Alex Shuck

I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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Some of the best threads in the Healthy Competition community... aren't even about competitive intel or product marketing. They're usually found in the "careers" channel. Some of the most recent topics have been around: - how to navigate layoffs - creating "win docs" to use when asking for raises - fractional work - job interview tips - growing beyond director-level titles - what to do when you're juggling too many requests I don't think this element in a community is talked about enough. Usually, they're marketed as a place to get the TACTICS, TEMPLATES, FRAMEWORKS, etc. for a certain role. And yeah, we certainly share those things in the Healthy Competition community for competitive intel and product marketing. But what's equally as important, IMO, is just seeing how other folks in your role are navigating their work life. There are some nuances with the CI and PMM roles that make it more relatable and resonant when you hear it from people in those roles vs. general marketers, sellers, product managers, etc. That's where I see the majority of people connecting with one another and experiencing the real value of community.

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"The Cookie Purge: Why Smart CMOs Are Feasting on First-Party Data (and Product Marketers Are the New Chefs)" With the demise of third-party cookies scheduled for early 2025, I believe we're not facing a loss of data but a feast of opportunity for CMOs and Product Marketing alike. Companies transitioning from cookies to zero and first-party data are unlocking significant rewards, with a 2.9x increase in revenue and 1.5x cost savings. This represents a shift that will redefine how CMOs will serve up value to customers and companies. Over the past several years, the appetite for using cookies has declined. Over 40% of consumers continuously reject consent banners. The implementation of strict GDPR/CCPA regulations, Apple’s privacy stance, and the rejection of third-party cookies used by advertisers to personalize content on Apple’s Safari browser have led Google to remove third-party cookies from its menu. How will CMOs navigate to the cookie purge? They will need to: 🔍 Reimagined Ingredient Sourcing: First-party data, our new premium ingredient, is collected from our own assets like the website, customer purchase history, and log-in credentials. We need to work closely with marketing, sales, and customer success teams to gather and analyze this data. Product Marketing will use the data to craft more accurate buyer personas and customer journey maps because CMOs will expect us to turn this raw data into actionable insights that drive Go-to-Market strategies. 🍳 Cooking Up Personalized Experiences: Zero-party data is our secret sauce. We must create compelling reasons for customers to voluntarily share their preferences directly. This means designing innovative quizzes, surveys, content, and feedback loops to encourage data sharing. CMOs will look to us to translate the nuance into personalized experiences that keep customers coming back for more. 🚀 Serving Up Predictive Analytics: With first and zero-party data as our base, CMOs and the company can develop predictive models that anticipate customer needs from end-to-end. This isn't just about personalization; it's about proactive product development, marketing and sales strategies, and generating customer loyalty, enabling the firm to stay ahead of the curve. The shift to zero and first-party data empowers CMOs and Product Marketing to work closely together to create deeply personalized B2B experiences that will elevate our products. The CMO’s success will depend on interpreting and acting on this rich data to craft the recipes for a feast that will determine our company's success in this new era. This is more crucial than ever. So, how are you moving into the cookieless era? What have you learned using zero and first-party data? #CMO #ProductMarketingEvolution #FirstPartyRevolution #ZeroPartyGold #DataDrivenCMO #PersonalizationPower #B2B2C

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Casey Winters sharing how he helped Pinterest and Grubhub increase retention and revenue by optimizing their onboarding experience: Contrary to popular belief, onboarding isn’t a marketing or sales problem. “So who should work on this problem? What does an onboarding team look like? This is a CROSS-FUNCTIONAL team: Product designers… Engineers… Product managers… In B2B a lot of times sales will be involved… Sometimes marketing… User research… All of these people have to be working together to figure out how to build the right experience so that people are going to get the value of your product and keep using it.” This begs the next question: "Where does onboarding end and the core product begin? Your onboarding team should be in charge of the entire product experience until people reach the habit moment” Onboarding might just be the most underrated drivers of growth. Don't make the mistake of underinvesting in it. If you're looking to improve your product onboarding - give the full video watch, it's full of powerful and practical advice. Source: Casey Winters’ talk at Slush 2018: Why Customer Onboarding is the Most Crucial Part of Your Growth Strategy

