Welcome to the Product marketing insider podcast brought to you by the Product Marketing alliance.
Behind the scenes, we’ve been talking to lots of product marketers from across the globe to get insider info about their journey into the world of product marketing.
In episode five we speak to the product marketing team at G2
If you want to hear more from G2 they'll be in attendance (maybe even presenting) at the Product Marketing Summit in Chicago
Full transcript:
Bryony Pearce - PMA 0:00
So I guess if we could just start off if you just run through for everyone listening, who we're speaking to today?
Yoni Soloman 0:05
Sure, I'll kick it off. My name is Yoni Solomon and I'm head of Product Marketing here at G2.
Aubyn Casady 0:09
I'm Aubyn Casady and I'm Senior Product Marketing Manager.
Gina Carr 0:14
And then I'm Gina Carr and I'm a Product Marketing Specialist.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 0:21
So if we could just start off by kind of giving a bit of background and what made you all want to get into product marketing in the first place?
Gina Carr 0:33
So I had a little bit of a windy path to get to product marketing, I didn't start in it right away. I've been at G2 since I graduated college and I started as a customer success manager. Umm and then when we realised we needed an implementation team I helped to build that team out, and as I was creating more of the collateral and doing the documentation and figuring out the messaging, I realised that I liked more of the creative aspect of things. And so then when the time came and there was an opening on our marketing team, I just kind of wiggled my way over into product marketing and it was definitely a better fit for me. So I could use the creative side of my brain that I wasn't using quite so much with customer success.
Aubyn Casady 1:24
And I started working in kind of a full funnel management role but a lot of focus on sales execution and business development, and there was some marketing elements to that role, this is like my first job out of college, and I kept finding, like, as I was closing deals or attempting to close deals, there was so much missing, like I didn't have the tools that I needed, I didn't have the collateral or the support or the enablement. And so I kind of worked more and more backwards through my career, like, from managing a deal and relationship management all the way back to like, okay, I want to start developing one cheaters or things that can support the sale. And then as I was working on that, I realised like, I don't even have the messaging or the foundational strategy to support that collateral. So it was kind of like a work backwards until I got to the point where I felt like I was actually able to create the foundational thoughts that supported that sale. So it's kind of been an effort and a journey to figure out how to support our sales team ultimately.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 2:21
I guess though, has that really helped you going from that journey, because I guess now you understand the entire journey from start to finish.
Aubyn Casady 2:28
I think it definitely helps me have a tonne more empathy than maybe a lot of traditional marketers do for the close because, yeah, my philosophy is if this doesn't ultimately translate to dollars and growing our business, what we're doing as marketers doesn't matter. So, um, yeah, I think that experience definitely helps.
Yoni Soloman 2:49
Yeah, and you know, I would say similar to these two and to probably most product marketers I talk to, I found my way into Product Marketing by accident as well. I started in client success in my first job out of school and really got a sense of how our tools worked from a functionality standpoint, but actually started to talk to real people about the differences that these capabilities make in their daily lives and their workflows, and I wanted to find a way to capture those stories for my company, because we weren't really doing that at the time. And so I spent about five and a half years, and my first job out of school playing in pretty much every single area of marketing storytelling you can imagine, I ran PR, wrote all the content, managed content marketing, built out channel, ran demand-gen, even implemented our first marketing automation platform. And I think what was great about working in all these areas was I found myself naturally living at this fun intersection of sales, product and marketing, which you know, at the time I didn't know it, but that really is what product marketing is. And so before I know it, I found myself running Product Marketing before I had a solid concept of what it really was or what it could do. And yeah, so I continue to love living in between these teams to act as like a glue, right, to help product, marketing and sales, like in sequential order, work together and align to reach their goals.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 4:09
Okay, sounds good. And how long have you three been a team for now?
Yoni Soloman 4:13
Boy, I've been here eight months, Gina's easily the longest tenured.
Gina Carr 4:16
I've been here for four years
Yoni Soloman 4:17
And Aubyn?
