The Role of Product Marketing in B2B: Strategies, Tools, and Metrics for Success

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Role of Product Marketing in B2B: Strategies, Tools, and Metrics for Success B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt
Hosted by Dave Gerhardt
Release Date: April 10, 2025

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1. Introduction and Participant Backgrounds [01:33 - 03:32]

In this episode, Dave Gerhardt welcomes three distinguished guests to discuss the pivotal role of product marketing in B2B environments:

• Natalie ([02:05]): Head of Growth at Novatic, based in New York. Although not a trained product marketer, Natalie is expanding her role to encompass product marketing responsibilities.

• Jason ([02:39]): Founder of Productive PMM and co-creator of Demo Dash alongside Eric. Jason specializes in assisting founding product marketers at startups.

• Eric Holland ([03:06]): Senior Product Marketing Manager at BetterWorks. With six years of experience spanning manufacturing, tech, sales, and customer success, Eric also hosts the "We're Not Marketers" podcast.

2. Importance of Product Marketing in B2B [03:32 - 05:28]

Dave Gerhardt asserts the critical importance of product marketing within B2B companies, especially in an era where AI is accelerating the commoditization of software products.

Dave Gerhardt [04:15]: "Product marketing is the most important marketing function inside of a marketing team at a company... Positioning matters, differentiation matters."

He emphasizes that product marketing drives the strategic narrative that aligns the entire company, differentiates the product in a saturated market, and requires cross-functional collaboration with product, sales, and marketing teams.

3. Defining the Role and Responsibilities [05:28 - 07:35]

Jason outlines the core responsibilities of product marketing:

Jason [05:45]: "Understanding who your product is selling to, why your product is differentiated, and enabling everyone in your company to deliver that message."

Eric adds that product marketing bridges the market and product development, emphasizing content deliverables like positioning and messaging that resonate with the target audience.

4. Strategies for Differentiation [07:35 - 12:46]

The discussion shifts to strategies for differentiating products in competitive markets.

• Natalie explains Novatic's shift from brand awareness to highlighting unique differentiators amid over 30 competitors in the interactive demo space.

Natalie [08:38]: "We need to focus on telling our message, making clear how we are different from those competitors."

• Jason highlights the importance of precise targeting and segmentation to facilitate effective differentiation.

Jason [09:08]: "Differentiation becomes a lot easier when you can know specifically who you're targeting."

• Eric cites examples like Freckle for their direct competitive positioning and Clay for clear differentiation through segmentation.

Eric [11:10]: "Freckle... reworked their positioning to directly compare with major competitors, making their differentiation clear."

Dave further appreciates Notion and Figma as examples of companies that maintain strong differentiation even as they scale.

5. Identifying Bad Product Marketing Practices [16:06 - 25:23]

The panel discusses common pitfalls in product marketing, emphasizing the dangers of reactive versus proactive strategies.

• Natalie admits Novatic previously struggled with reactive product marketing, scrambling for positioning and messaging during product launches without strategic alignment.

Natalie [16:06]: "We were just scrambling to put together some positioning messaging statement... everything feels so last minute."

• Jason criticizes the tendency to associate product marketing solely with feature launches, advocating for a broader approach that includes use cases and success stories.

Jason [16:58]: "Bad product marketing is when a product marketer is waiting just for new things to talk about their product in the market."

• Dave highlights the need for consistent narrative beyond single launches, using Salesforce as an example of effective repetitive messaging.

6. Measuring Product Marketing Success: Metrics and KPIs [26:31 - 35:38]

Dave queries the panel on how to quantify product marketing's impact to executives.

• Jason recommends leveraging OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to align product marketing goals with company objectives, such as breaking into specific industries or generating pipeline.

Jason [27:21]: "Using OKRs helps prioritize projects based on how they ladder up to objectives."

• Examples:

  • Objective: Break into the financial services industry.
  • Key Result: Close $200,000 in revenue from that segment in Q1.
  • Project: Develop targeted sales collateral and training for the financial services segment.

• Dave discusses the integration of product marketing with sales and revenue operations to ensure alignment and measurable impact.

• Eric suggests using tools that integrate with CRM systems to track the utilization and effectiveness of marketing assets.

Eric [32:26]: "Using tools that plug into your CRM allows you to track which assets are being used in deals and their impact."

• Natalie emphasizes the importance of creating dynamic and updatable content to ensure relevance and ease of measurement.

Natalie [43:26]: "Dynamic content like interactive demos can replace static one-pagers and allow for real-time updates."

7. Q&A Highlights [36:29 - 46:37]

Several audience questions were addressed, shedding light on practical aspects of product marketing:

• Positioning vs. Brand Marketing:

  Jason [36:44]: "Product marketing owns both positioning and go-to-market strategy."

  Eric [36:45]: "Brand teams often operate in silos, which can hinder cross-functional collaboration necessary for effective product marketing."

• Shining in a Sales-Led Company:

  Jason [38:50]: "Engage deeply with sales to understand deal dynamics and provide strategic insights that influence outcomes."

  Dave [40:13]: Emphasizes building strong relationships with sales teams to become a trusted partner rather than just a collateral provider.

• Replacing Traditional One-Pagers:

  Natalie [43:26]: Advocates for dynamic content such as interactive demos and deal rooms over static one-pagers to ensure content remains relevant and easily updateable.

  Jason [44:48]: Suggests tracking usage through tools like Highspot to measure the effectiveness of sales assets.

• Hiring a Good Product Marketer:

  Eric [46:37]: Recommends leveraging personal networks and known candidates to streamline the hiring process.

  Jason [48:35]: Advocates for portfolio reviews and in-depth discussions of past projects to assess candidates' capabilities.

  Natalie [49:29]: Uses behavioral questions to gauge candidates' strategic thinking and alignment with company needs.

8. Conclusion [50:08 - 52:05]

Dave wraps up the session by encouraging listeners to join the Exit 5 community for further engagement and support in their B2B marketing careers. The panelists express their gratitude and reiterate the importance of strategic, proactive product marketing in driving business success.

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Notable Quotes

• Dave Gerhardt [04:15]: "Product marketing is the most important marketing function inside of a marketing team at a company..."

• Jason [05:45]: "Understanding who your product is selling to, why your product is differentiated, and enabling everyone in your company to deliver that message."

• Natalie [08:38]: "We need to focus on telling our message, making clear how we are different from those competitors."

• Eric Holland [11:10]: "Freckle reworked their positioning to directly compare with major competitors, making their differentiation clear."

• Jason [16:58]: "Bad product marketing is when a product marketer is waiting just for new things to talk about their product in the market."