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Where are the QA experimentation jobs? No, really... Where are they? Who is doing the QA for your experiments, A/B tests and optimization? On LinkedIn, specialty job boards and various websites, you can find roles for: - Experimentation Engineers - Project Managers - Designers - Analysts But no QA... How come? If you don't have a dedicated QA does that mean everyone does QA? Who's responsible for the quality if everyone is doing it? — — — It’s experimentation and a/b testing QA week… How many “bugs” did you squash on your latest experiment?   — — — P.S. “Experimentation Confidential | Off the Record” ↳ Private conversations. Actionable insights. #experimentation #abtesting #CRO #QA #jobs

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Let's get real with AI tool adoption in Marketing... As VP of Marketing at Wunderkind, Amandine Servain knows firsthand the challenges and opportunities that come with integrating AI tools into marketing workflows. In a recent AMA webinar, Amandine shared her approach to evaluating and adopting these tools. The key, according to Amandine, is to start not with the tools but by identifying specific pain points within your team's workflows. From there, look for AI solutions that can both solve those problems and also seamlessly integrate with your existing technology stack. "First, we look at the challenges that we have... then we move to trying to find a tool that can solve that pain point, could be AI, could not be AI," Amandine explained. "When we find AI tools, such as Tofu, that was solving a pain point, most of the time we do a POC first to make sure it actually solving the pain point that we think it's solving." But adoption is only half the battle. Measuring the impact of these tools is equally important. Amandine's team tracks engagement metrics and runs A/B tests to quantify the effectiveness of their AI-powered campaigns. However, Amandine cautions against data overload: "We track a lot of data, probably too much data, more than we actually use, but I think that's kind of the marketer's disease, tracking too many data points and not fully knowing what am I going to do with that data?" The key takeaway? Be strategic in your approach to AI adoption. Identify clear pain points, ensure seamless integration, and measure impact using meaningful metrics. With the right strategy, AI tools can be a powerful addition to your marketing workflows. What has been your experience with adopting AI tools in your marketing efforts? https://lnkd.in/gMTVPbtU

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How many marketers are ghost writing LinkedIn posts for their executives? I’m curious and want to connect with you… At RevPartners, we recently started a campaign we’re calling Creatorship Creators x Leadership As the GTM Creative Manager, I’m empowering our leadership team to share their career learnings, advice, moments from their weekly work or other types of content on LinkedIn And you know where one of my go-to sources of inspiration is? SLACK That’s right. Everyone’s favorite internal messaging app is a content playground. As our resident “That’s a Post!” employee I’m constantly sleuthing on Slack for tidbits that tell the story of our people and our product offering (RevOps as a Service) In 2024, 90% of the decision making cycle happens through prospects researching solutions on their own It’s a time of social media > search engines Buyers want recommendations from their personal networks Which is why we’re all in on LinkedIn personal branding Have a question about the way we’re structuring this initiative? Drop a comment below! ⬇️ —- 👋 Hi, I’m Cassie! I’m write about B2B Creators and employee generated content. I’m also the GTM Creative Manager at RevPartners where I enable employee and leadership personal brand building. Everyone has a story - I’d love to hear yours! ✨

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This guide by Michael Applebaum is one of the best product marketing guides that I've seen written. Concise and practical. Thanks to Stage 2 Capital as well. #ProductMarketing #PMM

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Many product marketers get hung up on 'owning' items like messaging and pricing. But ownership or being the sole decision-maker on anything doesn't make a stellar product marketer. After all, a company is a collection of minds, not one mind. Unless you're the CEO or founder, thoughts of ownership aren't that helpful; they mostly just leave individuals and teams feeling frustrated. Instead, acting like an owner looks very different for PMMs. A stellar PMM knows how to manage various points of view, timelines, priorities, and nudge the organization in the right direction, one step at a time. As a PMM, it's healthier to approach your job as navigating a large ship, powered by many rowers, that can't turn on a dime rather than piloting a 2-person fighter jet. 75% of the job is knowing how to *influence* the other rowers, including the ones steering the ship. Influencing, not ownership, is the path to promotion and having an effect on revenue. The hardest part is this: influencing can't be learned from the neat and tidy frameworks found in books or through catchy stories on social. I don't have very many answers either. But maybe start by accepting that your success and happiness in PMM depend on being pragmatic, not dogmatic, having an opinion, and knowing how to gather support. Practice that. Enjoy the experience of learning how to influence and abandon the fallacy of ownership and control.

