Create a New Market Category Like a Splunk PMM

24:36for what it means to do observability well. Observability is the category in which we play. And to give you an example, last year, we surveyed more than 1 ,700 people to inform the report. And when I was at Puppet, I didn't have anything to do with this, but I worked with an amazing PMM named Alana Brown, who spearheaded an annual state of DevOps report, which was also the largest research of its kind. And we got a ton of mileage out of this report every year because it was an opportunity to reinforce the importance of our category, infrastructure automation, as like a key requirement for doing DevOps well.

25:13And I think some other ideas like for playbooks that work well for activating your category, like more down funnel. I've also found it works well to create things like buyer's guides for your category where it comes off as more like vendor neutral. But again, you sort of position the requirements or core capabilities in a way that maps to your differentiators. And then also golden RFP templates are great, you know, to kind of, again, help steer buyer requirements in your favor. And then last thing I'll say, and I'd love your take on this is if you're a B2B vendor, don't sleep on peer review sites like Gartner, Peer Insights, Trust Radius, G2, like these are a great opportunity to hard code your category into the taxonomy that these sites use to label your company.

26:03And, you know, since it's 2025, and we can't do a podcast without mentioning AI, I do think peer review sites are more important than ever. Like when you think about chat GPT or Gemini kind of becoming like the primary interface that your prospects are using to research products rather than like visiting your corporate website directly.

26:22Michael Olson:Totally, absolutely. Yes, I think you're spot on. And I would also recommend digging into popular forums for your where your ICP hangs out even like Reddit. I read an article somewhere I can't remember where it was now I'll have to try to find it but it was an article that talked about where various generative AI tools get a lot like source a lot of their information across the web and for example it lists a number of different sources right but But like Reddit was one that came up for ChatGTP, just as an example. It's of course not the only place, but one of the sources where it gets its information.

27:06Michael Olson:So I think that's such a great idea to source that. You gave us so many tips and playbooks and ideas here. I want to circle back to some feedback you gave around getting the analysts buy-in early, particularly for B2B SaaS companies. I think that's so important as someone who has had to put together multiple forms for the Gartner MQ or submissions and the critical capabilities and Forrester waves and all the things. And there are so many opinions about this. I've heard a lot of pretty senior leaders, both at small companies and large companies, who are of the opinion that like, oh, everything is pay to play.

27:54Michael Olson:Like, oh, you only get into the leadership quadrant or the leader category if, you know, you've paid some ridiculous amount of money. I disagree with that, actually. As someone who's been on the Gartner side and I've worked hand-in-hand with analysts, I disagree with that. I personally believe that PMMs should look at analysts as a partner or a sounding board in how they're developing messaging. messaging. But I don't have too much experience on this for category creation. So curious from your perspective, when you start engaging with an analyst on something like this, how do you go about it? Do you try to get their feedback first and let them kind of like think it was their idea?

28:41Michael Olson:Or do you say, hey, here's what we think. What do you think? Is this what you're seeing too? Do you use them as validation? I guess like talk a little bit about what that engagement looks like. Yeah. First off, I totally agree with you, by the way. I don't think of analyst relationships as pay to play at all. I have literally worked in companies where there's been like a magic quadrant for our category where vendors have been named a leader that weren't even Gartner clients. So I think you're spot on. The analysts, you should think of them as trusted advisors and neutral experts on your market and a sounding board for feedback on product strategy, on positioning strategy, including like a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today.

29:25And by the way, yes, they can become an influence, you know, opportunity for you, because at least in the case of like a Gartner or a Forrester, you know, they're actually advising end user clients that you're also trying to sell to if you're a B2B company, right? So it's both for sure. But I would say like my experience with category creation is getting analyst feedback early on to help sort of kind of essentially be like market requirements to help shape the direction of your category narrative is really essential. And then once you've got that category narrative and that positioning like mailed down on paper, getting like either through strategic advisories, if you're working at a company that can afford that, or briefings where you can brief them on the positioning and then immediately follow that up with an inquiry where you just ask questions and just listen and get their feedback.

30:13I think that's the best way to pressure test it and validate it before you, you know, kind of roll it out to the market more broadly.

30:21Michael Olson:Yeah, such a great tip. My personal experience from working on the vendor side with Gartner, as an example, as we're as we've developed out messaging for a net new offering, we incorporate some of their feedback and even their voice, their language into the narrative. And then when they hear it later, I like to think that it makes them feel good that they see their own contributions to our narrative coming out to market. So very helpful. Okay. And so you mentioned a couple of playbooks, like for example, the state of observability, I think, report. What else do you do on the go-to-market side, how do you make sure like sales and enabled or the rest of marketing is rowing in the same direction?