• Natalie [16:06]: "We were just scrambling to put together some positioning messaging statement... everything feels so last minute."

• Jason [27:21]: "Using OKRs helps prioritize projects based on how they ladder up to objectives."

• Natalie [43:26]: "Dynamic content like interactive demos can replace static one-pagers and allow for real-time updates."

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Key Takeaways

1. Strategic Importance: Product marketing is essential for creating strategic narratives, differentiating products, and aligning cross-functional teams in B2B companies.

2. Defining Roles: Clear definition of product marketing responsibilities—understanding target audiences, differentiating products, and enabling company-wide messaging—is crucial.

3. Effective Differentiation: Precise targeting and segmentation enable effective product differentiation in crowded markets. Companies like Freckle and Notion exemplify successful strategies.

4. Avoiding Pitfalls: Reactive product marketing leads to last-minute scrambles and misalignment. Proactive, strategic approaches yield better outcomes.

5. Measuring Success: Utilizing OKRs and specific KPIs (e.g., revenue impact, competitive win rate) helps demonstrate the value of product marketing to executive leadership.

6. Dynamic Content: Moving away from static assets like one-pagers to dynamic, updatable content ensures relevance and ease of measurement.

7. Collaboration with Sales: Deep engagement with sales teams enhances product marketing’s strategic influence and fosters mutual trust and effectiveness.

8. Hiring Best Practices: Focus on portfolio assessments, behavioral questions, and leveraging networks to identify capable product marketers who align with company goals.

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This episode provides a comprehensive exploration of product marketing's role in B2B settings, offering actionable insights into strategic differentiation, effective collaboration, and measurable impact. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or new to the field, the discussions illuminate paths to elevate product marketing within your organization.

Transcript

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[Dave Gerhardt]

You're listening to B2B Marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt. We got Eric, we got Jason, we got Natalie here. Let's kick this off and first let's do quick introduction. Let's go, Natalie. Jason, Eric, don't do the 20 minute marketer explainer. Tell me who you are, what do you do for work and what's your background as it relates to product marketing is. And then we're going to get into the good stuff.

[Natalie]

Cool. Hey everyone, I'm Natalie. I'm in New York. A little warmer right now than Jason Eric. I am head of Growth at Novatic and I'm personally really excited for this webinar because I'm actually not a trained product marketer. Sorry, that's where Jason Eric come in. But I'm starting to do more product marketing at Novatic, something this quarter I'm really taking on. So I might have selfishly put on this webinar to learn from two of the best product marketers I know, so really I'm here along with you. So we're trying to figure out like, how do I structure a product marketing function right now?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Love that. All right, big words, gentlemen. Two of the best product marketers she knows. Jason, you're one of them. Who are you?

[Jason]

Hey, everybody, I'm Jason. I live in Collingwood, Ontario. So up in Canada, I've always been a founding pmm. So I've been that first product marketer at a startup and today I have my own business called Productive PMM. And we do, we help other founding PMMs. And I also create interactive demos with an agency called Demo Dash with my pal Eric.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Love it. All right, Eric, that's you, man. Eric has been known to send me great hoodies. Eric, what's your background?

[Eric Holland]

Yeah, Eric Holland, Pennsyl Tucky or a little town called Carlisle if you feel like looking it up. Been a product marketer for about six years. Half of that was in big time manufacturing, half of that spent in tech and also dabbled in a little sales and cs. So I love it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right, gang is here.

[Eric Holland]

Sorry, just kick me off, Dave. No one cares where I work.

[Dave Gerhardt]

That's all right. What are you doing now?

[Eric Holland]

Just started a new role actually as a Senior PMM at BetterWorks and do a little podcast with we're not marketers and like Jason said, start a little thing on the side called Demo Dash.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Love it. And you all came to drive last year, which is great. All right, let's transition. Talk about the role in product marketing. So I actually just want to get on a little rant to kind of set us off for a second. I actually think that product marketing is the most important marketing function inside of a marketing team at a company. And the reason why is because more than ever, and I think this is especially going to continue to go nuts and accelerate with what's happening with AI because of how much software and building products is going to become a commodity more than ever. Positioning matters, differentiation matters. And having a strategic narrative that resonates with the key buyer in a market and you can rally the whole company around the story. And the reason I say it's the most important thing is because in order to truly build differentiation, that is not something that the marketer. We can't just get in a room and do one of those like, you know, brainstorms with the post it notes and walk around and, you know, everyone slaps a post and do that whole nonsense because the value and the differentiation from the company has to come at the company founder level, executive Level, it has to do with the roadmap. Right. What is the product vision? And product marketing's job is to own that and execute on that. But it is truly a cross functional role. The hardest part about the role of product marketing is that you don't necessarily get to go shopping for any of the ingredients, but you have to cook the meal. And so you have to work with product, you have to work with sales, you have to work with marketing. And I think that's what makes it such a complicated role to like perfectly. You know, it's very easy to say I'm an SEO specialist, I know what you do. Right. If I say I'm a product marketer, well, that could mean a lot of things. And so maybe. Jason, let's kick this off with you. How do you define the role of product marketing inside of a company? What should product marketing do and own?

[Jason]

It's a good question. Yeah, I think it is. I say some of the core things I think product marketing should own in a company is understanding who your product, who you're selling to. So one of the core things of positioning is who is our target customer, who's our icp? I think one is understanding your target customer, understanding why your product is differentiated in the market. So understanding what makes your product unique and better than anyone else's. And then I think enabling everyone in your company to be able to deliver that message. Like, in a nutshell, if I was to say at a very high level what it was. But like you said, like that can mean a whole lot of things for product marketing. But understanding your targeting, segmentation, understanding how your product is differentiated, understanding your product's positioning, and then making sure that everyone in the company can deliver that message effectively. I think it's probably how I'd summarize the role of product.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Eric, you want to build on that?

[Eric Holland]

Yeah. I won't regurgitate anything from Jason, but what I really love, I heard it at an event about two years ago, is we bring the market to the product and the product back to the market. And so I think that turns into a lot of different ways. The easiest and most traditional way is like deliverables, content deliverables mainly. But then things like positioning, messaging I think is something we have to own. We have to be able to say, hey, this is the story that's going to resonate and make sure that the product we put in market actually stays there for a really long time. You know, I think really, like, I'm getting really excited now about the different ways to make product, product LED content. So historically it was kind of like you'd make a one page or whatever and now you can actually be like, hey, here's the product and part of the entire sales process before they ever actually get in to the demo and then well after they've seen that first demo. So I think those aspects really should be owned heavily within the PMM function.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Natalie, where you sit, right, thinking about growth and thinking about growing revenue and growing pipeline for the business. Like how do you see product marketing enabling that to happen? Like, what would it improve? How would doing better product marketing help you generate more revenue, close more deals?

