Unlocking product marketing potential with data
Summary article by Anastasiia Shpiliak & Leonard Burger
Leveraging quantitative and qualitative data is crucial in every step along the product marketing journey. From company to company, and product to product, setting up processes to collect, handle and analyse data to make product marketing truly data-driven can be challenging.
In this panel discussion;
- Maya Lawrence, Deputy Head of Product Marketing at Sopra Banking Software (SBS),
- Lucie Casamitjana, Head of Product Marketing at Skello,
- And, Aditi Trivedi, Product Marketing Manager at Revolut,
discuss how to unlock product marketing’s true potential using data.
Touching on their own experiences we dove into what ‘data’ is in each company. Whether products are delivered in a business to business (B2B — Maya), business to consumer (B2C — Aditi) or indeed Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C — Lucie) manner, impacts how data is utilised.
[Anastasiia] What is data in your company and what is the setup of your data team?
Maya: SBS is a subsidiary of Sopra Steria, influencing team structures and data collaboration. Data is pivotal across multiple functions, affecting not only the consultancy arm’s advice to customers but also the delivery of our SaaS products at SBS.
Within the product marketing team, and the broader marketing team, several members specifically use data. Its application varies depending on the task at hand.
Our product marketers utilise data in the go-to-market process to both execute and measure the impact of delivery. While other departments use different data collection methods, these are shared across the board to maximise everyone’s effectiveness. This unique approach helps us leverage the synergy generated by all teams using data in different ways.
Lucie: We have a unique business model at Skello. Instead of a specific team owning data, our whole product team is empowered with data, using tools like LUCA. The role of the data analyst is to provide clean, structured data for our own analysis, and everyone is trained to run their analysis on business or product usage data. Support is always available. We use both qualitative and quantitative data; the former for exploration and hypothesis creation, the latter to confirm those hypotheses and reduce uncertainty for prioritisation or success analysis.
Aditi: Revolut is a B2C company grappling with large amounts of data. Our product marketing decisions rely heavily on data. Every initiative is backed by a business case, with a team of 15 product marketers managing numerous products. Prioritisation requires solid data backing.
In product development, every feature or UI/UX update is data-backed, including research. We have UI researchers gathering qualitative data from customer interactions. Interestingly, many customers are fans of our product and provide valuable insights.
[Anastasiia] Let’s focus on using data in the various stages of product marketing, the first of which are the crucial areas of market research and analysis which is the interlinked messaging and positioning stage. How do you make sure that data is helping you during these stages?
Maya: Our product marketing process begins with three stages. Firstly, strategising, where we rely on analysts and our marketing intelligence team to provide us with essential research. This helps us formulate a statement of direction for the product marketing process.
They gather and analyse information to understand the addressable market and potential product-market fit. In my experience with the customer engagement team, we focused on front-end solutions for banks, developing software for banking apps. When expanding the product into our digital banking suite, we commissioned a study with Forrester to understand market needs.
We surveyed hundreds of banks and identified top use cases. The findings guided our product roadmap and influenced our messaging and positioning. The last stage involves understanding the competitive landscape to identify differentiators and position ourselves in the market.
Data from our analysts and marketing intelligence team is invaluable in the early stages of the process, providing a solid foundation for subsequent marketing efforts.
Lucy: Our team, now scaled up to five members, includes Lorette who’s responsible for market intelligence. She continuously keeps track of market trends and competition, as infrequent checks risk outdated data. Our tasks include global market analysis, mapping the workforce management ecosystem, understanding the personas, their KPIs, and our position in the market.
We also conduct win-loss analysis to understand how customers perceive us. These findings are crossed with quantitative data, such as win rate and churn rate, to extract valuable insights. This information feeds our product strategy and helps create battle cards for sales.
When crafting our positioning, we consider our current and desired market position along with qualitative data from customer interviews. These interviews focus on customer aspirations rather than typical user feedback. The combination of this data helps build a solid market position that resonates with our audience.
Messaging, although related, is separate from positioning. It’s an adaptive process that changes based on the audience and channel. All of this is data-driven, and in specific cases, we launch MVPs in test countries to gauge customer response to the product and its messaging.
In summary, our approach to product marketing involves continuous market intelligence, data-backed decision making, customer-centric analysis, and adaptive messaging, all aimed at competitive positioning.
[Anastasiia] So how does this work for you when it comes to the discovery phase?
Lucy: In the discovery or pre-roadmapping phase, we identify opportunities to improve our North Star metric. We explore data, measure cost and impact, and verify our decisions using internal data.
Once the roadmap is validated, we examine the problem or opportunity in detail during the product cycle’s discovery phase. Our team, consisting of product managers, designers, and product marketing managers (PMMs), focuses on different aspects without overlap.
The PMM offers market insight, qualitative analysis, and outlines aspirations for effective market positioning. This ensures the solution reflects our core values and meets the right market aspirations.
We compile this data during the discovery phase and share it with the product team, guiding our decisions for product development in specific markets and for specific customers.
Aditi: During the discovery stage at Revolut, Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) act as consultants, providing insights about marketing, customer feedback, and competitor actions. However, the actual product discovery is undertaken by a dedicated team. PMMs can help validate their hypotheses and run tests, but their role is somewhat limited in this capacity.
On the other hand, PMMs can offer recommendations based on continuous customer feedback. They use social listening tools and platforms like Reddit to collect feedback. Support chats are another valuable source of feedback.
When repeated feedback emerges, it can be forwarded to the product team with the suggestion, “Customers are asking for this. What do you think? Where does it fit on the roadmap?” Following this, the product team conducts its own discovery and decides on its priority.