31:07Michael Olson:Like, how do you take that beautiful narrative that you put together and got buy-in for, and then put it into the market? What is kind of some of that stuff look like? Yeah. Again, you know, I, I talked about internal roadshows with smaller groups earlier being the biggest thing that I've found works, works to get like your sales team and your marketing team enabled on your category narrative. I am not a big fan of one way communication channels, like internal webinars, you know, for rolling out. Yeah. No one attends anyways. Yeah. Right. And it's like, it's not the right forum for rolling out new messaging.

31:38So it's obviously like a bigger time investment as a PMM to like have to roadshow and do the same thing with a bunch of small groups. But I think it's a better way to most importantly, get like feedback from your sales and marketing teammates to pressure test the narrative and see if the work that you've done actually resonates or help have them help make it better. But then secondly, to actually secure their buy-in so they can carry that narrative down the field to customer conversations and derivative marketing campaigns and content. So I think that's, to me, kind of the key for getting it to stick and getting your sales and marketing teams to start to sing from the same playbook, so to speak, not to mix metaphors.

32:16Michael Olson:I love that. Yeah, so helpful. And then bringing it back to Splunk, I know you gave a couple of examples already. You mentioned when we were of preparing for this conversation that rather than creating a new category for Splunk, your big task for Splunk was to attach your offering to this huge market of observability as a market category. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like, talk about your approach to that. And maybe what from the framework that you outlined, did you use for this new task of kind of attaching Splunk to this existing huge market category? Yeah, for sure. So maybe just a quick level set, like on Splunk for anybody who hasn't heard of it.

32:56Yeah, so Splunk's a cybersecurity and observability platform. And what that means is we basically help IT operations, engineering, and security teams keep their software and their digital systems like their websites and their mobile apps and their supply chain management systems that they use to run their business. We help keep all that stuff up and running and performing and protected from like security threats, for example. And of course, and this is why you and I are coworkers, like Splunk was acquired by Cisco a little over a year ago. We're now operating as a business entity of Cisco. But if I can give a little bit of kind of a story as it relates to Splunk, it was very much a case of the third element I talked about in that decision tree toward the top of the pod around like attaching our brand and our company to an existing, you know, emerging category.

33:41And so when I joined Splunk a little over three and a half years ago, we were the clear market share leader in a segment called log management, which was being rapidly subsumed by a broader new observability category that today has like a$23 billion TAM. And that observability category had emerged as a mashup of a bunch of once distinct software monitoring categories. And we had just made several acquisitions to expand our product portfolio for this emerging observability category. But we were kind of struggling with a perception gap where people still first and foremost thought of us as either a log management company or a security company.

34:22And we kind of lacked the unaided recall for observability among emerging buyers for this category of tooling like engineering teams. And so when I got here, we got to work sharpening our positioning to ensure that our strategic narrative sounded different from how observability competitors talked and that we were both framing the customer problem a little bit differently, using our state of observability report findings as kindling for describing the promised land. And then also, we took a lot of great care and attention to make sure that we were framing our differentiators in a compelling, clear way and persuasive way as basically the requirements, you know, to get there, like the requirements to achieve the promised land.

35:05And in the last three years, we've now been named a leader in 19 of the last 20 observability related analyst vendor comparison reports that have been produced. And we've seen big improvements in Splunk's unaided recall, you know, among observability buyers. So I think like, to kind of summarize it, or put it simply, like, we are far more likely to be immediately shortlisted and name dropped when observability buyers are asked to rattle off, you know, the names of leading vendors in the category than we were three or four years ago.

35:34Michael Olson:That's awesome. Yeah, it feels good to see some of the hard labor come to fruition as you start to see yourself, or not yourself, but see your organization become more prominent in the market. That's awesome. Okay, so let me just summarize a little bit because we talked about so much here. First up is a PMM would have to walk through that decision tree of, am I creating a new market category or is it something else? And then it's crafting the positioning, which leads to the narrative. ideally leveraging the framework you provided, and then getting internal buy-in, being that internal salesperson for your messaging and your narrative, and then activating on that.

36:13Michael Olson:And that's with some, you gave a ton of great ideas for top of funnel type of assets that you can do every year, which is great. And then getting analysts buy-in to help affirm this new category and then to all the way to enabling sales. So my last question for you on this topic is what advice do you have for a product marketer who is trying to either pivot market categories or reshape theirs or create an entirely new one? Yeah, I would say it's extremely hard to get a new category to stick, particularly when you're like using made up branded terminology. So my advice is be pragmatic and make sure that you're always putting the customer first.

