down to the fear of leaving money on the table by not going after one single segment and use case where by the way the tam of that segment is still really big but because it's not like tens of billions you You think, oh, no, you know, we've got to get to that point.

1:02:30Jonathan Pipek:So I think, you know, what Jonathan said is brilliant. It's you can get to the aspirational message once you've contextualized it, but start from that specific point. And they do agree.

1:02:42Craig Brown:Yeah, yeah. And you know what? As you were talking, it made me realize that it doesn't help give context to how your product fits in your customer's world. So when you don't add that context, then your customer is left to fill it in. And that's how you end up with a confusion and, well, who are you? And, oh, you're this when really you're that. So I completely agree. I'm also on their website. I really like how that's unfolding in that story as you scroll through. I think that was a really strategic point. So what's something that you wish that PMM would have considered differently building out some of this messaging?

1:03:19Jonathan Pipek:yeah and look i'm always um i'm always very sympathetic because so you know these guys are kind of you know i wouldn't say they're like early stage they're series a but they're still building out an understanding of their market and they're still a b testing and figuring out what works and what doesn't so i'm always hesitant to say they should have done this and should have done that because actually you know you will see lots of advice that says all in one lead positioning never works i i recently worked with a medical uh a med tech platform and actually that was exactly the positioning that we needed and i again a whole separate conversation to justify that so i never i never like to kind of just say here's a universal rule that being said i think one thing they could do in the above the fold is specifically call out security teams you sort of have to scroll down a bit before you you realize that's the target audience it's a really tiny thing but just dial up that empathy like straight away just provide that clarity as early as you possibly can and then i would also say there the opportunity to learn even more through that research of customers and and prospects and buyers is there an emotion for example that you could identify around you know some of the concerns that they're addressing so for example you know they say accelerate ai adoption and i imagine that that is a really key use case for their target customer they're like look we're growing really fast we're implementing all of these ai tools and like we just lose control of data so something like this really helps but i would love to know some of the emotions behind those pains like is there stuff that is keeping you up at night with the acceleration yes ai adoption if that's the case what is it what is it and so you know one thing which i always do when i look through messaging it one of my favorite words is the word without because it immediately tells me you can achieve this thing without the downsides of the alternative that you're probably using right the alternatives the alternative and so i want to know like right now what is it that is keeping them up at night yeah they want to accelerate ai adoption but there are some real worries behind that and i think it could just slightly edge up if you like the the the concern and the anxiety that their target buyer is

1:05:38Craig Brown:experiencing that they can solve yeah i was gonna say the same thing i as i was scrolling through and i'm finding their all the benefits and the cool stuff that their platform can do i'm left thinking um it's not i mean i'm not the target audience so let's be clear about that but i'm not seeing a way for me to empathize with the target audience though because i don't see any use of yeah, to your point, there's no emotion, or at least I'm not picking up on it. I don't know, Jonathan, what are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, same. It feels like it's saying the right message, but I think one, honing on the emotion, like what happens if you don't have this solution, right?

1:06:21Craig Brown:I think to Craig's point, without, I think that's where you kind of really drive the point home. One other thing I noticed was that I think the CTA on the homepage takes you to a demo request, which I was kind of surprised by that because I think visitors wouldn't necessarily like website visitors wouldn't necessarily expect that. Um, and it seems like a very like, Hey, you just learned about our website or sorry about our product, like go get on a demo immediately. I wonder if this is an opportunity to kind of have a softer CTA, like, um, a product tour would be really nice or a video case study, like something like that.

1:06:55Craig Brown:Such a great call out. yeah if there's something that i know my buyers hate it's like forcing me to get on the call with a salesperson just to see the product it's so frustrating it really is i mean even just learn

1:07:11Jonathan Pipek:like how this product works right demo i'm you know i'm not i'm kind of not quite ready yeah they feel like i've got the full context so um yeah i totally agree that there's also a point around like what does that journey natural or like for your target audience and actually this is where there is a little bit of nuance with sub sub verticals if you're if you're working with security tech uh or legal tech your audience if they work in those fields probably want a little bit more information there might be an extra level of risk aversion so there's an extra layer of education that is required in that journey um you know again that's a huge generalization but it's just you know something to consider when you go right what is the cta we want to get them on a call straight away well actually they might go to that demo page and go oh no i'm okay thanks

1:08:00Craig Brown:yeah okay at the end of the day it's a trust building exercise that's what it is yeah right so taking some of that that that great commentary um what would you guys do what what are some tips and advice um how can these pmms take it to the next level

1:08:18Jonathan Pipek:one thing which i think is i mean it's something that we've we've spoken about um but it's this idea of you are the new way what what is what is the old way and i think really stepping into that mindset is also something they could bring to their home page as well is not just talking about what makes you great but but what is it that you are solving in the day-to-day for your target buyer that is really difficult for them and so it is spotting those emotional dynamics the social dynamics as well and then bringing that out in the messaging so they're probably doing a great job of that and there's just an opportunity i think to to really dial up the urgency uh in in the message and i think that would be a really great route to that i love it jonathan yeah i

1:09:10Craig Brown:I mean, agreed. I think along with kind of the CTAs, along with kind of the things we've already talked about, just really differentiating from the alternative, I think is kind of a different way to say what Craig mentioned, would just make it easier. Because I think it's almost like, and again, security teams, by definition, should understand what the ramifications are, what the problems are with adopting AI. But if it ever comes to a point where it's a different persona going to the page, it's not necessarily super clear. You're not a security expert, or you're like, oh, well, what is the problem?

