Weekly free product marketing live session.

Organizations are on a never-ending transformational journey where product marketing is becoming much more about complex services and solutions wrapped around products. But is the discipline of product marketing adapting fast enough to this changing world?

Attend this session to hear about changing role of product marketing and if its time for a rebranding of this critical function.

Topic covered in this PMMnow session:

• Product marketing leadership
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Recruitment and team management

About the speaker

Priya Rajeswaran is currently Head of Technology Marketing at EY. She has over 15 years of experience leading product marketing and strategic marketing programs at IBM and NTT.

She has also held a variety of marketing and consulting roles that help bring a unique perspective to taking technology products, services, and solutions to market.

Join us for a live and in-person workshop on Product Marketing Certified: Core. Shape the trajectory of your career with the ultimate product marketing certification.

What is Product Marketing Core?

Trusted by the world's biggest brands... it's the industry standard.

From research to optimization, Product Marketing Certified: Core explores the A to Z of product marketing in a way that simply hasn't been done before.

Our one-day, in-person certification covers every element of our accredited curriculum and in a nutshell, will arm you with:

💪 A comprehensive overview of every essential product marketing principle, including case studies,

😀 Endless group networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities, and

🔥 All the strategic insights you need to move up the career ladder into a role you'll not only want but be ready for.

"Very helpful to get in the same room as other product marketers, ask questions, and learn frameworks. I loved the case study examples and real-world insights from Jason's stories and experience."

How it works

👩‍🏫 We meet in person for a one-off, full-day certification session.

🧠 Your instructor will take you through all 11 modules of the program, with real-life examples.

❓ Throughout the day, there'll be lots of opportunities to ask questions and take part in group activities.

🎥 After the day’s over, you’ll be given access to all the lectures on-demand, as well as bonus footage.

👨‍🏫 You'll have the option to join virtual weekly workshops - forevermore - for additional, group mentor calls.

🔖   After a single day of learning, you’ll be Product Marketing Certified (providing you pass the exams!).

The ultimate product marketing course

...for the ultimate product marketer.

From pricing to positioning to sales enablement to OKRs - and more, our interactive, full-day session is packed with all the high-impact topics needed to move your career, product, and company's needle.

Blend theory with practice by picking the brains of your peers, pulling together diverse experiences and perspectives, and solving common PMM problems - together.

"I absolutely loved the course. It was a great forum to learn from experts and colleagues. There were practical templates and insights to apply immediately, as well as strategic insights."

What you'll get

🔥 Delivery of the most extensive curriculum that'll enhance your knowledge and skill set on the product marketing approach. Fact.

🔥 Official PMMC® certification - if you pass all the exams - that's certain to spice up your professional portfolio.

🔥 Chance to connect and work alongside like-minded PMMs in person.

🔥 Access to invaluable bonus footage and all course content for life - even fresh updates.

🔥 Access to 20+ templates and frameworks.

🔥 Discounted rate to PMA's Membership Plans.

🔥 Opportunity to network with fellow PMMs.

Welcome back to Meet the Masters - a podcast series to discuss the key facets of product marketing, with renowned experts who have been there and done it.

In this episode, host Charley Gale speaks to Alex McDonnell, Market and Intelligence Lead at Airtable.

They discuss how to communicate newfound intel to your team to get a proactive response, the ethics, and legalities of CI, Alex's biggest CI success, along with what you can learn from the Competitive Intelligence Certified: Masters course we have at PMA - a course that Alex himself built from his experience and expertise in the field.

A little bit about Alex

Alex McDonnell is a bit of a self-confessed primary qualitative research nerd, with a special penchant for win-loss interviews. His research methods tend to bias toward semi-structured qualitative conversations over other more rigid methods, such as quantitative surveys.

At Airtable, Alex is behind the strategy for building customer-obsessed, competitor-alert intelligence programs that help sales, customer success, and marketing cut through the competitive noise with clear positioning.

A bit more about Competitive Intelligence Certified

Led by Alex himself, Competitive Intelligence Certified: Masters is an industry-standard, self-paced curriculum designed to help you build the intel skill set that elevates your competitive advantage.

From market mapping to win/loss research, developing your market position to the role of CI in stakeholder management, this certification is crammed with the ins and outs of CI and will leave you and your team exuding confidence from here on in.

Inside, you'll access:

🎁 10 chapters packed with actionable CI knowledge.
🎁 Vetted exam questions to test your understanding.
🎁 9 templates to put your learning into action.
🎁 Official certification to showcase your skills and boost your credentials.

By the end of the course, you'll learn how to:

✅ Build a tech stack for competitive intel.
✅ Understand and conduct win/loss and primary research.
✅ Visualize your competitive position with a market map.
✅ Bring CI to the table in strategy and product decisions.

So, you've built a fantastic product, and now you're pumped up to design a great product video marketing strategy to get it on the market and start winning customers.

While in theory, this sounds like a solid plan, product marketing isn't all sweets and candy. Many companies spend a lot of their time creating product videos and come up significantly short, while others miss out on the very crucial elements of what's needed to create effective video content, causing their campaigns to flop.

So, if you're struggling with your product video marketing strategy, this is the article for you.

We’ll be covering:

• What is product video marketing?
• Why is video content important?
• What does good video content look like?
• How to create a product video marketing strategy by use case.
• Tips for creating video content.
• Video demo recording guidelines.
• Video content checklist.
• 20 recommended video marketing tools.

