Marketing course

About Marketing Masterclass

Are you a new marketing manager? Or a soon-to-be one?

Transitioning from being an individual contributor to being a marketing manager, a fundamentally

To help you fast-track your growth as a marketing manager, we have several industry-leading experts
who have seen it all educating you about various challenges you might face and how to be centered
regardless of any managerial curveballs that may be thrown at you.

Meet the Speakers

1. Colin Campbell - Director of Marketing at Sales Hacker

Colin Campbell is the Director of Marketing at Sales Hacker, Inc.

Colin is one of the leading authorities with regards to content strategy, SEO, analytics, marketing
performance measurement and social media.

He believes that marketing, if done right, should feel like giving a gift. With over 10 years of marketing
experience under his belt, he has been a major part of many companies’ successes. Some of the notable
companies that he’s worked with include Brafton Inc. and Easy Energy of Massachusettes, LLC.

2. Jill Soley - Bestselling author of Beyond Product

As a product management and marketing leader, Jill Soley embraces a collaborative, customer-focused
approach to product and marketing management.

She has worked with over 10+ high-impact, high-growth public and startup companies in her marketing
career of 16 years. Some of the notable brands that she has worked with include Freshworks Inc,
Cloverpop, Adobe, Siebel systems, Sony Pictures Imageworks, etc.

3. Wes Bush - Best-selling author of Product-led Growth

Wes Bush is the bestselling author of "Product-Led Growth: How To Build a That Sells Itself."
He believes the way we buy software has changed over the last several years. He says that the days of
hiding your product behind closed doors - where potential customers need to sit through a long, drawn-
out sales call just to see what the product is capable of - is gone and that it's time to lead with your
product and let people see for themselves if you can deliver on your promise.

With over 9 years of marketing and teaching experience, he has worked with notable brands like Axonify,
Vidyard, TEDxUW to help meet their targets with his product marketing expertise.

4. Eric Keating - VP of Marketing at Appcues

Eric Keating is the VP of Marketing at Appcues.

Being a go-to-market business leader, he is known for building efficient demand generation functions,
telling compelling stories, developing customer-centric product roadmaps, and fostering high-
performance teams.

He has over 17 years of marketing experience and expertise in strategy building, digital and product
marketing, and he has worked with brands like Appcues, Zaius, Kantar Millward Brown.

5. Janani Dwaraknath - Head of Product Marketing at Freshworks

Janani Dwaraknath is the head of product marketing at Freshworks Inc.

Janani believes that product marketers give a voice to both the product(s) in the market and vice-versa.

Packing a work experience of over 10 years as a marketing professional, she has worked with big brands
like Cognizant Technology Solutions and Freshworks and enabled them to achieve significant feats with
regards to brand recognition, PR and product marketing.

6. Russ Somers - VP of Marketing at TrustRadius:

Russ Somers is the VP of Marketing at TrustRadius, he is intent on bringing truth to the market. Being an
experienced leader skilled in corporate marketing, demand generation, product marketing, and
communications, his finesse lies in combining strategic vision with analytical insight and execution.

He has over 20+ years of marketing experience and has worked with over 8 notable brands including
Trendkite, sonarDesign Inc, Invodo, and more.
Role of Marketing in an Organization

The role of marketing in an organization keeps changing as the company grows. It even varies from one
organization to the other. What are some of the constants you can count on? What are the areas in
which the rest of the company will always depend on marketing?

A marketing team is responsible for:

- Influencing prospects and customers to take desired actions.

- Bringing out the value proposition of the product or service and getting customers to experience it.

- Enabling two-way communication between a company and its customers.

- Deciding your branding and messaging and enabling the whole company to own it.

- Executing the 4 Ps - product, price, place or distribution, promotion - no matter how big or small the
company is.

Another definition > "Marketing is a strategy we use for getting your ideal target market to know you, to
trust enough to become a customer by building relationships".

Setting goals

Focusing on individual things can often prevent you and your team from achieving the bigger picture.
When you are setting your goals, make sure that they inspire your team to derive their own! How can
you do this?

- Invest more time in setting short term and long term goals.

- Once these goals are set, make sure to hold people accountable and do so justly.

- Always ask yourself WHY you are doing what you are doing.

- Set your team,s goals , but also encourage your team members to make their own goals.

Allocating marketing budgets

Planning out your budget so you can achieve your goals is a complex process. What are some parameters
you can focus on to get it right? How do you know you're spending on the right things?

- Set the goals you want to achieve and break down your budget into sections based on this.

- Hire the right team for your needs.

- Allocate a budget for experimentation. Don't be afraid of making short-term changes.

- Automate, but don't be impersonal.

Alignment Between Marketing and Other Teams

Marketing teams need to collaborate with sales, product, design, and other teams. This is how you can
ensure that your product is attractive and something people will buy. What are some rules of
engagement that helps these relationships function smoothly?

- Understand the needs of your sales team.

- Communicate with your sales team, your customers and your leaders.

- Figure out if your product is a solution.

- Make sure your marketers, your web development and design people sit together.

KPIs to Measure

KPI - key performance indicators

Marketing without measurement is not marketing. How can you look at the right KPIs for your
campaigns and quantify your progress to see how close you are to achieving your goals?

KPIs to look at - visibility --- website traffic, social media views, impressions

- engagement --- shares, likes, comments, saved

- returning users

- Look for leading measures and lag measures.

- Focus on building a returning base of users.

- Know what your objectives are and figure out the simplest way to do it.

- Focus on measuring the hard-core metrics but also be open to surprises.

Focus on the 4 - Leads, Conversions, Value (e.g. Monetary) & Frequency. These determine the true value
+ growth potential. Build everything else around them.
How to Think About Hiring?