37:00So don't be too bullheaded about feeling like you always must create a new category versus attaching yourself to an existing one or redefining an existing one. And, you know, think about like the main goal of category creation, again, is to frame the position in your customer's mind where your product plays. And, you know, the reality is like if you create a category, if you try to create one that's too narrow or abstract or doesn't use customer language or doesn't immediately create that aha moment, you know, when you describe it to your ICP, you're probably better off figuring out how to redefine and evolve the current category where you play or attach yourself to an existing one.

37:37And then unsolicited, but like, you know, kind of one other piece of advice that's only semi-related that I coach like my team on a lot is like if you're a PMM, particularly an earlier career product marketer, I'd say force yourself out of your comfort zone. And what I mean by that is often when you first get into product marketing as a career path, the initial focus is on becoming an expert in your own product and how it works and even competitor strengths and weaknesses. and that's all good and it's necessary. But I think the next step in product marketing awesomeness is to become an expert, not just on your own products, but on the broader market, your buyers and the context in which your products exist.

38:15And a lot of the great PMMs that I've worked with, they actually make it their business to become experts in how competitors position themselves, how they go to market, including the ICPs and the segments that they target relative to us, where they have strong product market fit versus where they don't. Like, how are they balancing product-led versus sales-led GTM strategies? And I think this type of strategic market insight not only helps you lead from the front when it comes to things like creating categories, but it also can set you up as a PMM for growth and leadership opportunities down the road.

38:48Michael Olson:Yeah, I love that tip. I think it's so helpful to help kind of readjust your thinking. And you're right. It is an especially good tip for an early in career product marketer. If I look back to when I was really early on, I thought I had to be an expert in my own product. But then I felt like I wasn't, when I was showing up to conversations then with customers or partners, I realized that my knowledge kind of stopped there. But certainly after I went to business school and after my time at Gartner, I realized how valuable it was to come at it as if I were an external consultant or an analyst. And let me really understand my customer's problem.

39:32Michael Olson:And to your point, the context that they're operating in and okay, well, what are the all of the possible solutions to this problem that I'm finding? And then digging a little bit into competitive intelligence. I love starting with what is the customer's problem that they're trying to solve. And not only how does my problem solve it, or how does my solution help with that problem, but also why? And same thing with our competitors. Why is our competitor's solution better? And that's where you really start to understand differentiators and when those differentiators make more sense for a customer.

40:08Michael Olson:And you can write all of this back to win-loss data. And there's so many ways that you can kind of connect it and drill deeper. So more conversations for another day. Well, awesome. Thank you so much. And that concludes the first segment of our show. So now it's time for the second segment, which is so much fun. It's the messaging critique. This is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging. And the fun part is Michael, you as my guest, get to pick the company that we talk about. So I've got three ground rules for how we do the messaging critique. Like after you tell us what the company is, first, you're going to tell me what you love about the messaging or what stood out about the company.

40:53Michael Olson:Then you're going to tell me something you wish the PMM would have considered differently as they were creating the messaging. And then finally, we're going to do a quick, fun brainstorm on where the PMM can take the messaging to the next level. You know, maybe it's some fun content that they can create or, you know, creative campaign. So all of this is about refining our craft, meant to be no negativity, just thoughtful, constructive critique. So let's get into it. All right. Big reveal. What is the company that you would like to critique? Let's talk about Walnut. Walnut.io. Okay. So tell us about it.

41:34Michael Olson:What is the product? Who's their ideal customer? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Like, I feel like their messaging on their website is so clear that I feel like I can answer that question, even though I've actually I don't work there and I've never actually used their products. But basically, they are an interactive demo platform. So a tool to enable B2B marketing, sales and customer success teams to build and run interactive demos of their own products for prospective customers. And yeah, I feel like their target customer is kind of people like you and me, you know, like I've spent a lot of my career as a PMM responsible for building out scenario based or use case demo scripts, you know, to teach like our sales engineers on what to show and what to say when they're demoing our products to prospects.

42:20And I'd expect they would target PMMs who want to embed like an interactive click through demo of their product on their website in a free trial or a self serve see, try, buy experience. And then I also imagine like they target sales teams directly, you know, that want to be able to enable those sales teams with like, you know, use case oriented demos to be able to show in a customer buying process. And I think there's probably a third persona too that I see from their website around targeting customer success teams directly who want to build like self-serve onboarding and adoption content for new customers where you can use their product to actually demo the product for specific use cases.