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Incentives matter... and there's an "incentive paradox" at play when product-led meets sales-led. When you are doing a great job with product education, have transparent pricing, and make it easy for anyone to get started, you will have inherently less meetings as a percentage of traffic. If you are measured on short term performance on meeting volume, it can be tempting to start to add friction back into the process. This is often a mistake. Product-led companies with a sales-led component will often do far better in the long run; as an easy to use, helpful, easy to learn product often attracts more champions, awareness, and funnily enough... demo meetings. You have to work transparently with other teams and to align on the goals and have the tough conversations with the stakeholders ahad of time so you don't find yourself scambling and making rash decisions. #productmarketing

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Want your team to rock employee advocacy? The secret sauce is serving up content straight to where they're always online - Slack! 🚀 With Oktopost's Social Advocacy App on Slack, your savvy advocates get real-time updates on fresh content from your Advocacy Board, making sharing content a breeze! Discover how this boosts adoption for your advocacy program here: https://okt.to/HpFxWI P.S. Microsoft Teams users, Oktopost has got your back too! 🙌 #EmployeeAdvocacy #Slack #StayConnected

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I distilled 𝟭𝟯+ 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 of my go-to-market experience as a CMO/VP/Head of Product into this 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲👇 So, if you need help building a go-to-market plan, this resource is for you. I originally built this for myself for my consultation work. → I wanted a template that covered all of the key considerations in an effective and efficient go-to-market engine. → While also still being lightweight enough to be completed quickly (and no more than ~2 pages if printed out). Here's a summary of what the template covers: 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟭 - 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 • 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼 - what you stand for, the change you're championing, why you should be trusted • 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 - the urgent & important problem you're solving and how you're solving it better than alternatives • 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 - segments, ICP and buying committee 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮 - 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗕𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 • 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘆 - jobs to be done, buying triggers • 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘆 - objections, fears, alternatives • 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 they trust - where they learn and make decisions 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟯 - 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 • 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 and 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 - per customer segment • 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 strategy - how you price vs the market 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟰 - 𝗚𝗼-𝗧𝗼-𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 • GTM 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - sales-led, PLG, etc. • 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗪𝗲'𝗹𝗹 𝗪𝗶𝗻 - one sentence statement uniting GTM teams • 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 Gen - how you'll generate demand • 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗚𝗲𝗻 - how you'll collect demand • 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 - how you'll prospect, nurture and close • 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 - how you'll grow revenue 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟱 - 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 • 𝗢𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 and 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 - for Product, Marketing, Sales and CS As I said, it is comprehensive. But as you can see below, it's all done in a lean package. ___ Want the FREE template? 👉 The 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 using a fictional company to help guide you through it. 1. CONNECT with me    ❗don't miss this step, I can't send you the post without :) ❗ 2. LIKE this post 3. COMMENT "GTM" And I'll share it straight with you :) Plus all my future training videos on it. ___ So why am I doing this? → Help better define what a GTM strategy consists of → Help others get a head start building theirs → Get your feedback to make the template better :) So what are you waiting for? ___ ✍️ Connect with me, like the post and comment "GTM" to get the template. ♻️ Reshare if you found valuable. #B2B #B2BMarketing #B2BMarketingStrategy #GoToMarket #Marketing #SaaS #Enterprise #BrandAwareness #DemandGen #LeadGen  #Sales #Data #ROI

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It's been 13 years since LivePerson gave me the opportunity to "break into tech" and my passion for how businesses build meaningful relationships with customers has grown exponentially. In the last decade, I've been blown away by how fast the way we communicate as brands has changed -- but one thing has remained consistent: the art of meaningful conversation. Coming full circle as I have built my career in building meaningful connections with people from around the globe-- with the lessons learned from living the #livepersonlife. I am honored this week to welcome Ruth Zive, CMO of LivePerson to the 147th episode of the #RadicallyTransparent podcast. I wanted to share with you a few things I've learned from this episode: ➡️ 91% of business leaders feel very positive about using AI to engage with their customers, however only 50% of customers share the same enthusiasm about AI. That's a MASSIVE gap. So much so, Ruth calls it -- The AI Gap. Basically, she calls out the clear divide between business leaders and their customers when it comes to adoption, enthusiasm, and education around AI. And she's not wrong. However, she challenges us all as marketing leaders to put down the "marketing Hype" and work on creating a playbook to close this gap. For a conversation that will change the way you communicate with your customers, I couldn't keep this one to myself. Full episode here: https://okt.to/dqXAoV [PS- BIG thank you to all the LivePeople around the world I had the pleasure of working with and learning from (there are so many to name, I think LinkedIn needs more characters!) And a special shout to my first manager ever in tech, Caroline Nakash for always believing in me.]