Aubyn Casady 4:19
I started in April so we're we're hitting the six month mark.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 4:22
Oh okay, so you're quite new still.
Yoni Soloman 4:25
Right. So for like Product Marketing, the thing that I've joked around with everyone is that like somehow, you know, three people who have never worked together before, we came together and in about eight months built the Product Marketing Team of the Year.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 4:43
Not bad going, you've set high standards for the future! So how does your team structure work? Like, how do you divide it up?
Yoni Soloman 4:49
Yeah. So I think what makes G2 really interesting and feel free to chime in, is that it's very much a jigsaw puzzle of a product suite. There's like a tonne of different business units that all live under this umbrella that we call G2, with solutions that impacts technology vendors who literally put their solutions on our marketplace, right, to sell and engage with buyers. We have solutions for research and content, we essentially have a business unit that acts as like a mini analyst firm within G2. And then we even have new solutions through acquisitions that we've made that now impact CIOs and CTOs. And so there's a wide gamut of businesses that all operate under G2 and the only way for this team to sort of take all that together and turn it into one strategy is for all of us to be aligned to this specific business unit of the G2 house.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 5:34
Okay, and then before this team was formed then, was it a case of product and marketing were quite siloed and you join them together? Or do you know how it looked before you all came together?
Gina Carr 5:48
So our marketing team was pretty small for a while, when I joined it was maybe like six or seven people, so pretty tiny and everyone was a little more generalised, but not quite so specialised into the different aspects of marketing. But then as our team grew like, now we're, what 70 people total, so it got a little easier to have that, like, focus, and work with product more, but I would never say it was like fully separate. It wasn't like, you know, everyone was arguing and head butting or things like that. Umm it was just very much the startup thing of everyone's wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot of things, so it's just a little more organised chaos now we've got some more people.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 6:49
And then how, like, how would you describe your relationship to product and marketing? Do you all get on well? Is there any friction? Or? And how do you kind of like, how do you share the workload? So in terms of copy, would that all go to marketing or would you take some it yourself and then pass it over at a later stage?
Aubyn Casady 7:07
I mean, yeah, I'll speak to that. I think we actually achieved a pretty great process interacting with not just product and sales and marketing, but like the different divisions within that. So I think, um, G2 has done us a huge favour by staffing people who are like truly experts in their in their field. So as product marketers, we understand where our responsibility starts and stops, and that's understanding the need of sales, the function of product and pulling that into some foundational messaging for us to go to market. But we all, unlike you and our copywriter, we understand that there's somebody else who's going to be way better at taking our messaging and turning that into conversions. And we understand that there's going to be a sales team that's way better at taking our messaging and having that conversation. And then there's a product team who understands how this product functions much better than we do. So I think everybody at G2 really understands like, this is what I'm great at, this is what you're great at, if we can all come together then we can create this pretty functional process. Yeah, somehow since I've come on, like this three person team has managed to tap all of those skills from other teams. And I mean, our launch rate is, like, literally a launch a week. So that's like a testament to our ability to like march right through these launches effectively and yeah, I've never been a part of something where people like truly get that.
Yoni Soloman 8:27
Yeah, it's not a new webinar or anything like that either, that's like a new capability and integration, research, launch or reports or even a partnership, we literally, we bought two companies in the first like six months of my time here, so I would easily put our sort of launch cadence as far as new capabilities to market on pace with that. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a company in technology, especially one of this size, that launches as much as we do.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 8:57
Yeah, that's real good. Before I came onto the podcast I was expecting an auditorium full of people that I was going to be podcasting, so when I saw just three of you I was really impressed.
Yoni Soloman 9:07
That's so funny because before we walked in here I turned to Aubyn and I was like, this is gonna be really funny when they see this is only three people.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 9:14
Well at first when I just saw you Yoni I was like, wait, surely this isn't a one-man band? I was expecting it to keep going!