[Natalie]

Yeah, it's interesting. Early days at Novatic, I was so focused just on like we need to get brand awareness out there. We need to get some early demand gen, lead gen built up because people didn't know what interactive demos are really what Nevada was three years into being at Novatic now, not saying we've penetrated the whole market by any means. I'm sure plenty of you have no idea what we do, but there's a much better understanding and education out there for interactive demos and for Nomadic. So all that being said, we really realized last year that we need to focus a lot more on how we stand out. Not what are interactive demos or explaining the category, but how do we differ from other ones out there. There are now like 30 plus competitors in the interactive demo space, which is absolutely wild. And I think most software companies are in pretty competitive spaces right now. So that's why we decided to switch. Okay, Natalie, like you've been focused on the education and Legion portion. Now we really need to focus on telling our message, making clear how we are different from those competitors. And part of that is, you know, strategic launches and also kind of creating that narrative, but also working with sales team, obviously make sure they have the materials needed.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Jason, how do you do that? Any wisdom on this whole topic of differentiation?

[Jason]

What do you do?

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do you read April Dunford's book and then go do it? That's not even a dig. I think she's great. She's the probably the best book you can read. But it for whatever reason, all of the templates are out there, right? I could ask Chat GPT to make me a positioning statement and I can fill it in and it could still suck. And so how do you do this? How do you differentiate in a competitive market like Natalie's trying to do?

[Jason]

Yeah, I think differentiation. I think like you said, the formula of it, like the framework is pretty simple. I think it's just A hard thing for a lot of companies to do. So I think when you're trying to differentiate, you first need to get more specific about who you're selling to. So if you're trying to go broad and you're trying to, you know, you're not willing to really target a very specific type of company and type of buyer, then it's harder to differentiate. But if you get really specific with saying, we're going to go after these types of companies in this particular department within that company and people who have this particular problem, then being able to say why your product's different or better than the other alternatives out there becomes a lot easier. But I think a lot of companies aren't willing to do that, Carl said.

[Dave Gerhardt]

In the chat, which I think is great. Segmentation leads to differentiation.

[Jason]

Yeah, well said. And I think that's it. I, like a lot of people, don't want to go after a very specific segment, but I think, like anyone who's listening to product marketing thought leaders on LinkedIn, I think it's something that people are starting to talk about more, and I think startups now are starting to focus more on that. So I think differentiation is basically like knowing why you're different or why someone should choose your product over the alternatives. But figuring out your differentiation becomes a lot easier when you can know specifically who you're targeting.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Do any of you have an example right now of a company that you think has nailed this differentiation in a crowded market?

[Natalie]

Jason, I'm going to steal an example you gave me once, and I feel like you might have to say this. Basecamp. Is that what you're gonna say? No.

[Jason]

That's an interesting one. No.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah.

[Jason]

Like, go ahead. I'm curious.

[Natalie]

Yeah, I just feel like productivity tools, like, there are so many out there, it's so obvious, but they decide to really segment down of, like, we're gonna be super simple to use. We're not gonna give you all the features. And I was gonna say what I think the hardest part of differentiation is just saying no, like being able to admit that you're not good at things. Any marketer I talk to early stage is always like, I want to differentiate. My CEO will not let me say that we're not good at something or we're better at something else. And I think basecamp from the beginning was just like, hey, no, we're not going to do everything. We're just going to do a few things really well.

[Jason]

Yeah, I like that.

[Eric Holland]

Well, I'm going to throw a name in the hat. Everyone knows Clay, right? So the Fletch boys, give them a shout out. They reworked a company called Freckle and I just love that whole stance where they basically came right at the competitor that everyone knows, skipped all of the BS with all the context setting you have to normally do and was just like, here's how we're different. Or for non technical folks, which again, back to Jason's point was the segmentation and I think that Carl dropped that bar. Segmentation leads to differentiation.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So Freckle. I had to google freckle SaaS because if you just go to Google and type Freckle, it's SEO nightmare. So the headline says it's like Clay without the learning curve. Freckle is the clay alternative for non technical users. Unlock your best outbound campaigns with easy enrichment research and cleanup templates for your. This is a great example of a early stage company differentiating. Right. This gets harder though as the company grows. Right? You know Eric, you've done this at a bigger company. I've been through this where once the company grows and there's more pressure from investors and the board and the market to grow, you naturally add on more Personas and everybody kind of eventually goes to this north star of like, well, now we sell to all these Personas. Now we are the all in one platform. And that is where it gets hard. It's easy to differentiate when you're doing one thing for one person really well. Can you build a successful business that way? You can, but you know what I'm trying to articulate, like it gets harder as you're asked to add on more stuff. How does product marketing drive that internally? How do you stay differentiated as you grow and who's done it? Well, that you can think of?

[Jason]

Yeah, I think it's a hard thing because I think when you're trying to sell a platform, your messaging does get broader. I'm trying to think of a company that's done it well. I think when you get to a point where you are a platform, then it's really a matter of either focusing on individual products and each of those individual products is differentiated in some way and there's a very specific kind of go to market for each of those individual products or you're focusing on specific use cases. So hey, if you are looking to accomplish XYZ job or solve this particular problem, our platform is going to help you do that better. For these reasons, I think a company like I'm a big user of notion and I think one of the things that notion does Extremely well is they take a product that's so broad and they make it really easy to understand how you can use it for very specific use cases. So they. And they do that with templates. But I think they do it by saying, hey, we have this really broad platform. You can do a million things with it. But if you are trying to, like I know, for example, they're working with product marketers to say, hey, how are product marketers using our product for different product marketing use cases? And so you compare them to other project management tools like a ClickUp or something like that. A notion is out there saying, hey, for product marketers, we're a lot better. Our AI can help you with xyz, but here are all these templates that are going to help you do all these different product marketing use cases. And they go out and they partner with product marketers like Jess Petrella, who's building out different templates on notion for product marketers. I think that would be an example of a company that's gotten so broad that it's hard for them to be very specific, but they're trying to go after very particular audiences or buyers use cases, that sort of thing.