1:09:42Craig Brown:Why can't we just roll out ChatGPT or insert AI tool here? I think making that a little clearer would help for sure. Yep, yep, totally agree. All right, Matomic, we like what we see, but you've got some really good tips here. So we'd love to see some of that implemented so that you can take that messaging to the next level. All right, so Jonathan, Craig, there's one thing that I like to make room for on this podcast, And that is having a moment of gratitude because as product marketers, none of us get here alone. We're always building on each other and being mentored by each other. So thank you both so much for your willingness to come on and share your playbook and your expertise and all the time that you spent prepping for this.

1:10:26Craig Brown:I really appreciate it. And I know it benefits the PMM community. So thank you. And then, yeah, and I want to turn it over to you. let's give some shout outs to some of the PMMs who have brought you to your point in your careers and how you've been mentored along the way. Yeah, for sure. So I've got two that come to mind. So one, I know this is cliche, but Craig, you're easily number one on the list. You know, when you start a collaboration with another PMM, like you don't know how it's going to go. And I think with Craig, I like I've gained a true product marketing partner. It's not just like, oh yeah, sure.

1:11:01Craig Brown:I'll bounce ideas off of you, but someone that's like actively pushing my business forward. I think he's also kind of given me the strength, like the, the courage to like, just do whatever the damn thing is like, and just be unapologetically me. And like the other part is like, I've been doing product marketing for well over a decade. Like I know product marketing like the back of my hand, but every time I work with Craig, I learn a new way of doing things. And that's something I really enjoy. So definitely appreciate you, bud. The other person I'll shout out is Kevin Chan. I think he is absolutely an incredible PMM, top 1 % of all product marketers in the world.

1:11:37Craig Brown:He's, on top of being just an excellent PMM, he's like an adored product people leader, I should say. Like his team absolutely loves him, run through a wall for him, so on and so forth. And he's just a visionary. He's the one who actually started my mentorship journey on ADP List. I joined ADP List because of him. He's given me tremendous business advice. And he inspired the idea of a company that I'm actually hoping to launch next year. and then even beyond that he's referred product marketing candidates to me for my product marketing agency and just like generally always been super supportive uh and just the nicest guy like you cannot say a mean thing about the guy like just such a kind guy so uh big fan of both so oh so great craig your turn let's hear it well i'm gonna throw it back to jonathan um

1:12:23Jonathan Pipek:and uh i had to i had to pay jonathan a lot of money for that one um yeah that was the most expensive inducement so far um but uh but no seriously i think um the first thing i'm gonna say about jonathan is that he's really great at clear direct feedback and it has made me a better product marketer and it's something that i actually really miss from my days working internally for b2b sas companies like it was such a it was such a point of the beamery culture which is like look as long as we're respectful we're not hurting anyone's feelings here just like let if you don't think it's a good idea like let's just let's just talk about why and let's find a better idea and i i really love that dynamic with with jonathan we always get to a better solution uh you know with what jonathan said about me like i've also learned uh different approaches also working um with him i think i also feel a lot of trust with jonathan as well and like that is something that has really like been part of the strength of our our relationship that has grown and i just want to do like work all always with jonathan like i always want to be partnering with him on every project like it's just it's always such a it's such a joy and i think you know we've being a founding product marketer can be a really vulnerable thing within a startup so I just wanted like shout out to like any founding solo product marketer.

1:13:52Jonathan Pipek:Like I get you. I see you. It's tough. Like you're doing freaking awesome work. And it's just nice to like have someone that's been through that. I can really like appreciate a lot of the challenges and like, you know, the amount of work we've had to do to get to a point that we actually feel confident enough to like talk about this stuff. Right. So Jonathan's just freaking awesome. I'm going to very quickly shout out a few other people. So one other person, Sophie Coleman, who is a product marketer I worked with at Beamery. That Beamery was my first product marketing gig. Sophie came in as a more senior product marketer.

1:14:29Jonathan Pipek:And it was really the first time I saw what I considered to be very kind of elevated, what elevated product marketing looks like. You know, PMMs going beyond just being a content creator. And that was a moment where I thought, that's really cool. I like that. also um Christelle Delapour and uh Chloe Nichols because they were the two product marketers that I formed the meetup group with in London all those years ago when there were only 350 of us in the country um you both rock and you're awesome and um you know we were all again solo founding product marketers and it was just nice to have such a really cool support network so So yeah, I love it.

1:15:12Craig Brown:You guys are going to have to make some intros to some of these peeps because they sound amazing. Also, I see future collaboration happening for you guys. I'm sure more is coming. Oh, for sure. I promise this is my last question for you. Is it just best for our listeners to find you guys on LinkedIn? How can we access your expertise a little more?

1:15:31Jonathan Pipek:Yeah, LinkedIn is great. Yeah, we chat a lot on LinkedIn. So I love meeting new people. I think Jonathan's the same. So just drop me a connection request, drop me a message. Let's hang out.

1:15:44Craig Brown:Sounds good. You have it. We'll put it in the show notes for everybody to find you. So with that, we're going to conclude today's episode. Thank you again, Craig and Jonathan. This was lovely and so appreciative of your time. And thank you, PMM listeners, for coming along on today's journey with us. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take on the next step of your own journey.