Data in the pricing stage
Making decisions in the pricing stage depends on a lot of factors that require teams to leverage different datasets. How does this happen in SBS (B2B) and Revolut (B2C)?
Maya: In pricing our digital banking product suite, we collected data from various sources, considering our existing pricing structure as the suite merged different products.
With multiple products bundled or sold separately, data collection and pricing determination were complex. We had to go beyond the “pay as you grow” model, considering API-based pricing for some products.
Our holistic approach included feedback from pre-sales and sales teams about region-specific prices, competitor pricing, and rates for different tiers of financial institutions.
Hence, expert consultation is essential. Data from surveys, pre-sales teams, or other teams on SaaS cost setup is crucial. It’s vital to have a team to consolidate this data and determine the pricing, ensuring profitability.
[Anastasiia] This is interesting for those working in B2B. Perhaps it can provide insights for those in charge of pricing. However, I do agree that a Product Marketing Manager (PMM) should be involved in the process and should have an impact, at least with their insights. Aditi, how about Revolut?
Aditi: As PMMs at Revolut, we don’t directly influence pricing. While most of Revolut’s products are free, I am responsible for the paid subscription plans. However, the pricing of these plans is controlled by a separate team comprising the global business and finance teams who conduct a thorough analysis.
We can provide input if we believe that customers won’t respond positively to a price change or if it disrupts market positioning. Given that it’s a B2C model, we do have the authority to decide when to offer discounts on the product and the types of campaigns we can run. However, we don’t control the actual pricing of the product. This illustrates the differences in approach between B2C and B2B.
[Anastasiia]: Thanks for sharing. Now on to our final topic, performance-oriented questions are common in all companies and I’ve come across questions where PMMs are to demonstrate their impact on the company’s North Star metric.
This can be challenging, as PMMs frequently work with various groups of metrics — business product sales, for example — but rarely own specific metrics. When they do, these are typically very particular metrics. So, how do you measure the impact a PMM has on the North Star metric, and what is the North Star in your company?
Lucy: As I was explaining, our company is structured into impact teams. Each product squad has a distinct goal, or north star, that directly impacts the company’s business.
PMMs are an integral part of this journey. Their role is to influence the north star, which could be the basket size, Net Promoter Score (NPS), churn rate, etc. However, it’s challenging for PMMs to see their direct impact on these significant metrics. For instance, despite doing their best, they might not affect the churn rate or NPS, as many other factors can influence these figures.
What we tend to do is define additional success KPIs for the product and PMM teams, on top of the north star. These include specific, measurable objectives that we can track based on the actions we take for a particular project. It’s crucial to align these objectives at the project’s onset to ensure we’re moving in the right direction.
For example, we delve into the funnel and our campaigns, tracking click rates for quantitative analysis. For qualitative analysis, we listen to sales and support calls to understand if our messaging and positioning resonate with our audience.
The aim is to learn from this analysis and continuously work on your go-to-market strategy. Remember, a GTM strategy doesn’t stop when the product is launched, it’s an ongoing process. Therefore, it’s crucial to measure and track these KPIs in the mid to long term.
Maya: The concept of a North Star suggests that we all strive towards a single goal, which could be profitability or revenue. However, attributing these outcomes solely to product marketing is challenging. We could consider contract renewals, signed contracts, opportunities, SQLs, MQLs, or website traffic.
However, when managing an entire go-to-market process with various components, each with its unique KPIs, each team or stream has its own North Star contributing to the bigger picture.
One area we’ve sometimes neglected, due to our focus on increasing MQLs and conversion rates, is understanding the sales team’s needs. This includes not only ensuring the messaging and positioning are correct but also whether we are providing the right resources. Are the assets we provide helpful? Do they use them? If not, how can we improve? What have they learned over the years that we could incorporate into the next iteration of these assets?
Our sales team, in our B2B world, are our internal clients and are crucial. We can bring in as many MQLs or SQLs as possible. However, if they can’t use them due to a lack of the right resources, the responsibility falls back on us.
Aditi: I really appreciate this question. In our product marketing team at Revolut, we have our key performance indicators (KPIs) clearly defined each quarter, usually four or five items. We know what our goals are, and our internal infrastructure supports these goals.
One method we have for tracking our progress is by launching campaigns and monitoring their impact. A common campaign we run involves offering a free trial of our paid subscription, which typically costs seven to eight pounds per month. Within 24 hours of launching such a campaign, we can see how many customers have joined.
Other ways we measure the impact of our campaigns include customer feedback, support queue lengths, and responses related to our campaigns. We also track customer engagement with our emails, such as open rates, click-through rates, redemption rates, comprehension, and usage.
In conclusion, this panel discussion emphasised the importance of data in every step of the product marketing journey. They highlighted how companies, regardless of their target markets (B2B, B2C, or B2B2C), utilise data in various ways. Their insights ranged from using data in strategising, formulating market research, making pricing decisions, tracking performance, to making an impact on the company’s North Star metrics. It was evident that leveraging data not only optimises the marketing process but also provides a deeper understanding of the market, user needs, and marketing effectiveness.
🍿 Check out the full recording of the discussion here.
This event is a collaboration between the Product Marketing Alliance (PMA) & SBS having taken place at the SBS Paris office on 28 Nov 2023.
SBS = a software company designing tech solutions for financial institutions worldwide to provide services accessible to each of us, everywhere, anytime
PMA = a one stop shop for all things Product Marketing, insights, events and training. Founded by Richard King and Bryony Pearce, it is part of The Alliance.