Yoni Soloman 9:24
Small but mighty team. But yeah, I think Aubyn really hit the nail on the head. It's like the things that I think we've done really well at as far as managing this process is one, defining our go to market process. Especially at startups, I think sometimes process people can roll their eyes at, you know, there's this big culture at G2 around doing it live and moving quickly and I totally understand that, but when when you have a process that you can repeat, rather than inhibiting fast paces and moving quickly, it becomes like a launchpad to actually just like get things done with like ruthless efficiency, time and time again. And so we've really, we've nailed the process part and I think the handoffs, like Aubyn said, from us to, for example, our creative team, it's just, it's been like one of the most fun elements of this business, watching our foundational work get turned into magic by all the other people at G2 who do what they do best.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 10:10
Awesome, thank you. And then if there is such a thing, what does a standard day sort of look like for you all? I get the impression there isn't such a thing but I ask it anyway.
Gina Carr 10:27
I don't know, I feel like that's a really hard question. Like, like I said, I came from customer success, where it was a very structured thing, like you had an implementation call, and you had a kickoff call, and you had designated things that you had to do. So coming into marketing was kind of a change for me and I have to figure out how to, like schedule my own time and like, be like, okay, I need this long to work on this, and this long to work on that. Umm, so with all of the different launches, it isn't really the same day to day so that's kind of a hard one to sum up.
Yoni Soloman 11:12
Yeah. And I wouldn't say it's the same day-to-day anywhere and that's what makes product marketing so tricky. And so like, even product marketers at other companies, both in Chicago and around the country that I talk to pretty regularly, the job changes everywhere you go. And so I don't think any of us in product marketing are having an ordinary day-to-day at any given point, but like, you know, I think the closest I can come to it is, you know, having to live at the intersection of sales, product and marketing, I would say like the biggest focus of our days, each and every day, is to make sure that the capabilities that we're rolling out are aligned properly to campaigns that the marketing team wants to run, that are then properly aligned to sales goals and enablement that needs to happen with those teams. Kind of just making sure like we run air traffic control is the way I would explain it.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 12:00
That's a nice way to put it.
Aubyn Casady 12:01
Yeah, I think that's dead on. There are no two days that have the same set of meetings or the same set of conversations. But, because we are launching something literally every week, I think because we have that process in place that allows us to like manage the chaos a little bit better, because we know what's coming up next, like any given week I know all three of us are working on messaging for something at the beginning stage of a launch, all three of us are working with creative and with demand gen to figure out what those next steps are to go to market, and then all three of us are working on some sort of sales enablement to make sure sales have conversations that are effective. So regardless of where we are in that, that process, whether it's day-to-day or week-to-week is constantly going on a kind of wash, rinse, repeat cycle.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 12:41
And how far ahead do you plan?
Yoni Soloman 12:43
Um, so you know, really, it really depends. I would say, having worked in other product marketing teams, this is the most organised team I've seen in that. We do have a a launch calendar that very much is our, like, there's probably like two or three things on the team that I think are like bible to us, right, and I think it's our message houses, it's our go to market launch plans, and it's our go to market calendar. And I think probably at any any given point, we have like a like a two, two and a half month view. Like we're in October now and I can't imagine that I can see anything beyond like December.
Aubyn Casady 13:19
We have January.
Yoni Soloman 13:20
Do we? Okay yeah, so it's like two to three months ish, but those days will change and there's like, there's stuff in the middle that constantly pops up as well. So, um, but yeah, I think I would say like about a quarter if we're lucky.
Gina Carr 13:33
Yeah, I'd say that's the farthest we would go out then you have the fun ones that pop up and you've got to do a little faster than others.
Yoni Soloman 13:40
I mean, the thing that I always try to remind people is that, and none of my friends in development or product ever want to hear this so don't publish this, but like, developing and shipping product is easy. That's the easy part.
Aubyn Casady 13:59
Shots fired.