When it comes to the tasks a manager has, often, the most important one is hiring the right people. You
have to figure out how you can identify and train your potential hires so that you end up with an
awesome team. How can you go about the hiring process?

- Do not outsource your hiring.

- If you're a small company hire generalists.

- Hire people who think differently than you, who have different skill sets.

Advice for Aspiring Marketing Managers

As a new manager, you may be wondering how to excel in your new role. You need to be able to inspire
and empower your team as well as constantly learn on the job. How can you be a phenomenal manager
who gets things done, and done well?

- You're starting from scratch again so be willing to learn.

- Understand metrics and double down on channels that work for you.

- Be picky about taking advice.

- Hire people smarter than you, set direction, then unblock and enable them.

- Build empathy with your team, don't be a dictator and don't pretend to be perfect.

- Lead through influence, not authority. Build empathy.

- When it comes to feedback, ask questions instead of making statements.

Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is about the right content reaching the right audience at the right time. How do you
make sure your content is timely and of great quality?

- Talk to the sales team or to the audience directly if possible, to know what content to create.

- Drive people towards trying your product with un-gated content.

- Be where the customers are searching for you.

- Consistency and repetition are the two keys to a good content marketing strategy.
Content Distribution Strategy

Once you have your strategy in place, you have to distribute your content properly to your audience.
Whether it is through organic channels or through paid measures, it's important to make sure it reaches
your audience. How can you ensure that your content stays fresh in your customers' minds?

- Spend 30% of your time and effort making the content and 70% on promoting and distributing it.

- Figure out who your audience is and come up with the right distribution plan to reach out to them.

- Speak to the sales team and ask them their input.

- Reuse, recycle and repurpose your content in different forms.

- Work with your demand generation team to bring in more visibility to your high-quality content.

SAS = Statistical Analysis System

SAAS = Software as a service

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

What is Product Marketing?

Product marketing is often misunderstood as it lies at the convergence of your sales, marketing, and
product teams. What exactly does being a product marketer entail and what are they trying to achieve?

--- Responsibilities of product marketers : market research, competitive research, customer acquisition
(positioning and messaging, deciding the channels, product launches, sales enablement, pricing),
customer retention (customer communication, customer marketing programs), identifying potential
growth markets

- Let the customers try the product before purchasing it.

'Product puts things ON the shelf and product marketing takes things OFF the shelf.' I don't think it can
be explained any simpler. Yes, there are various methods, multi-stage processes, and evolving techniques
to keep in mind. It all boils down to the one simple question. How would you sell that product?

Product marketing is not just limited to knowing the market and doing research but to find the
intersection between everything market research, customer needs market behavior and everything and
sharing it with other teams to accelerate their goals.

How to Hire Product Marketers?

Product marketers need to comprehend the product completely to be able to create messaging. They
also have to make sure your sales team can sell your product. What do you look for when you're hiring
for such a role?

- A product marketer should be able to: analyze, strategize, tell a story, execute, measure.

- Soft skills to look for while hiring product marketers: a love for people, a knack for collaboration, ability
to build influence, ability to coordinate.

Product Marketing KPIs

Product marketing KPIs are usually different than general marketing KPIs as they have an additional focus
on customer lifecycle and sales close rates. So what KPIs matter to product marketers?

- KPIs are set depending on your goals

If your goal is the revenue you can measure the revenue growth and the deal size.

If the goal is acquisition you can measure the new customer growth rate, the win/conversion rate.

If your goal is retention you can measure the adoption rate, the churn rate, the monthly active users, C-
SAT.

Churn is the measure of how many customers stop using a product. This can be measured based on
actual usage or failure to renew (when the product is sold using a subscription model).

If the goal is sales enablement you can measure the close rate.

For a goal like customer lifecycle you can measure: product or feature adoption, monthly/daily active
users, retention, customer advocacy - like reviews and case studies.

Product Marketer could/should additionally focus on building/ supporting the Product Ecosystem as
well. Take for example the Product Marketplaces that SAP or a Salesforce has. It increases reach,
adoption as well as helps continuously enhance the product in line with Market or even ahead at times.

Distributing Product Messaging Across GTM Teams

In order to be able to sell your product well, you have to ensure not just your customers but also your
sales and other customer-facing teams understand it. How would you effectively distribute your product
messaging across your various teams?

* A go-to-market (GTM)

Internal marketing tips: have a consistent place to store everything, communicate repeatedly and make
sure you enable every single employee.

Alignment Between Product and Marketing Teams

Product management and marketing roles have the same goal. So working closely is key to making the
customer successful. What steps can you take to work align product marketing with the product teams?

What product marketing can provide to product management:

- identify the gaps and important things that aren,t happening

- work together to prioritize what needs to happen

- divide and conquer these tasks based on skills and interests

How to align with the product team: build empathy with the product team, invest in relationships with
people, help them understand your "why".

Community and Partnerships

A community comes with a variety of gains for everyone involved if done right. Whether it is a partner or
a customer community, they're great places for building relationships and brainstorming ideas. How can
you build and engage a community?

- Understand why you want to create a community.

- Let the community decide what it is, not you.

- Don,t look at communities or partnerships as just transactions.

There are three main components that make a Prospering Community! Those are Need,Want,And
Productivity! By engaging in the community I will learn of need, by partaking in resource solutions, Will
discover wants, and by networking, will see production. If these three are not starved by retoric
strategies of supply and demand. The community would be a thriving One, that balances need, from
want because they are the same in rationale to have a balanced productivity line of profitable resourcing
outcomes.
End of Course

Becoming a marketing manager is not just a big change in your career, but it truly affects everyone who
reports to you or whom you can influence.

Congratulations on completing this course! We hope you got plenty of insights and takeaways from it.