[Eric Holland]

I got one. I'm a big fan of Figma. Right? And you know, Figma, I mean, typically going against like Adobe products and stuff like that. I think last time I was on their website they're still positioning as the design tool for designers, but I use it all the time. Was just on a call with Toss Bober, Shout out to us. I think you're on here. She was using figma too. I know the Fletch boys use figma. What's interesting is that their positioning doesn't seem to change. They're still focused on like designers, but I am very much not one of those. I know the other few folks I mentioned are not one of those. And so it's interesting that they've stayed pretty rigid with their positioning and who they're going. At least from a inbound perspective. You know, you got folks like me and other product marketers and other marketers using it for their own uses. So that's one I like to lean on. Specifically. I think a good story goes along.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It's also like as the company grows, maybe your facts and your ingredients change. And so maybe notion can tout that they're the big, you know, maybe being the biggest matters. Maybe having the most customization options for templates matters, right? Maybe Figma has the most designers at other companies. Like you matter. Maybe the ingredients change a Little bit. There's some good product marketers in this chat right now. All right, I want to ask a question from a different angle, which is what are some of the what does bad product marketing look like? It can be hard to articulate good because it's like, you know, what are good examples? Who does good look like? But let's flip this and say, like bad product marketing. Most of the people here are B2B marketers. A lot of them in SaaS, but not all SaaS. Right. Let's take the flip side of that. Bad product marketers. What did they often do or chase?

[Natalie]

I'd be happy to tell what we have been doing because honestly, we haven't been doing good product marketing. So I'm willing to out myself and talk about why we decided to prioritize it. I think the biggest thing I've heard and that we've done too is just like reactive versus proactive. So it's a lot of like, okay, product launch something. And I've done this at other companies too. Oh my God. Let's scramble to put together some positioning messaging statement. Go make a few LinkedIn posts that are just like, hey, this is now live. That's awesome. Write a blog post and then be done with it and move on to the next launch. Like, everything feels so much last minute. It's not really planned. You're not aligned with your product team. As far as, okay, this is what we're going to share. I think that's one end. Just like putting out way too much every time there's a new feature.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Gab says in the chat, you basically become an asset shipping function. Right? Like, we need something turned to product marketing. We need to launch blog posts. Hey, we have this new feature coming out next week.

[Jason]

What can we exactly.

[Natalie]

Like, I've heard so many product marketers just talk like, I feel like a task taker or an order taker versus getting to be part of the strategic conversation. I'll say on the flip side, probably what I've been doing poorly at Novattic is little product marketing. I've almost been so scared to do so much like new feature, new feature. Hey, look at this flossy feature. That I haven't strategically woven our product into our messaging as much or positioning much as I should have. Very ironic for an interactive demo company. But I think being so scared to talk about the product because I didn't think about it in a strategic way. Just kind of ignoring new feature launches. And we hear from customers all the time. Wait, you guys put out this feature. You put out this feature. I didn't know about that. So either like two spectrums of over educating the market with one off features or under educating the market and just like not letting them know about these launches.

[Jason]

Yeah. To build off that, I think you called it small product marketing. I think most product marketers, or a lot of SaaS, companies in general, don't market their product enough and don't get their product out there in front of people enough. And so I think that when we think of a product focus campaign or we think of talking about our product in the market, it's usually tied to some sort of new thing. So it's like a new feature, a new launch, something like that. And I think that product marketers, what good product marketing would look like, but I suppose as an opposite, what bad product marketing looks like is when a product marketer is waiting just for new things to talk about their product in the market. So you can talk about use cases for your product. You can talk about success stories around your product. You can talk about success stories, use cases. There's all kinds of things. You could talk about your existing. Oh, examples of your existing product. You do that extremely well, Natalie. So I think that you look at companies like Clay and they have their clay books. You're talking about different use cases for clay. Chili Piper does the same thing with spicy chili use cases. You look at you, Natalie, and you have showcases. You're talking about customers all the time. And you have your advisors like myself, who are out there kind of doing videos about your customers. And I think that product marketers just aren't doing that enough at all. And so you're out there and showing people your product.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Jeff kind of built on this in the chat and said you can also keep talking about the products you launch. A product launch doesn't start and end on day one. And so I think launch marketing is amazing, and I think it's very underrated. I understand why a lot of the product marketers in here hate it, because you don't want to be the just like, hey, let's launch something. But I think that launches are an awesome opportunity to go and retell your broader story to the market. And so, like, I work with a great founder once who would be like, in our 101, he'd be like, all right, what do you got from the product team? I'm like, just this kind of like, lame little update feature, like new dashboards. And he'd be like, no, no, let's use this as an Opportunity to tell the bigger story. It's like these new dashboards now allow this person to have more insight and visibility into X, y, and Z. And so maybe, yeah, you can't write 1500 words just about that, but we could write an article that basically shows a new dashboard, a quick blurb about this feature, and then tells the bigger story about, like, hey, here's what we're building, and here's why this matters. Right? Also building on your examples, Jason, of, like, things you can create, I actually think that sometimes we don't have launches. I like the forcing function of, like, nobody's giving us things to launch. Like, what can we do? And it could be like, let's make a killer deck and a video and an article about, like, 15 ways you can use clay that you didn't know you could use, right? And it's like, boom, use case, use case. Example, example, example. So, like, the creativity and the freedom to be able to go and create those things and then using everything as an opportunity to go back to the market. I also think product marketing can be a momentum driver for the company. We did this at Drift, where we had this concept called marketable moments, which is once a month, we would do a launch. It was the first Tuesday of every month. No matter what it was on the calendar for a year, it was the first Tuesday of the month because we knew that based on our sales cycle, like, we wanted to stack that kind of momentum earlier in the month. We didn't want it to be later. And then we would sit down with the product team, literally in a meeting together, and we'd look at the first half of the year from January to June. What product stuff do we have? And they're like, all right, well, in April, we're going to do this thing. February, we might have this. And then in June, we have this big launch. Okay, cool.

[Jason]

That's great.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I got three things now. Now I know I got to go fill in three other slots with, like, marketing driven stuff. And now we have a calendar that can be driven by product marketing. That is momentum for the company. It might not always be new product stuff, but I do think having that launch mentality allows you to have a constant narrative to the company. And last thing before I shut up on this is Marc Benioff has always done this really well. Say whatever you want to say about Salesforce.

[Eric Holland]

Now.

[Dave Gerhardt]

It's easy to throw rocks at them because they're the massive incumbent, right? But what they have done, they basically have the same three or four messages, and they Tell them over and over and over and over and over. It's like they do it at dinners, at road shows, at events in their website. Right. And so oftentimes just repetition and frequency matter. And so it's about repeating the same core messages and executing them in different ways versus always having to add new stuff to add on. Eric, did you want to chime in and say something on top of that.