43:01Michael Olson:Yeah. And it's so clear and direct right at the top of the page on their website. It just reads interactive demo platform for marketing and sales. That's exactly what it is. so there's no like okay what what what are they doing i have to do some calculus to try to make sense of the buzzwords as very many b2b sass companies do unfortunately okay so what do you what else you said you mentioned that it's very clear and direct anything else about the messaging that you're really loving yeah i just think like generally is a best practice especially for b2b messaging i think like good messaging kind of needs to do four things it has to be relevant, you know, like, is it germane to your target audience and their day job?

43:44It's got to be differentiated. Like, does it sound different from how competitors talk? It's got to create like the immediate light bulb moments or aha moments. Like it's got to create clarity and then it's got to get you motivated. It's got to create like interest or intent. And I feel like, you know, looking at their website, I feel like they kind of nailed all four of those things. Like, I mean, on their, I'm looking at their homepage, they literally have a section that says who Walnut is for.

44:10Michael Olson:I love that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, totally. It's like it's got audience specific use cases and value props. And then I feel like it's easy to quickly understand what they do. Also, like, you know, they use like very clear conversational language to describe what they do, but they also kind of nail it. So what and for what it's worth, and you talked about this earlier, like I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek and start with why. But I actually think when it comes to like B2B websites, you need to really quickly nail down what you do in order to orient visitors on your category. And I think Walnut does that really well.

44:46Like they start by declaring their category. They're an interactive demo platform. And then they quickly pivot to the benefits. And like you can see above the fold on their homepage, it's like give your audience a hands-on product experience, measure deal and prospect engagement, increase site conversion rates. Like if they just said those value props with no context on what they do or how they pay it off, it would sort of start to sound generic or imprecise. But I feel like you're better able to contextualize the value props when you first understand like, oh, they're an interactive demo platform.

45:17The other thing with Walnut that they've done a good job of is like they're kind of drinking their own champagne, right? So like, you know, you look on the homepage, they've embedded an interactive demo of their product right there, like to show how their product works. which is like super meta, but it's actually a great way to like experience the product in less than five minutes and get a sense for what it can do and how you'd use it. And then I think last, like there's just not a lot of fluff that I see on their website or jargon. Like their messaging is simple. It's to the point and it's just super easy to figure out like what they, what they do and why you ought to care.

45:50Michael Olson:Yeah. Like to your point, they give you the minimum information that you need to keep you interested, to get you interested. And then just as you scroll, it's show don't tell with with a demo and i think that could be really powerful okay so what's something you wish the pmm would have considered differently as they were building out this messaging or this experience generally i am not a fan of like stylistic feedback because i think it's very subjective and personal preference oriented so i'm going to kind of break my own ground rules here but but i'm trying to reach for like some things that they could maybe improve just to take it to the next level.

46:26But for me, like, personally, or stylistically, I always like seeing website messaging that's a little irreverent or whimsical. And I think B2B messaging, like it can be so dry at times, you know, and I think it really helps you stand out and gives prospects kind of the warm fuzzies when they think about you if you're a little bit more irreverent. And Walnut does like a little bit of this with headlines like why do top sales teams go nuts about Walnut. But I think they could lean in a little harder on this vibe, especially since like their ICP is primarily sales and marketing teams and growth companies, right?

47:02Like sales and marketing people tend to have a lot of personality. So I think they could embrace that a little bit more in some of their copy. I don't know. What do you think?

47:10Michael Olson:I was going to say the same. I felt like when I look at the top, while I very much appreciate that it's very clear, I understand exactly what they do. I understand the benefits right away. I wish it felt a little bit more like a story or like they made it more meaningful. Because right now it just feels, it's almost too generic that I don't even really, like I'm not motivated to read it. You know, unless I really need a demo platform, I'm not super motivated to like continue scrolling. And I feel like the big image on the right that's kind of interactive when you hover over it. It feels like at the very top right when you go to the side, they've got this quadrant with these little, with the faces.

47:55Michael Olson:And as you hover your mouse over each of the faces, a different benefit pops up. For example, when you hover over one of them, it says simplify pre-sales. I don't really know what that means. Or I mean, I can guess at what that means, of course. Then there's streamlined customer onboarding, right? There's all kinds of little, I guess, benefits. I don't feel like that space, that real estate on the page is being properly utilized. I'm not sure if they're giving enough context to truly engage with their ICP just above the fold. I'm just not sure. I guess I'm not sold yet that this little interactive quadrant is doing the storytelling enough.