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We just wrapped up one of the biggest product marketing projects of my career. 👉 Changing the user experience on our Use Case pages 👀 PLEASE GO CHECK IT OUT! 👀 Teardowns optional 😉 Here's how we did it: 1️⃣ Prioritize Use Case copy by prioritizing user experience We run some pretty dang successful product marketing campaigns on LinkedIn right now focused on problem-solution use cases. Most of these go to a Use Case page. After some heat mapping and listening to sales calls, I knew we needed more. More copy, more FAQs answered, more customer-specific language. 2️⃣ I worked with nearly every department to get this done. 👉 I interviewed Customer Success to understand how customers today use CoLab to complete a business process. And then what the impact of that use is. 👉 I interviewed Sales to understand FAQs and objections during each use case. 👉 I listened to sales calls to understand how prospects described their problems with each use case 👉 I asked Product how *exactly* customers use CoLab to do a process or workflow inside CoLab 3️⃣ I worked REALLY closely with my CMO She had her roots in product marketing and product management. She helped me through the thinking part of how to address a page refresh and through the nitty-gritty copy aspects. We did a couple product marketing specific exercises to work through the thinking and execution. 4️⃣ Recognize these pages are part of the highest level messaging priorities for product marketing We have messaging broken down into 5 categories: 👉 POV: owned by Founders 👉 Strategic narrative: owned by CMO 👉 Value propositions: owned in part by product marketing 👉 Core capabilities: owned by product marketing 👉 Features and attributes: owned by product marketing Owning a huge chunk of the visible part of Value propositions messaging was a task I didn't take lightly. I've done website page refreshes before. I've helped with Product pages before. But this project was the first one I both: - Owned - Had expert help through each step of the process As far as career development goes, you can't ask for more than being empowered to do big things while also being supported through the journey. #b2bmarketing

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Do you incentivize your product managers based on the incremental revenue they drive from your digital properties? You should. So says Jared Miller, Senior Director of Web Analytics and Personalization at Kendra Scott. That's how he's structured his team's compensation. He believes that analysts should aim to go beyond traditional roles like report writing, data collection and data presentation to become proactive contributors to the growth of the business. And that's why analysts are goaled on the incremental revenue growth their initiatives drive. That's just one idea he shared on our newest episode of The Frictionless Experience podcast this week. Some other 🔥 ideas you'll want to check out: ✨ How he prioritizes proactive idea generation and value-driven actions over technology and perfect data, enabling his team to make good decisions and gain valuable insights. ✨ Why you shouldn't wait until you have a vast amount of data or perfect data to start testing ways to remove friction from digital journeys. ✨ How balancing between thorough statistical analysis and quick execution provides an opportunity to merge data, expert opinions and customer preferences for quick wins. ✨ Why good storytelling to convey data to tell a meaningful story is vital in creating successful digital products. ✨ How Jared uses the "stone soup" approach to management to combine individual contributions and create a richer collective result. And my co-host Nick Paladino offered a bit of digital sleight of hand noting that good personalization can actually subconsciously distract users from friction they may experience. Be sure to check it out on your favorite podcast platform or find links here at The Frictionless Experience. #frictionless

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Today's nugget: Make your creative and messaging stronger. That's the holy grail that will drive recall & tap into the consumer's need & move them to purchase eventually. This is primary. Optimizations, frequency, reach, impressions, etc... mean zilch if your creative isn't strong. Period. #MediaBuying #DigitalMedia #Branding #MediaPlanning #Consumers #Marketing #Performance #Brandformance

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Sometimes you just need a group of PMMs to gather and talk shop. Convos around: 👉 Integrated marketing campaigns 👉 How best to measure product adoption 👉 New tools to check out 👉 Even navigating office politics Glad to host this fab group of Bay Area PMMs as part of the Product Marketing Alliance #productmarketing

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Introducing 💡 Spotlight 💡 It’s your cheat sheet to HubSpot’s 100+ latest updates — including these 4 biggies we know you’ll love: 🧡 Service Hub connects service and success together to help customers faster 🧡 Content Hub takes content creation into the future with a single piece of content – remixing everything from blogs to social, and more 🧡 Commerce Hub makes B2B buying and selling SO MUCH smoother from wherever you transact 🧡 HubSpot AI powers all our Hubs and the Smart CRM so you can deliver the best experiences possible Reinvention starts here at hubspot.com/spotlight

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