[Eric Holland]

Our Hot takes welcome here?

[Dave Gerhardt]

No, absolutely.

[Eric Holland]

I saw something in the chat about making a PMM charter. I'm going to say that's a mistake and what you should do.

[Dave Gerhardt]

What does that mean?

[Eric Holland]

PMM charter is typically like a slide deck that outlines what you do and what you're responsible for and what they shouldn't come to you for. My take is that those don't work. They typically sit on a shelf after you give the presentation. And what I've found really effective, particularly in day two of week three at this new role, is spending about a week and a half, two weeks figuring out like, where are these like gaps? Where are the things that I can actually maybe make some moves and then start having functional conversations with those leaders that say here's where I want to do some work. What do you think about this? The light bulb has been boom on and some of the follow up conversations have been like, I'm going to go let my team know that these are the type of things that they should be coming to you for in the next 60, 90 days and that everything else not to bug you with, I'm like, wow, that's like what the charter is supposed to do. So my advice hot take would be don't spend your first two weeks building a deck and giving a presentation. Just lay low, analyze, figure out where you can make some silent moves and then go have those functional conversations with the leadership teams who actually need your help to get some shit done.

[Natalie]

Eric, can I add on to that? I think one thing I'd add that I did try to do early at Nevadic too is don't ask the sales team what they want. Go talk to customers, go listen to recordings and go talk to customers in person during those two weeks. Figure out common themes, then create content for them because then they'll trust that you know you are anticipating their needs and will create that content. And every now and then they might have feedback or like, oh, can you do this? Can you do something else similar to this or for this industry? But I, I used to be a little more of an order taker. My last job and I found by Being proactive and being like, here's the material, here's what I'm working on. Or if they ask for something, say, like, oh, actually, I talked to, like, 10 customers. They've mentioned this use case is really important. So I'm going to prioritize that first. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, I hear that use case all the time. That's awesome.

[Jason]

Yeah, I think there's a balance with all that stuff. I think, like, if you come in new as a product marketer to a company, I think you do a hundred percent, you want to get out and you want to talk to customers and you want to try and do your own assessment of what people are saying in the market and that sort of thing. But I think if you are not sitting down with everyone in your company and asking them what they. Now, I come from a world of founding product marketers, so the first one in the company, if you're not asking the question of, like, hey, what are you struggling with right now? Where can product marketing help? And you're not prioritizing some of that stuff, I think you're missing out for sure. There's a balance of things that you yourself are being proactive and you're looking at, like, what you're seeing. But then there's also some stuff you're hearing from within the company. And the thing I'll say about the charter, because I think you make a great point, Eric. I think the charter is something that you need to do, that listening tour. You need to get out and you need to talk to people within your company and outside of it. But I think the good thing about a charter, especially when you're, you know, stepping into this role and there's no playbook set out for you, is it gives you this kind of goal of I'm doing all these things. And sometimes the creation of this charter helps you kind of solidify your thinking and just get it down somewhere. And the process of creating it, it's not like it's necessarily some artifact everyone's going to reference all the time. But sometimes these sort of things actually just help you get your thinking straight. Getting it down on paper actually helps. So that's why I'm big, like, why I'm a fan of those things. But that's just my perspective.

[Eric Holland]

Yeah, I secretly know you love them, so I just had to.

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[Dave Gerhardt]

Let's talk at the executive level. Let's not talk about like early stage startup and individual contributor. I want to think like you're talking to the CEO. The three of you are hired consultants to tell the CEO and the founder and whoever runs marketing, maybe the head of sales cfo, how do we think about the value of product marketing and how do we measure product marketing success? And I ask that because, you know, whether you're trying to be the order taker or not, it does end up like a lot of output. New sales decks, new examples, new collateral, da da da da. We don't often have in product marketing like this, this one metric, right? We start doing content, content person could say, yeah, traffic has grown, you know, 47% bit harder to show that in product marketing. How would you coach a CEO, founder manager with the goal of I want to help people manage up here. What's the right way to think about measuring?

[Jason]

Yeah, I can go ahead. So there are a few things that I would recommend to people. So like one and someone just tossed it in the chat there, the OKRs. Like I've always been a fan of OKRs. And when it comes to OKRs within product marketing, I like to think of it as okrps, meaning the objectives like that high level, not as measurable, more aspirational, objective. And it could be like laddering up to something that's a company objective. Your key results are things that are measurable, time bound, specific. But then the projects, because project marketing is project based, quarter in, quarter out. You mean working on Specific initiatives and projects. And knowing what projects ladder up to those key results and then up to those objectives is going to help. You know that. Okay, this list of projects that I have this quarter, how do I prioritize it? Prioritize it based on how it ladders up to those objectives. So I think the OKR method, I think is definitely one thing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But can you give me some examples? What would like just example objectives and key results for a product marketing team.

[Jason]

And so like an objective example could be like, hey, this year we want to break into the financial services industry. A key result of that might be that, hey, in Q1, we want to sell, we want to close $200,000 in revenue, or maybe we want to get 200,000 in pipeline for those types of deals. And then within product marketing, you know that. Okay, well, for us we have to work on an enablement project because we need to make sure that our sales team, like that particular segment team is able to one has the collateral that they need, maybe an updated pitch deck. We've done the enablement training with them so they understand the messaging, that sort of thing, those things on their own. It's not like there's a metric tied to them other than you get the work done. But if you were laddering that up to, oh, this is helping impact a certain revenue number for that particular segment, then lat ladders up.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Right. But like what's great and challenging about that is what Jason just said, like that that can't happen unless the product marketing team, if that plan is not fully integrated with the company plan, because product marketing doesn't have the keys to just like go run campaigns and generate pipeline. So that needs to be like in partnership with rev ops and demand gen and whatever and like support them on this mission of booking 100 meetings in this segment this quarter. That just is an initiative that you're going to help work. Right?