Yoni Soloman 14:02
It is everything that comes after, as far as like properly aligning human beings who have a million things going on in their day, both internally at your sales team and externally in the market with customers and prospects, to actually understand, comprehend and be receptive to what you're trying to communicate to them. And so you know, even with like such a fast launch cadence, like we're shipping out product better than ever before. And this is a problem I see across the entire industry. Like building software used to take three months or longer. Now building software and rolling it out takes three weeks or shorter and now AI is writing its own code so before you know it, it just creates this absolute fire hose of new stuff coming at people. So I think the most important test for like, great product marketers in the next like three to five years, especially once AI like completely masters how to code itself, is going to be how do we distil all of this down into very easy to understand human stories that come out at at the right rate and cadence so that people's brains can literally like take in that information and do it and do what you want them to, does that make sense?
Bryony Pearce - PMA 15:06
Yeah, absolutely. I just want it on record though that I'm not held liable if that gets aired and you get in trouble. I don't control the editing.
Yoni Soloman 15:14
Yeah, you can tell them I said that.
Aubyn Casady 15:17
Being one guy in this group of the three of us I think they'll know who it was!
Bryony Pearce - PMA 15:31
Okay, so what would you say the top three skills are that have helped each of you kind of get where you are today and be successful in the role?
Gina Carr 15:39
Um, so I don't know that this is like a skill per se, but like product knowledge is the biggest thing for me. Coming from customer success, I think it was such a great stepping stone and launch point to go into product marketing because I was on the frontlines of answering all of the questions that customers had, I know what they used, I know what kind of confused them, and so I really, really, really knew the product well. So jumping in, even if we add new features or we have like a spin off of one of our current products, I know our product really well so that I can just kind of take that and run with it and it's less time where I'm sitting there being like, okay, I don't get how this works, what do I need here, I don't know what that means. So it's like a really solid foundation that I think helped me kind of hit the ground running.
Aubyn Casady 16:32
Yeah, Gina's a rock star, I could not agree more with you, way to go buddy. As far as the role that I'm in, or I guess, generally Product Marketing, I think the three skills that I find to be like, critical, are first organisation. I think, like, especially when you're launching at the rate we are, if you're not leveraging your tools, if you're not keeping everything straight, writing everything down, making sure that you've got a good cadence with the stakeholders that need to be involved, you can get buried so fast. Like I know Gina's got time set specifically blocked on her calendar every day to make sure that she updates Asana and make sure she's checking, like, if you don't have that type A approach, this can be a really overwhelming and daunting role. Contrary to that, if you do, this can be like the most fulfilling, exciting, I check off 20 boxes every single day jobs. So like, this job is for that type and I really don't think it's for not that type. Also the ability to communicate clearly, like our job is messaging and it's our job to translate the complicated and technical into something people can digest, understand and appreciate. So if you can't communicate clearly that transition and how to go to market, if like, you hate writing, or you don't like, this role is not for that, so I think like that skillset is really important. And then third is empathy, like Yoni was saying, our job is to sit at the epicentre of product, sales and marketing, if you can't put yourself in the shoes of the salesperson and understand the struggles that they might have on a conversation it's going to be tough for you to articulate how to answer those challenges that get brought up and if you can't understand, like the drive of a product launch and the deadlines and the things that they need to hit up, you're not going to really rationalise what goals they're trying to achieve. So I think being able to empathise with all of those roles, whether or not you've worked them in your lifetime is important.
Yoni Soloman 18:19
Yeah, yeah. And I'm so proud because you guys just like hit perfectly on the criteria, there are five pieces of criteria that I hire for whenever I'm talking to people in regards to like, what makes a perfect product marketer, and they nailed pretty much all of them. It's a strong foundation of product knowledge, strong understanding of marketing campaigns so you can actually ideate how to take your messaging and bring it into the real world, you have to have a strong understanding of the sales pipeline, which means that you need to find someone from a skillset perspective with equal understanding of product development and the product that you sell, of how marketing campaigns tactically are run, and three, how a sales pipeline works. And then the soft skills you need to bring to the table are having an extremely strong written and, you know, in person storytelling capability. And if you bring all five of those to the table, you're probably a unicorn product marketer. But I think the skill that I, you know, those are like the hard skills that I would normally grade on when talking to people interviewing for a role, I think the most underrated skill that we bring to the table, and like, I don't, I don't actually think that like at a foundational level, I'm like, overly talented at anything that I really do here, but what I do have is a lot of curiosity, and the best marketers that I have, especially in product marketing, have this innate curiosity to understand how different technologies work together, and how different values stories impact people on their own journeys. And so I think like the most important thing that you can bring that brings all that together, is just like an innate curiosity to try to figure out how things work together.
