guest post by Barry Doctor, a product marketing manager at Katun Corp.
Congrats!. You’re online. Now you’ve engaged in social media tools. The rise of social media has really revolutionized the tools I use to perform my product marketing role. Over the past years I have been using Twitter to really help make my life a little bit easier.
There are still a lot of comments that are flying back and forth about how to use Twitter for the best and biggest bang. The answer is simple – there is no one size fits all. Stop looking for it. Now more than ever, multiple people in your organization are engaged in social media. And, I support the notion that it is no longer a single source media – that it should be shared by multiple groups to support everyone’s goals.
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(This article is cross-posted as a guest post at onproductmanagement.net)
As product marketing professionals, we are tasked by senior leadership with understanding the buyer persona and directing the creation of marketing materials that tout the benefits of our product to those specific personas, benefits that solve the buying problems of the market. We are tasked with understanding the voice of the customer. We are tasked with win/loss analysis, competitor analysis, branding and sales psychology. Strategic stuff. Big picture stuff. Important stuff that makes sales more efficient and ultimately brings revenue in the door.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is fairest… is that how your typical presentations start? Sounds a bit ego-driven, doesn’t it?
How about when you are networking? Do you introduce yourself with a simple handshake and a pleasant comment or two? Or, do you go into a long dialogue on who you are, what you think, how you act, what matters to you? A few people do this, but does it make for a good networking introduction?
Of course not. Most of us acknowledge ourselves and move on in the conversation with the person we have just met. We try to learn as much as we can about them, trying to establish a relationship that is mutual.
In a recent blog post, Forrester CEO George Colony wrote that CEO’s want better sales forces. As the sales enablement arm of the organization, how do product marketing professionals, ensure that our sales team is effective and ready to sell our new products and have well designed sales tools aligned to the ever-changing sales cycle?
Alignment. (n) ə-ˈlīn-mənt: the act of aligning or state of being aligned; especially the proper positioning or state of adjustment of parts (as of a mechanical or electronic device) in relation to each other. (more…)