[Jason]

Yeah. And that's why things like the okrs you would do on a quarterly basis and usually it would be you're sitting with your marketing team and everyone is figuring out the okrs for the quarter. And so you know what you need to ladder up to, you know what other initiatives that you're supporting in some way that kind of ladder up to that. I see a lot of chat here as well around KPIs, I think in terms of like numbers that a product marketer wants to tie themselves to. So revenue impact is ideally, as a product marketer, if you can tie yourself to revenue, that's amazing. And a couple of ways that you could do that would be one, if you're doing a product launch and it's a net new thing, something that has its own revenue tied to it, then making sure that you have revenue targets for a product launch, maybe it's a quarter after the launch, six months after the launch, that is revenue that you can tie yourself to. And when you go for your, you know, your annual review, you can bring those numbers and you can say, hey, I've impacted this much revenue. Another one would be things like competitive win rate. So Eric knows a lot about this one coming from his past roles. But if as a product marketer, I think one metric you can really kind of own is not just close rate because so much goes into close rate, but your competitive win rate would be something where you versus other competitors. A lot of what you're doing as a product marketer, if you're working on things like competitive intelligence, you are working on sales enablement around how to differentiate, if you're working on competitive comparison pages, all those things that are going to help your team compete better, tying yourself and being the one who reports on your competitive win rate is a metric that you can really own. The last one. And this is something that I think product marketers, not everyone wants to get into, but it would be things like deal support or deal influence. So Claire Smith is an awesome product marketer. She worked with Slack and she was more on the CI side. And one of the things that she did is she got really in depth with deal support. So she was the expert on them versus teams and all this stuff. And she would get in and she would help whether it's helping strategize on a deal, creating content for that deal, right? Like being a sounding board or a go to person for the sales rep. And she would tie herself to every one of those deals. So she had a target every quarter that she was focusing on. And so I think like one thing a product marketer can do is even if there's a field on the deal, some way that you can say that you helped influence that and maybe a pick list where you can go through and talk about the different ways that you helped influence it. If you're getting very specific, I mean if you're getting embedded in sales and really help influence deals, then that should be a number that you tie yourself.

[Dave Gerhardt]

One thing going on in chat people kind of asking like how do you track that sales is using these assets? How do we track assets utilization without signing like a broken record? How do you tie collaterals between sales collateral, between revenue. How do you all answer?

[Eric Holland]

I hate the answer because honestly, at least from my experience, it's going to require some budget. But there's a lot of different ways. Software is maybe not particularly for product marketing yet we want this whole tool suite. But there's a lot of things that you can do where it just plugs into your CRM and then you work with rev ops and the magic happens there.

[Dave Gerhardt]

So you're saying there are tools that like, just like a website we can track. Like, oh, did they use X in this deal? Right.

[Eric Holland]

A hundred percent. I've been very fortunate. Basically inherited Novatic while I was at Clue and was able to use that for nearly a year. And that was one of the big aha moments for me was like, I no longer have to like guess. Also, if your company has deal rooms, I haven't had the fortune of using them myself. But that's also a great way because you can actually put in your content into these deal rooms and then the sales team is using them and you can say, look, when they're using this content or this playbook, we have this conversion rate or this competitive win rate.

[Dave Gerhardt]

And then isn't there like the low budget option? I see this in the chat. Like the way to not. Okay, so most of the. If you're asking about the budget for it, we can make the assumption that you're probably an early stage company and therefore you're not going to spend on it as you grow in the later stages. Like you. Absolutely. The way to track it is to buy a tool and to use the tool to track it. Like that is how we do it. It's like not knowing what's going on. So you got to make the investment at some point. But let's just say earlier stages. Wouldn't the answer be like, let's make less collateral, let's make more meaningful collateral. We improved the website flow. Or here's a specific one, we improved. I know you all hate the sales deck. We improved the sales deck. We made a way better demo discovery and demo deck. We rolled it out across the sales team in Q2 and win rates went up 17%. Would that not be one way you can measure the success of the impact of product marketing?

[Eric Holland]

Yeah, a hundred percent. I actually would recommend that too. Is like there has to be a sense of discipline in those early stages in the content you make because. So you can measure it. Right? Because if you've got 15 pieces of content out there in the ether and you make changes to all of Them or even a few of them. It's so much harder to say like this one or even this one or two made a difference. And so I completely agree with that sentiment is there has to be a responsible here in the room that says, hey, we're going to cool it on how much we output. We're just going to make these few assets really, really good and then measure.

[Jason]

Yeah. Another one that's pretty tactical too, is you here probably have a call recording tool, something that's a little more tactical, but most people have dong. Most people have something like that. Those are pretty good. Now picking up on is a slide on the screen. And so it's pretty helpful if you, especially if you make a change to a sales deck.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Right.

[Jason]

Like so you launch a new product or you do some positioning change and now there's like an altered one or two slides halfway through the deck. And that's how you explain your narrative. Right. And I think that's something that you can pretty easily track and not only track if it's being used, but then actually listen back to those calls and be like, is the messaging also being used? Not just the sales deck, like this slide itself. So that's a good one too.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Matt from our team in our private chat said, I like Jason Chill, Canadian product marketing guy. He, he's from Canada. It's a big. Apparently it's a different country and there's a bunch of different, you know, things that happen up there. It seems great. Seems great.

[Eric Holland]

They don't have Trader Joe's.

[Dave Gerhardt]

They don't have Trader Joe's. And I try to send Matt some swag from Exit 5 for being like a kick ass team member. And I had to write like a 13 page essay to send that Stu. That's crazy. Anyway, but yeah, you all are great. Canadians are great. All right, we're going to go to Q and A. Y'all can hang out and feel free to just come off mute and, you know, shout if you feel like you have a strong answer to these. We're going to just spend the last session that's not webinar, which is y'all are doing an awesome job. Great vibes in here today. This question is from Sophia. How much of the positioning and GTM strategy should be led by product marketing vs brand marketing? Great question. I've seen it done by both.

[Jason]

Companies I've worked at that have a brand team. They have not owned positioning or go to market strategy. So I'm just going from my experience here, I think brand can support product marketing. Can support the marketing team in these things. But I think it's. Yeah, product marketing owns both.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Cool.

[Eric Holland]

Yeah. I might have a. It might be simpler, it might also stir the pot a little. But like I've never seen the brand team hang out with product or the engineers or honestly even sales. So I think like, how are you going to have that cross functional go to market approach if it's just siloed to marketing? Would be my question more than anything.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. And who would have time to like make any branded swag if the brand team was doing product marketing, it would be a huge issue in the company.

[Eric Holland]

Yeah. Someone's got to make that stuff look good. Yeah, yeah. Product marketing.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. I ran a brand team for a bit. I can say that.

[Jason]

Haha.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Inside joke.