And in terms of the products at G2 then, so how do you like, do you all chip in on all products? Or like, do you split them between the three of you? How does that sort of work?
Yeah, we we split them up. But like, we also have such a, we use Asana to manage everything and it's been a total lifesaver. That's like, I'd say Asana is like the secret fourth member of the team, you know what I mean, we manage all of our projects together. And what's nice is like, you know, Gina, for example, manages our content and the research side of the house that I was mentioning along with what we're calling our user side, which is literally like the www.gt. com website, the marketplace. And then Aubyn manages all of our solutions for our technology vendors. And so there are two somewhat different sides of the fence, but I feel like we have such a good collaborative environment here that no-one's territorial about their messaging houses or their projects, and I know that I hop in all the time and ask them to take a look at stuff that I do and vice versa. So we definitely have our areas but I wouldn't call us territorial or siloed.
Aubyn Casady 20:49
Yeah, definitely not. I agree. I think like, going back to how do we make this all work with other teams is the same way we make it work with the three of us, like, I respect and trust and understand that Gina is an SME on all of the things she owns and I know she trusts me for the same and Yani for the same. So I think like the ability to just trust each other, first and foremost, that, like, you know better than me from a technical standpoint, but at the same time, like, I don't think any of us thinks any of us are better writers or better messagers, or any of that. So like, we're moving so quickly that it's easy to miss something, it's easy to miss a step in your go to market, it's easy to miss an opportunity because you're so in the lead. So like, I appreciate when sometimes Gina comes to the table with some like, really unique ideas that are super outside the box on how to go to market or how to run a campaign that like, I'm just so heads down that I didn't think about. So I think like yeah, trusting each other in our skill set and our ability and that we're all like, on the same team here, there's not one element of competitive anything here.
Gina Carr 21:51
Yeah, I would say we all know that, like, the rest of us know different things, like I've been at G2 the longest so I know a lot about G2 and what we've done in the past and how things have happened before. But like, I'm pretty new to product marketing, Aubyn and Yoni have been doing it longer, so we kind of know where the strengths and quote unquote weaknesses are so that we can always tag each other and be like, hey, I'm really struggling to come up with something here, can you help with that? And then someone's like cool, I've done that before, I've tackled that issue, here's a really good solution. So I think it works out really well.
Aubyn Casady 22:24
And like, something that is kind of a little benefit bonus is that I think what we actually love and like about marketing in general, is that we have like our own little space, like, Gina does not mind cleaning up a deck or like pulling together some sort of design anything, where it's like, I would rather cry. Whereas I'm like, throw me the blogs, give me the blogs, I'll write everything, and so it's like all of us have our little space within product marketing or marketing in general where it's like, we can do it all we're capable of all of it, but this is like kind of where I love to be, so if you need support on that, throw that to me, that's like a nice to have and I don't think you should necessarily assemble teams based on like, what everybody likes to do. But it does work.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 23:08
Yeah, it sounds like you all complement each other by chance.
Yoni Soloman 23:13
Yeah, and all those skills that they mentioned, we all complement each other in various different ways.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 23:18
Okay, awesome. So next, if anything, what do you think needs to change about product marketing?
Aubyn Casady 23:27
Like in the world?
Bryony Pearce - PMA 23:29
Yeah, so not in G2 specifically, but in the industry in general.
