Author Archives: Marisa Kopec

About the Author

Marisa Kopec is Vice President and Group Director, Go-to-Market, at SiriusDecisions. She leads SiriusDecisions’ Product Marketing and Management service, delivering research and advice to help product marketers and managers succeed. Follow Marisa on Twitter @Marisa_Kopec

Portfolio Marketing Is the Whole Enchilada

SiriusDecisions’ perspective is that the traditional catch-all term “product marketing” cannot encapsulate the go-to-market functional competency of a b-to-b company – the categorization is too narrow. Though product marketing is still an absolutely necessary role in the marketing ecosystem, the term doesn’t accurately describe the holistic high-level marketing competency required to bring a b-to-b organization’s portfolio to market. And bolting on “solution,” “segment” etc. within the “product marketing” category is not the right answer. How does this internal naming problem get solved? We recommend that “portfolio marketing” become the new umbrella functional categorization term representing all job roles focused on marketing segmentation/sizing, persona definition, content ideation, launch, sales enablement and go-to-market planning for all elements of an organization’s portfolio across products, services, industries, audiences and solutions.

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Product Launch Has Changed. Have You?

Inbound marketing is driving the need for a redefinition of product launch processes. By 2015, SiriusDecisions predicts that 71 percent of all inquiries will be inbound in nature. This trend must be reflected in launch budgets and strategies, which, historically, have been heavy on events and direct marketing. Organizations that plan and execute inbound marketing techniques (e.g. search engine optimization, search engine marketing, digital marketing, Web site conversion optimization, social media) fueled by thematic, topical, thought leadership content aligned to audience needs do so at their own peril.

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When Did the Business Case Become Passé?

Do all product managers in your company use the same template when creating a business case for innovation investment? Do you even have a consistent business case process for making investment decisions? When these processes are inconsistent among product managers or business units, flawed investment decisionmaking is the result. Reasons are cloudy regarding what and how to innovate vs. companies that have a tight business rationale for their go-to-market processes and proper decisionmaking authority ingrained in the culture. Here is my advice (toward making the business case cool again):

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A Call for Mandatory Social Media Upskilling

I listen to conversations about the merits and future of social media and networking for b-to-b. I sit across the table from b-to-b executives who don’t believe that social is impacting or will impact their buyers’ behavior. The most common myth repeated over and over again to me is: C-level decisionmakers don’t have time or are just too important to use social media. To be honest, it feels like déjà vu -- it’s the exact same dialogue the industry had about impact of the Internet on b-to-b buying. And I’m pretty sure that, down the road, we won’t be having this conversation anymore, and social won’t be a issue; it will be just an ubiquitous component in the marketing and sales ecosystem, just as the corporate Web site has become over the past two decades.

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

As an analyst on the product marketing and management (PMM) team at SiriusDecisions, I listen every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, to the suffering of b-to-b professionals due to the lack of alignment in b-to-b organizations. It’s saddening to witness bright, successful, driven people – who all just want to see their company grow and be prosperous – downtrodden by imbalances in workflow processes or conflicts resulting from accountability tension between product, marketing and sales.

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How C-Level Executives Validate Their Vendor Choices

There are six stages in the SiriusDecisions Customer Buying Cycle. The final stage, “making the selection,” is the inflection point in the purchasing lifecycle when terms and conditions, contract negotiations and the implementation plan with the vendor of choice are all finalized. It’s the last checkpoint to ensure that the decision is the right one before final signoff by the key decisionmaker. At this stage, C-level executives are typically fully engaged and thus can make or break a deal. In our recent C-level buyer persona study, offering several bulleted potential responses from which to choose, we asked C-level executives: Which of the bullets carry the most weight when you are validating your decision to select one vendor vs. another?

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When Do CIOs Respond to Marketing Messages?

Best-in-class marketers leverage persona exercises to form an understanding of a customer segment that enables powerful audience-based communications and personalized content to be shaped. The more granular and specific the understanding of the buyer persona, the more meaningful the messaging created for that persona will be. The apex of our b-to-b persona template is job role. The SiriusDecisions 2012 persona study found that 29 percent of CIOs are most likely to respond to a marketing message when it is relevant to the CIO job role. What this means for marketers is that, when targeting CIOs with content and campaigns, the value proposition should include the CIO’s functional responsibility in the organization and how he or she is measured. Understanding a “day in the life” of the CIO persona is crucial.

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What’s Really the Difference Between Solution and Product Content?

There’s a big difference between solution messaging and product messaging. However, a lot of solution content falls short of its intended goal – not really manifesting into anything other than product content. Good solution content might not even mention a product. It’s more focused on engaging the audience in a conversation, at least at first. Here are the common attributes of best-in-class solution content.

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Solution Messaging: Don’t Write Copy. Build a Grid Instead.

The best way to start creating solution content is not to write copy. Before pen goes to paper, or fingers go to keyboard, stop. Before you create anything, draft the structural framework of the messaging. SiriusDecisions recommends a creative brainstorming session that involves whiteboarding the ideas in a grid structure.

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A SiriusDecisions Secret to Product Launch Success

Want to know a secret to product launch success? Create a solution handbook for the offering being launched. And, even though we call it a “solution” handbook, it can be used for a product, service or solution.

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