Pragmatic Marketing recap by Brian Kelly
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The document outlines key insights from a pragmatic marketing training attended by Brian Kelly, emphasizing the importance of market-driven strategies in product management and marketing. It advocates for identifying unmet customer needs and utilizing structured approaches to effectively bring products to market. The training, provided by Pragmatic Marketing, Inc., covers foundational concepts, organizational structures, and the critical roles of product teams, development, marketing, and sales in the success of technology companies.
Pragmatic Marketing recap by Brian Kelly
- 1. PRAGMATIC MARKETING TRAINING THAT DIDN’T SUCK Brian Kelly @resetbrian Feb 2016 Ann Arbor LSC Meetup
- 2. IN OCTOBER 2014, I ATTENDED A THREE- DAY TRAINING SESSION IN BOSTON.
- 3. PRAGMATIC MARKETING HERE’S WHAT I LEARNED ▸ Why this topic is relevant to Lean Startup Circle ▸ Who should care about it? ▸ What is Pragmatic Marketing? ▸ How you can apply it 3 Credit / Thanks / Disclaimer: Most of the ideas and content in this presentation are taken directly from Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. I wish they were all mine, but they’re not. I found these ideas so useful that I created this recap to share them with people who might not have heard of Pragmatic Marketing. I highly recommend that you take their training. pragmaticmarketing.com
- 4. IDEAS ARE CHEAP. IT’S ALL ABOUT EXECUTION. Lean Startup Fanboy PRAGMATIC MARKETING 4 WHAT’S MISSING?
- 5. STRATEGY FIRST. THEN A PLAN. THEN EXECUTION.
- 6. PRAGMATIC MARKETING WHO SHOULD CARE ABOUT THIS RECAP? ▸ Product Managers ▸ Product Marketers ▸ Engineers ▸ User Experience Designers ▸ Founders 6 AT COMPANIES OF ALL SIZES
- 7. TL;DR: FOCUS ON FINDING AN UNMET NEED, USE PRAGMATIC MARKETING TO REFINE, BUILD, BRING YOUR SOLUTION TO MARKET
- 8. PRAGMATIC MARKETING PRAGMATIC MARKETING, INC.? ▸ Yep. That’s the training company’s name. ▸ Established 1993 ▸ Focus: Product Management & Product Marketing at technology companies ▸ “Trained tens of thousands of professionals at thousands of companies.” 8
- 9. PRAGMATIC MARKETING COMPANIES THAT ATTENDED MY SESSION (BOSTON, OCTOBER 2014) ▸ Acquia ▸ Backupify ▸ Best Doctors ▸ Blackboard ▸ Bloomberg ▸ Canadian Medical Association ▸ Duo Security ▸ Equifax ▸ Everbridge ▸ IBM ▸ Ipswitch ▸ Polycom ▸ RSA / EMC ▸ Seagate ▸ Wolters Kluwer 9
- 10. PRAGMATIC MARKETING CURRICULUM ▸ Foundations ▸ Focus ▸ Build ▸ Market ▸ Launch ▸ Price 10 Product Management (PM) Product Marketing (PMM) This recap (a bit of each)
- 12. PRAGMATIC MARKETING WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? If you’re in the business of building and selling a product Pragmatic Marketing is a proven model for how be successful. ▸ How to determine if a product should be built ▸ What to do to bring that product to market ▸ Who does what (PMM, PM, MKTG, Sales, …) ▸ When to do it, and how to do it 12
- 14. PRAGMATIC MARKETING WHAT IS BEING “MARKET-DRIVEN?” ▸ Market-driven means we base our decisions on what that market is asking for. ▸ It’s being outside-in. ▸ It’s not thinking inside-out and focusing on what we can do. 14 What is being “market-driven”? Market-driven means we base our decisions on what that market is asking for. → Be outside-in. It’s not: Thinking inside-out and focusing on what we can do.
- 15. AN OUTSIDE-IN APPROACH INCREASES THE LIKELIHOOD OF PRODUCT SUCCESS PRAGMATIC RULE
- 17. THE AIM OF MARKETING IS TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND THE CUSTOMER SO WELL THAT THE PRODUCT OR SERVICE FITS HIM AND SELLS ITSELF. Peter Drucker PRAGMATIC MARKETING 17
- 18. PRAGMATIC MARKETING SO, WAIT, WE DON’T NEED A SALES TEAM? If it was only that simple! ‣ Marketing gets customer attention… ‣ But, some customers prefer working with sales, and sales reps are often needed for large, complex deals. 18
- 19. PRAGMATIC MARKETING THE PRAGMATIC P’S 19 Product, Price, Promotion, Place What’s missing? Problem Which one do companies often put too much focus on?
- 21. Strategy Execution Less Technical Markets and Business More Technical Products and Technology
- 22. PRAGMATIC MARKETING TYPICAL APPROACH: EXECUTION-FIRST Problems with this approach ▸ Activities have a lot of guesswork ▸ It’s really hard to make an impact with tactics because we don’t yet have a strategic view of the market (a.k.a. we don’t know the problems well enough, yet). 22
- 23. PRAGMATIC MARKETING BETTER APPROACH: STRATEGY-FIRST ▸ Do everything from the left. ▸ This gives us everything we need for the right. 23
- 24. PRAGMATIC MARKETING START WITH THE PROBLEM ▸ Get this right, and it will multiply the effect of every single other activity. 24
- 25. GOAL: TAKE EVERYTHING THAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE MARKET AND DISTILL IT INTO ONE PAGE. LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock reidhoffman.org/linkedin-pitch-to-greylock/
- 26. PRAGMATIC MARKETING TYPICAL SOURCES OF IDEAS Loudest voices in the room ▸ Input from sales team, tech support, user groups, (some) execs ▸ This results in enhancement requests, special one-offs, etc. Don’t do this! ▸ This is the noisy 20% of the market ▸ We should be focusing on the quiet 80% 26 PROTIP: QUIET DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE HAPPY
- 27. MARKET SEGMENTS
- 28. THE BUILDING IS FULL OF PRODUCT EXPERTS. YOUR COMPANY NEEDS MARKET EXPERTS. PRAGMATIC RULE
- 29. IN EVERY MARKET SEGMENT, WE HAVE Potentials Evaluators Customers Market Segment: A group of individuals or businesses that share a set of problems.