Aubyn Casady 23:32
I would say, I think having been in a product marketing role in a few different organisations, is that the places that I've seen it be the most successful is where we're trusted. Like, Product Marketing is a relatively new role in a relatively new field that I think, in the last year or two, all of tech is like, oh my gosh we need this, but they don't necessarily know what it means and how it's done. Whereas, like, so, they'll hire product marketers, but they're very tentative and cautious about really giving them the reins to go to market. And so like at G2 we have this implicit trust from leadership and so there's way fewer, like, red tape places, there's way fewer places that we might get stuck in the queue. Like, we don't have executives reviewing our messaging, they trust us and they know that they hired us because we're experienced product marketers. And so I think like in the world, like if you're hiring people who are product marketers, like let them run with it, that's their area of expertise, just like your area of expertise is running a company or your area of expertise is running a campaign. I think getting comfortable with the role and letting us really do our thing. At G2, that's why we're thriving that's why we're launching something a week.
Gina Carr 24:49
I think from my end, and Aubyn kind of talked about it before, at least for us for product marketing, we're a little bit of type A and we like having structure to things, so I know that for a lot of companies, Product Marketing people don't know where it fits like, does it fall under product? Does it fall under marketing? Is it its own thing? What do they do? Like is Product Marketing just like a collateral creation factory? So I think as Product Marketing becomes a bigger thing, just having a little bit more structure that more people know and understand what product marketing is and how it works will just kind of help everyone. Because right now it's a little bit of everyone feeling things out and not quite sure what's going on?
Yoni Soloman 25:32
Yeah, I tend to get pretty extreme about my feelings around like the change in product marketing that needs to happen, because I really think we're at what I would call the tail end of the age of product marketing as we know it, I actually think the entire role is going to change all together to the point where it becomes less about the tactical products that you're launching and more about alignment. So like, something I played around with internally is this idea of like Product Marketing transitioning into some quite literally called alignment marketing, where like, it kind of talks about, you know, I mentioned the bubble that we've hit before, we're like, we are now developing and shipping products at such a fast rate that internal teams can't keep up and the market is just flooded with over-communication. And then on top of that, that's only compounded by, you know, the issue that teams are constantly looking for new markets to enter without proper context. They're looking for new things to build. And as a result, we all just can't keep up. And so product marketing's role at the end of the day is going to be to achieve alignment across all the teams within an organisation to make sure that we're effectively introducing new stories into the market that help people achieve their goals. And so I think the most important change for product marketing is I think it needs to become far less about the products and more about the general portfolio story or the value story of the company.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 26:55
And that kind of ties in nicely to the next question in terms of what do you think needs to be done to elevate the tole and to kind of get to that next level?
Yoni Soloman 27:02
Yeah, I think it comes back to trust and this will only happen as more companies embrace Product Marketing within their organisations and give them more leverage to do what they need to do. But like, the role of product marketing, I think, needs to be the gatekeeper of all go to market that a company has. And so like if you let product, for example, dictate go to market, I think we'd be shipping things at such a fast rate that no one would be able to keep up. If we were letting sales dictate go to market, I think we would only be launching at very specific times, probably not at the end of the quarter, for example, at the end of the fiscal year. And then as a result, everyone will be launching products at exactly the same times, and no one would be able to take anything, right. So it's our job to dictate the rhythm of that storytelling and really become like the chief storytelling team within a company that touches again, like all the internal teams like sales, marketing, implementation, client success, and even the executive team as well to help them tell a better elevated story of who this company is and what the value we're trying to provide is.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 28:04
Awesome. And so you all recently won the Product Marketing Team of the Year Award, congratulations. Can you just sort of sum up what that meant to you?
Gina Carr 28:27
I mean, I think a little bit of it is just honestly the validation that what we're doing, like people recognise that it's working really well and we're having successes with it. And you know, I love this team. It's my favourite team that I've ever worked with, so it's nice to see that that's working out well and like beneficial for not only us, but for the company. So it's just a little bit of that like recognition of hey, you guys are doing a really good job. That's kind of a simple thing but matters for me.