48:38Yeah. Maybe that's a great point. Like maybe what they could do more of is like depositioning the status quo, right? You know, it's like kind of context or framing for like why you need an interactive demo platform. Like, hey, when somebody goes to your website and they just see like generic illustrations or static screenshots, like you don't get the aha moment. What if they could like click through and actually see your product in action with a five minute commitment? Like, you know, that like, I don't know, something like that could be a little bit more helpful for like getting lighting a fire under people why they why they need this.

49:13Michael Olson:I completely agree. I like that they're they're top line messaging the header and subheader above the fold. I like that it's very clean and clear and helps me understand exactly what they do. But I think they can do more with as you put it like adding the why you should care and I think you said like deconstructing the status quo and focusing more on that, like the customer problem and why I even need a demo platform to begin with. I see the benefits. I get the benefits, but I'm not sold yet. So I'm eager to see where they might take this a bit further. Any last thoughts you wanted to add on Walnut?

49:53Michael Olson:And if a PMM from Walnut reached out to you and said, hey, can you give me some quick pointers? Well, what's kind of some big takeaways you might say? One other, this may not be at all practical. But one other idea I had as I was kind of going through their website the other day was since Walnut is often used by marketing teams to build public facing demos that you would embed on your own website. I was reading through some of their case studies and I found myself wondering like, what would the product demo created through Walnut actually look like for some of the customers that are featured in this case study?

50:26And if they could get customers to agree to it, I think it'd be kind of cool for like their case studies to actually embed the example interactive demo that was built through Walnut for that customer's actual product. And I mean, put yourself in the shoes of like, you know, doing like vertical marketing campaigns or sales outreach sequences and be like, hey, this is how other vendors in your category demo their product with the help of Walnut.

50:50Michael Olson:That is such a good idea, right? Like a like an ABM style campaign for your. Oh, I love that idea. We got to get someone from Walnut to run with that. Yeah, for sure. Maybe they're already doing it. We don't know. But very cool. Awesome. Okay. So before we go, I wanted to just pause and have a moment of gratitude as I like to do in all of my episodes. I feel like product marketing is so special because none of us get here alone. We're constantly learning from each other, building on each other's work. I'm definitely going to to steal a lot of the playbooks that you shared today. And we're all better for it.

51:31Michael Olson:So before we wrap up, I just wanted to say genuine, thank you so much, Michael, for giving me so much of your time and giving the product marketing community so much of your time and your insights. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's been a lot of fun. And like I said earlier, I've learned a lot from just listening to you and your other guests, and it's helped me level up as well. So big ups for what you're doing. Yeah, we're so lucky. We're in this very generous community of PMMs. Well, I'd love to turn it back around to you and ask who are one or two PMMs who have had a real impact on your career.

52:07Michael Olson:Maybe this is a good time to give them a little shout out. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I've been really lucky to get to work with and for a bunch of stellar product marketers, but maybe I'll give a few names. Like one of my biggest mentors is Tim Zonka, who hired me at Puppet in 2014. He ran product marketing and then eventually became CMO there. And I learned a ton from him about how to be a better PMM. He's now the VP of portfolio marketing at a company called Commvault. And then another one who comes to mind is a guy named John Rooney. I worked for him at New Relic. He's now VP of product marketing at Unity.

52:42And he taught me a lot about how to manage PMM teams and then also how to work with executives and how to sort of operationalize product marketing frameworks. And then if I can, like one other person I'd love to give a shout out to is Gia Thiel. I both worked with and for her for a few years earlier in my career. She's, I think, now a senior director of solutions marketing at Equinix. And she is one of the best in the business at building credibility with sales teams and crafting sales messaging that actually gets used by sellers. So she's awesome as well.

53:15Michael Olson:You're so lucky. You had different mentors and coaches for like different parts of the product marketing career and different kind of focuses and emphases. That's really awesome. Yay. Well, thank you to those PMMs and those leaders for helping to shape Michael and letting him bring some of those experiences on to the rest of the community. And I promise this is my last question for you. Where else can we access your expertise? Is it best to find you on LinkedIn? Sure. Yeah, I would not call myself an expert, but I'm always happy to connect with folks on LinkedIn for sure. Pretty easy to track down there.

53:53And then I also occasionally blog about product marketing and share frameworks and tips and ideas at theproductmarketer.com. So feel free to check that out too.

54:03Michael Olson:And your AMAs on Sharebird. Yes. Yeah. Sharebird's an awesome community. If you're not a member, definitely go sign up. It's great to listen and learn from other PMMs like us. We love Sharebird. Awesome. Again, well, thank you so much, Michael. This was so fun. And thank you, PMM listeners, for joining us on this adventure today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in the next step of your own journey.

54:40Thank you.