[Jason]

I do see in the chat there are some people who are saying like I have seen product marketing own brands, which is interesting. Like Mark Huber. I know, like Jeff.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah. I think there's like a bunch of different definitions of brand. Like there is brand as in like, you know, your logo, the look and feel and then there's brand, which is like the narrative. Like actually when I, towards the end of my run when I was at Drift, I moved into a role where I was running the brand team. There was a separate product marketing org, but they did that with me because they wanted to have me lead the story and the narrative for the company and then like the visual execution of that and I would work with product marketing to do that. And I think it's just a unique. It's come up time and time again on our podcast and everything. There is no, there is no perfect formula for team building. Right. Everyone does it differently. And so it's based on your ingredients, who's at your company. Maybe there's this amazing copywriter and storyteller that happens to sit on the brand team and she leads the narrative exercise. Right. I think a lot of that is just nuance. Okay, let's take this next one. How can a PMM shine in a SLG company? So I thought this was sales led, but then somebody else in the chat said state and local government. I don't know what it is. We're gonna assume that. I think the more wide. I don't think that the person who asked this is. Okay, all right. They said sales led.

[Jason]

All right, great.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Boom. Clarified. Thank you. Someone else who didn't ask the question. Classic us. Right in the chat was like, no, it means this. All right, so how can product marketing shine in a sales led company other than just Pounding martinis with the, you know, old school field sales team.

[Jason]

So I have a cool example of. So when I was at Clue, I got to work a lot with this guy, Dan Hamilton, who was. He was VP Competitive intelligence at Salesforce at the time. I think now he's corporate strategy. But I remember one of the things that really stuck with me. He said that one of the reasons he was invited into executive meetings with Marc Benioff and was valuable in those meetings is because he was so involved in sales deals. So he would be the guy who, even as VP at Salesforce, he was like involved in pretty high stakes deals. He was the one who was helping them on the competitive strategy side. And he can walk into these meetings and be like, I know exactly what's happening on deals. I was on one yesterday. We won for XYZ reason, we lost for XYZ reason. And that was his unique insight that he was able to bring to the table. I think for product marketers that want to get a seat at the table or be someone who's seen as strategic and be invited to or, you know, be seen or make their way into leadership, all that stuff, I think if you're in sales LED company, it's like get in the weeds with sales. So it doesn't mean you have to be their, like, servant and just kind of jump on every request that they give you. But if you can be the one person in the company who's like, I'm listening to sales calls all the time. I get involved in sales conversations and deals and I can tell you why we're winning and losing deals, or I can tell you what prospects are actually saying on the phone. I think it's going to be, you'll shine.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I had a VP of product marketing on my podcast a couple years ago and he. It was like a $500 million SaaS company, cybersecurity. He ran product marketing. I asked him about KPIs because it always comes up. He said, you know what my number one KPI is? How well does the sales team know the product marketer that serves them? He's like, I've had a segment where they don't even know the name of the person who serves them in product marketing. And I was like, seriously, that can't be a metric. He said, no, I'm dead serious. Like, if they know Jason, they know what he eats, they know what he likes, they know his senses. That means he is in there working with them. And I think there is something in all of the metricification and Autonomous growth and all the nonsense that we want to do. Like, can you roll up your sleeves, sit down with the sales team and say, hey, what do you like? Everyone gets so defensive about like, you know, we don't want to become the collateral makers. Well, don't. That is kind of the job. You can't make a hundred pieces of clutter. But you do need to sit down with the sales team and say, hey, what do you all need to close more deals? And how can I be the person to help you do that? That is the way to get them to become truly a partner together. Too many.

[Eric Holland]

So, Natalie, I haven't heard your voice for a while, so I want to give you an opportunity to jump in.

[Natalie]

Before now you guys are honestly, I'm just learning. I'm just sitting back with the audience. Learning from you all. Learning from the chat.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, bro, she invited you to come on here.

[Natalie]

You guys do the work.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, we're writing a review as we speak.

[Jason]

I've already.

[Eric Holland]

Doesn't die until I do. Okay, Dave, So what I was going to actually say to this is like one thing that I have really been fortunate about is I've always been in like a sales led motion of some kind. And typically there is some type of friction with the buying process because sales there's typically like an intro call and then another call and then another call. Then you might get the demo as an example. Typically timid to show pricing. So there's things that I think you can do monumentally that like they may not even come to you for. They're not going to say, hey, put pricing on the website, but if you can like really dig in and say, hey, these are some really good examples of where people lifted pricing on their website, how that led to more opportunities for the sales team to go feast and what it turned to the conversion rate on the win rate side. That is something that I think is, you know, in any product marketer's capability. Same thing with the messaging. You know, it better works. Right now universally, everyone's setting a different pitch. They're a little bit unclear on what is the value that they should communicate and the problem that we should dig into that is fully in my control to go help and figure out and massage. So there's a lot of things that I think we have the opportunity to do in a sales led organization that really can make us shine. But you've got to be looking at things from both angles. I think what does sales need to shine but what can also make their job easier? So that the buyer just naturally wants to say yes easier.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right, Natalie, this one's for you. Your fans are in the chat raving for more of you. So this question from Noel. It feels like nobody uses our one pagers anymore. Is there a new format people will use or what's the next one pager replacement? Just curious, as someone who's getting deep in the product marketing world right now, what assets are you creating? What are you delivering? Is there a replacement for the one pager? Is there a deck? What are you making?

[Natalie]

Yeah, I love this question because I have told my team I don't want to make them any one pagers. I will say so I'm going to caveat this. It's like an enterprise sale and you are going for a bigger buying committee. And I'm curious. Jason, Eric's point is too. I think there is maybe if it's a more old school sale or larger, they expect polished formal one pagers. That is the case. I've told my team I will make them a DICE one pager enterprise. Everything else I want it to be dynamic. Obviously I'm going to give a little plug for demos, but I don't really care what form of dynamic content it is as long as it's something that I can update on the fly. It can't sit in a folder somewhere and get outdated. So I think we mentioned like deal rooms. You can use those kind of to replace one pagers and have multiple pieces of content. Obviously I've used demos almost as a way to replace even slideshows rather than a slide deck that has a bunch of pictures of product images. Just walk them through the different parts of the product with an interactive demo. But really just anything that I can update on the fly doesn't have to be just let out once and forgotten about. That's the biggest thing because I've seen so many one pagers live and die.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Oh, or then they just keep asking you to update it. I'm like, you didn't even read the last one.

[Jason]

Yeah, that's why it's like when you do get to a point where you can have something like high spot and actually see how much they're getting used, then you have a good answer for that. But until you do, you can't really. I'm not a big fan of PDFs because I just think it's like a content form there. Why have a PDF when you can just have it on a landing page or something like that.

[Dave Gerhardt]

But I've always thought that if it's like the best product marketing asset is your public facing website. Unless you have trade secrets that you can't show there, it should be a website. So sure. I've had sales reps on the call just be like oh yeah, go to you know, drift.com. you know, why drift? And then boom, we move the deck to the landing page.