Aubyn Casady 28:58
From a personal standpoint, I've been at the game for quite a while and I think working at organisations where things aren't as efficient, we aren't as trusted, I started getting in my own head on a personal level from a career standpoint, like, do I really know what I'm doing? Is my gut right? Am I following my path? Like is this what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? I really did start doing that gut check until I came to G2 and getting that reinforcement, seeing things launch on time, seeing things launch effectively, finally having that alignment, and then just getting this like third party validation as an award really like, brought me back to earth and like reaffirmed that I can love something and be good at it and be successful. I'm a words of affirmation, love language gal. This was huge for me so thanks for this award.
Yoni Soloman 29:52
Yeah, I mean, I feel like they've said it all. When I came to G2 eight months ago, I came in a similar situation to Aubyn and I came because it was a fresh start here and I saw it as an opportunity to work with Gina and hopefully find someone as amazing as Aubyn, and build something from scratch here that wasn't here before and make it good and carve it out with the context and philosophy that that we would want to communicate through. And so yeah, I just think it's amazing industry validation to see that the stories that we're telling and the way that we're telling them not only resonates with our buyers, which we know it is because we see the results, but also with the product marketing community as well. It's a huge honour.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 33:30
That's all really nice to hear, thank you. And what would you say, since you've all been a team, has been your greatest achievement to-date?
Aubyn Casady 30:44
Oh, man.
Gina Carr 30:46
We're not starting with me on this.
Yoni Soloman 30:51
Yeah, I mean, honestly, you're looking at it, it's sitting in this room with these two. It has not only been like my greatest achievement at G2, but I think it's been the greatest achievement of my career, to find such an amazing group of people. You know, award or no award, I knew that we were the best product marketing team that I could ever ask for and so I think like, coming here and learning and growing and getting challenged by both of them and carving out this Product Marketing philosophy that brings together the best elements of all three of us, has been the best achievement. But the fact we get to do it together is amazing.
Gina Carr 31:32
Yeah, I would agree. This is the most supportive team like we're tiny, but so supportive, and being newer to product marketin and only having done it for probably a year and a half or so, like Yoni and Aubyn have just been so supportive and so amazing and like giving me words of affirmation, like you did a really good job on that thing and I'm like oh, thanks, guys. You know, say good job, give me a high five and I'm good to go. So just how well we have gelled as a team has been awesome.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 32:09
You're making me jealous, can I apply to join?
Yoni Soloman 32:13
We're actually hiring!
Bryony Pearce - PMA 32:18
Okay, so I guess we've kind of gone over it in bits throughout the podcast already, but is there anything in particular you'd attribute to the team success you're having at the minute?
Gina Carr 32:30
I feel like we've touched on it in bits and pieces of like how well we gel as a team, like we just said, but also the level of trust from people outside of our team and the willingness for everyone to just kind of work together. You know, with a startup, everyone's always trying to figure things out as you go. And obviously, you know, we're at almost 400 people, I think, as a company, so we're not really a startup anymore. But I would say we definitely have that mentality of like everybody pitch in, help each other, work with each other, trust each other, and it's really going to win.
Aubyn Casady 33:06
Yeah, it's definitely the healthiest organisation and team I've ever been on by a landslide. I've worked with some absolute incredible, brilliant colleagues before and been on teams that are really effective, but if you're not in an organisation that supports that success, both like, tactically and emotionally, like there are days where we're just in over our head personally and this company and Yoni and his boss and her boss, like, everybody's just really supportive of making sure that we're able to bring our best to the table every day. And if we're not, that's cool too, we're here to fill in the gaps, so yeah, I think we're successful because of the community we're a part of at G2.