- 30. PRAGMATIC MARKETING CUSTOMERS ▸ People who have gone through the process to evaluate solutions to a problem they identified they have, and they have purchased something. 30 Potentials Evaluators Customers Our customers Customers of our competitors HOW ARE YOU REACHING YOUR COMPETITORS’ CUSTOMERS?
- 31. PRAGMATIC MARKETING EVALUATORS ▸ People who want to do something about their problem, but haven’t purchased anything, yet. 31 Potentials Evaluators Customers HOW ARE YOU REACHING EVERY EVALUATOR?
- 32. PRAGMATIC MARKETING POTENTIALS ▸ People that we believe have a problem, but they don’t know they have that problem, yet. 32 Potentials Evaluators Customers
- 33. PRAGMATIC MARKETING DEFINE YOUR MARKET SEGMENTS Market Segment: A group of individuals or businesses that share a set of problems. 33 ▸ Bad Examples ▸ Fortune 500 ▸ Global 2000 ▸ Mid-tier ▸ Wireless ▸ Good examples ▸ Organizations that must produce regulatory reports ▸ Field salespeople that need to update the home office from the road
- 34. PRAGMATIC MARKETING USE SEGMENTS TO FIGURE OUT YOUR POSITION ▸ For each segment, identify: ▸ Your distinctive competencies ▸ The competition ▸ Barriers to entry 34 ▸ Align with strategy ▸ Sales channels ▸ Development teams ▸ Technology direction
- 35. THE ANSWER TO MOST OF YOUR QUESTIONS IS NOT IN THE BUILDING. PRAGMATIC RULE PROTIP: SPEAK WITH A CUSTOMER EVERYDAY
- 36. PRAGMATIC MARKETING INTERVIEW EVERY TYPE, IN EACH OF YOUR MARKET SEGMENTS ▸ Customers tell us the past ▸ Evaluators tell you about the present ▸ Potentials tell you about the future 36 Potentials Evaluators Customers
- 37. PRAGMATIC MARKETING FIND THE QUIET 80% ▸ Training classes ▸ Conferences ▸ Associations ▸ Executives and colleagues ▸ Social networks 37
- 38. PRAGMATIC MARKETING ASK… CUSTOMERS AND POTENTIALS ▸ What drives you crazy about your job? ▸ What drives your buying decisions? ▸ What do you think of my company / product? ▸ Who are my competitors, and what do you think of them? ▸ What great products have you seen lately? 38
- 39. PRAGMATIC MARKETING OBSERVE ▸ Start with an open agenda ▸ Understand “a day in the life” ▸ When do they pick up a pencil? ▸ How do they survive without your technology? When in doubt, listening is better than talking. 39
- 40. PRAGMATIC MARKETING MANY INPUTS, ONE PROBLEM Problem Statements ▸ “I need a file-indexing database, coupled with a complex query engine, which would allow ad-hoc search and retrieval of documents by random criteria.” ▸ I look bad when I waste time looking through 20 directories and I can’t find the one file that we need.” 40 Bad. Good!
- 41. YOU CAN LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY, BUT YOU WILL BE FAR MORE EFFECTIVE IF YOU LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE DO. Seth Godin PRAGMATIC MARKETING 41
- 42. PRAGMATIC MARKETING EVERYONE IS A PRAGMATIC MARKETER ▸ My buyers tell me that… ▸ I have a neighbor in our industry and she said… ▸ I met a competitor’s customer on the plane… ▸ I recently attended a conference and met… ▸ I made a cold call and heard… ▸ Our user group said… ▸ While visiting our clients I learned… 42
- 43. ONLY BUILD SOLUTIONS FOR PROBLEMS THAT ARE URGENT, PERVASIVE AND THAT THE MARKET WILL PAY TO SOLVE. PRAGMATIC RULE
- 45. PRAGMATIC MARKETING ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 45 DEV MARCOM SALES PRODUCT TEAM build stuff sell stuff promote stuff
- 46. PRAGMATIC MARKETING ACCOUNTABILITY ▸ Product Team: Collects and quantifies the problem ▸ Development: Solves the problem ▸ Marketing Communications: Promotes the product ▸ Sales Channel: Helps people buy 46 HOW WELL IS YOUR COMPANY KEEPING THESE RESPONSIBILITIES SEPARATE, TODAY?
- 47. IF THE PRODUCT TEAM DOESN’T DO ITS JOB, OTHER DEPARTMENTS WILL FILL THE VOID. PRAGMATIC RULE
- 48. 37 activities Which are the most compelling, right now?
- 50. Less Technical DEFINE OWNERS More Technical
- 51. PRAGMATIC MARKETING IN CLOSING ▸ Discover and validate market problems ▸ Focus on markets and problems to identify the best opportunities ▸ Create market-driven artifacts (personas, buying process, etc.) ▸ Clearly define the lines of each team: product, dev, comm, sales Run the product like a business of it’s own. 51
- 52. Brian Kelly @resetbrian Ann Arbor LSC Meetup Feb 2016 THANKS Now, go take this training! pragmaticmarketing.com