[Jason]

I wonder if it has something to do with, you know, maybe reps like to attach something to an email and they don't like to just link out to things.

[Natalie]

I will, I won't say. I've heard my rep say I want it to feel like I made it for them. Like they sometimes want something that feels custom made which I mean you can make it.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Yeah, you're getting the case.

[Eric Holland]

It would be off brand and messaging would be all over the place. Yep.

[Jason]

Yeah, we are getting to a point though because like I worked for a while, there was a startup that was doing something like that where basically they would come in and a rep could go to them, shoot them a message, say hey I have a call tomorrow or I'm I just started a deal with XYZ company and they would take a one pager template and they would personalize it to that company's messaging and all that stuff. And it was all done by just people like product marketers doing it instead of some type of AI. The plan is, was eventually get it to AI.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Have you seen that new thing, what's it called? Deep Sea gets over man, we're all toast.

[Jason]

So I haven't, I've. But I think that's where you are going to get to. It's like you have a one pager template, it looks into Salesforce, it knows what's going on with the deal, where they're from, what their industry is. It can look up their website and it like tailor spit the back out.

[Dave Gerhardt]

For a rep. That'd be sick. Back in my day we called that an intern. But yeah, I'm ready for the new wave. Okay, I got, I have a final question and then we're gonna throw the poll. So real quick, how do you hire a good product marketer? We're not talking about recruit like how do you build pipeline but like what are questions to ask? What would you go through in the interview process to identify?

[Eric Holland]

So it's hard. I can't come from that perspective but I do want to give two notes. The last two like full time roles that I've had. It wasn't like an application process and it was much of a I know this person and I know their work. And so maybe not directly answering your question, but as a hiring manager, I would definitely keep that feel out there and just be willing to ask people, hey, are you open to an opportunity? Because I think you'd be surprised how many folks are. And if you already kind of know their work and their reputation because you follow them and like their stuff. It's definitely moved along both of my last two processes in terms of the role. And it's made a lot easier, I think, coming in on those first few weeks on here's my skillset, here's the things I'm good at, and here's where.

[Jason]

I want to start digging into Nice. I think one thing that always I really like doing was I found like almost like an assignment and things like that I wasn't really getting a lot. Like I. Basically what I started doing was say, hey, we're going to have a call and I want you to bring examples of stuff you've done and I want you to walk me through it. And I wanted to get a sense that it was good in a couple of ways. One, I get to see stuff they'd actually done. So I got to see, you know, what the writing looked like or you know, a launch they might have worked on or a sales deck they made, that sort of thing. And then I also got them to walk me through it so I could hear about the process that they went through making it get a sense for like how much of this actually came from them versus someone else. But I always found it was like pretty good. Part of the interview process was that call because I really walked away with like a better understanding of what they were capable of. And I think again, I'm coming, like, usually it was like, I'm hiring my first other product marketer and because I was the first one there and I'm still looking for a generalist. Like, I'm not looking for a specialist or someone who's like, oh, I know packaging and pricing really well, or I'm a competitive intel expert. I'm looking for someone who can do a little bit of everything at that stage.

[Natalie]

I don't have for specific product marketing, but I can answer just two questions I really like to use in the interview process. One I always like to ask is like, what is something from your old job that you loved and you want to bring to this job and what is something that you didn't like as much that I think you'll get a sense of, like if they liked strategy or they liked long term campaign planning, but if they didn't like being an order taker, that's kind of a good idea if they are strategic or not. And then the second question I always love is, what is something? Let's say you took this job, it's a year later and you're reflecting back and you're so happy you took the job for X reason. And if they say, like, I made a strategic impact on the business, I helped launch a brand new product, or if they just say, oh, I learned some things, or like, I can kind of get an idea of how strategic they are through those two questions. And the best part about them is they don't usually get asked in that way. So people can't just like robot answer with their set answers. So go steal those two questions. Hopefully that helps.

[Dave Gerhardt]

All right, give it up. Wherever you are. Give it up for my panel of product marketers. Great job. Thank you all. We wouldn't be product marketers ourselves if we didn't ask for feedback. So real quick, right before you sign off and continue on your day, throw us a quick response to this poll on the screen right here that my producer Danielle has thrown up. 10 out of 10. Gab says yes. Aaron says thank you. Lots of fives, couple fours. You know, it's all good. Really good, really good. Informative session. This was so great. Thanks, y'all. 100 out of 10. Leslie, what says it's a four? That's all good. It happens. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amazing session. Thank you, beautiful people. Thank you. Oh, oh.

[Jason]

Four is pretty good.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I thought it was four out of ten. All right, I'm not. My bad. Jason, Natalie, Eric, find you on LinkedIn. This will be a podcast episode on our ever popular B2B marketing podcast. And so check it there. Check us out in the Exit 5 community. Thank you to Natalie Novotic for doing this, for bringing us this crew together. Shout out to you product marketers. Keep doing the damn thing, helping your companies grow close. More deals, less KPIs, more shipping work. And here's to a great 2025. Good job, y'all. We'll see you later. Adios.

[Natalie]

Thanks, everyone.

[Eric Holland]

Later.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you.

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To subscribe and leave a review, because.

[Dave Gerhardt]

I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B market marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review. Go check it out right now on our website exit5.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5, 000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning.

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Ideas, inspiration, asking questions questions and getting.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Feedback from your peers.

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Building your own network of marketers who.

[Dave Gerhardt]

Are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100 free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.

[Eric Holland]

Foreign.

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Is brought to you by Paramark Q2 is here. Budgets are already under the microscope and leadership is probably asking you what's actually working in marketing? What should we cut? How do we hit pipeline with fewer resources?

[Dave Gerhardt]

How do we grow faster?

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Does that sound familiar? But most teams still don't have a clear way to measure what's actually driving results. And that's where Paramark comes in. Paramark is a marketing attribution platform that helps you understand what what's working and what's not so you know exactly where to invest your next dollar. It goes beyond basic click tracking and utms because let's be honest, those don't tell the full story. Pearmark uses marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing to give you a true picture of your performance. You'll see what channels to double down on, what campaigns are just noise, what's driving results across brand, paid, organic, a certain geography, you name it. It's built by marketers for marketers. So if you're starting Q2 still guess where to spend, where to cut, or how to defend your budget to the CFO and CEO. You're probably flying blind. And that's where Paramark comes in. Paramark can help you fix that. Go and check them out right now. Go to paramark.com to learn more. I hope they can measure this.