Yoni Soloman 33:43
Yeah, I mean, I would echo everything they said and I would use this as an opportunity to remind everyone watching or like reading, is that great product marketing doesn't happen in a vacuum. We have, you know, our head of creative, our copywriter, our designers, our web developers, like we have a, I would consider our creative team and our marketing team to be like our muses, you know what I mean? Like, we give them the messaging and the guidance as well as we can and the work that they deliver consistently is the other half of this picture that makes this work so great. So like, I don't think that any team succeeds on their own. And so like Hillary, Eddie, Maya, Laura, like, we have like this amazing, like Heather on sales enablement, like we have such good partners on both the marketing and the sales side, along with of course all of our product managers, that help us do a great job here.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 34:37
Okay. Awesome. Penultimate question, what are your thoughts on the Product Marketing Alliance just in general?
Yoni Soloman 34:43
I think it's awesome and I've let the team know that like, there have always been like such amazing communities for demand gen, for SEO, for content, for brand, like every single branch and marketing you could possibly imagine has like a really good community, where they all like lift each other up and encourage each other, and the fact that you guys are now building this for product marketing to help us one, put Product Marketing on the map as a core focus, but also to bring us all together is amazing. I'm so glad someone did it and I'm certainly glad it was you guys.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 35:27
And then last question, do you have any words of wisdom for kind of any other product marketing teams that are aspiring to win this award next year?
Gina Carr 35:38
I would say, I mean it's a hard thing to do, but find a team that works for you and that you work well with and like Yoni was saying, even within Product Marketing, but also with our creative team, with our demand gen team, with our sales team, with our product team, with all of the teams that we work with, I think having that foundation of knowing that you can work well together and gel well together, like you're going to have bad days, everyone's going to have a bad day, the team might have hit a stumbling block, not everything's going to be perfect, so knowing that you have that team to be there to help support you and lift you up if you stumble over something, I think that, like I said, is a hard thing to necessarily find and it's not the easiest to just say like, go do it, but it's one of the most helpful things.
Aubyn Casady 36:30
I don't know.
Bryony Pearce - PMA 36:34
I applaud your honesty.
Yoni Soloman 36:38
I would encourage all the product marketers out there to, we've all become very, very good at telling logic-based product stories. We have the right data, we have customers, we have case studies, and it's all, you know, like bulleted out on pages to make sure that our brains can take in all the information, like tactically, we do a great job of the logic side of product marketing and talking to features and cutting capabilities really well. But, most decisions that you make, like pretty much all decisions that your brain makes are based on emotion and then afterwards you justify with logic. So I think like finding a way to, to lean into the EQ side of product marketing and the emotional component and tapping into like the key themes in stories that we like to read in our in our own personal lives, right, like the hero's journey, pain, overcoming obstacles and finding ways to weave those into your stories so that people reading them one, resonate with the pain that you're presenting to them and two, can put themselves on the hero's journey to like get the solution that they need with your product, I think is going to be the differentiator. There's a quote out there that says the most human company is going to win and I wholeheartedly agree with that. As smart and as amazing as technology is going to get an AI is going to code itself, at the end of the day, the company that can tell the best human story, especially for us product marketers, will be the company that wins in their category and in general.
Aubyn Casady 38:05
Yeah, that's well said, I agree. Like starting with the 'why' that's a story that isn't original, but literally every single thing I write or do is like, am I answering the question? Why is this important? And for whom? Like we can get so caught up in the KPIs and the numbers and the technical blah, blah, blah. None of that matters if we're not telling the story of why it's important. And that's what ultimately buyers are looking to understand. So yeah, that human element, starting with the why and then backing it up with how instead of the inverse is gonna make you so much more successful as a product marketer.
Yoni Soloman 38:42
Keep telling those human stories!
Bryony Pearce - PMA 38:46
Okay, well, awesome, guys. That's all my questions. Thank you so much for your time.
Yoni Soloman 38:50
Yeah, of course, it was such a pleasure.
Aubyn Casady 38:51
Thank you for your time!
Bryony Pearce - PMA 38:52
Yeah, it's been lovely speaking to you all.
Yoni Soloman 38:54
Yeah, well have a good rest of the week and thanks again.
If you want to hear more from G2 they'll be in attendance (maybe even presenting) at the Product Marketing Summit in Chicago