What is product video marketing?

Video marketing is a rather simple concept. It’s using video to promote and sell your product or service. It’s a great way of increasing engagement on digital platforms like social media and blog sites, as well as reaching a different audience with a new and interesting piece of content.

It’s also a great way to educate people about your product or service quickly and efficiently - often people nowadays prefer video over an article to learn something new.

What are the types of video marketing?

There are countless different types of video marketing that you can use to help you promote your brand and your product or service. Here are some to get you started:

Demo videos: Demo videos are a great way to improve a customer’s experience with both the sales process and also the onboarding process. Having them follow videos is significantly simpler for them to understand - plus, having one overall video customers can follow can be more time and cost-effective.

Brand videos: Introducing your company, team members, and work ethos through a video can add a personalized touch to your brand. Showing there are humans behind the face of the brand can bring more connection with the consumer and potentially increase the possibility that they’ll purchase from you.

Event videos: Event videos are videos such as webinars, on demand presentations, roundtable discussions, and so on, that are held by experts in the area which brings credibility to your brand, while also garnering more engagement and attention for your organization.

Expert interviews: As above, bringing experts from the industry can bring credibility, engagement, and attention to your brand that other pieces of content made by your company otherwise cannot.

Educational videos: These can come in many different forms, for example, how-to videos, tutorials, and so on. They don’t have to be directly related to how your product or service works - instead, you can find a topic closely related that’ll interest your potential customers enough that they’d like to learn more and either schedule a demo or purchase your product outright.

Customer testimonials: Having case studies or customer testimonials in the form of video content can show what data cannot. Having a human explain to another human through video how great your product is can have a very positive impact on your brand image.

Why is video content important?

We spoke to Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase, and asked different questions about why video content is so important, what good video content looks like, and how to keep your audience engaged. This is what he had to say:

Q: Despite the undoubted benefits video content can bring to the table, many organizations aren't using it to its full potential.How can product marketers fully incorporate video within their content plans to enhance the customer journey and convert more prospects into customers?

A: “I think every product marketer needs to think about this because lots of people are consuming video content right now.

“Two billion people view videos on YouTube every single month; it’s the second most visited site on the internet besides Google, so lots of people get their information and they consume that information through video content.

“We've been consuming content via text in the format of articles and blog posts for a long time, but a lot of people find video much more engaging. And it's a great way for your company to connect with your customer.

“When I think about incorporating video in a strategy related to a product launch - or anything else - I think about how we can bring video to all those different channels and how we connect to our customers.

“If it's on a landing page for a certain product, we're gonna have our text, we're gonna have an engaging video to describe the feature functionality and the value proposition to benefit our prospect.

“Alternatively, we may be doing a workshop; maybe it’s a series for our customer base where we bring them in on pre-recorded webinars, to go ahead and engage to make sure we drive adoption and consumption of our products.

“The great thing about video content is you can create a video and splice it up and repackage it in different form factors and use that video to go ahead and drive demand, enable the sales team for outbound activities, enable your customer success team. So I think video is very malleable, it can be used for lots of different purposes.

“Just like anything, you need to have different mediums of content to stay relevant and engage your audience. If you're only creating written content, i.e. blog posts every day, you're not engaging with a broad list or a broad scope of audience members that like to consume content in different ways.

“Personally, my favorite way to consume content is video. A lot of people like the video for an assortment of reasons to consume content - especially B2B buyers.”

Psst. Still not convinced video content has a role to play? Check out this presentation from Vitaly Shter, General Manager at Vimeo, who explained why the company loves video content and why it’s the future of marketing.

What does good video content look like?

Q: In your opinion, what ingredients are needed to create engaging video content?

A: “I think video content at its heart needs to add value to the person who’s watching. A lot of the video content I've had success with is evergreen content, i.e. content that people are searching for all the time.

“My YouTube channel is about a hobby and passion of mine: cars and motorcycles. I've built an audience and a following that takes value in DIY guides, all that kind of stuff; I show people how things are done. For example, how to properly wash or polish their car, change the spark plugs, or do an oil change on their vehicles.

“The great thing about video is it allows you to see everything with your own eyes; you can’t do this with a blog article. And that's the same thing with software as well. So, just the same way people are searching for ‘how-to videos’ on YouTube, I look for videos on YouTube, but I'm looking for a solution to a problem. The same people are looking for the same kind of experience with video for B2B software.

“What I tell people all the time is when you're looking and creating a product launch strategy around your software feature, you should be incorporating video.

“This is because people love to see the product in action; a video makes your marketing very transparent, shows the cards, and provides a much better experience for the B2B buyer's journey.”

How to keep your audience engaged

Q: Blog content and articles are viewed as pivotal elements for an SEO strategy, but what role does video have to play? How can companies use video content more strategically to refine their search engine optimization?

A: “I think video and other types of dynamic content can integrate into our core structures of SEO blog content landing pages - that’s where I see it adding value.

“I know lots of people are writing blog posts and including GIFs, and they're adding video snippets inside of the blog post as well, to provide additional context - I think you're going to see a lot of that in the future.

“The same thing applies if you think about how you're keeping the audience engaged. One thing that I've personally learned through YouTube is you have to use all these different variables and change the dynamic of what the consumer is looking at and engaging with.

“For example, YouTube videos have a bunch of overlays that highlight different terms and the camera angle switches. The same thing happens in these blog posts; in some places, there’s text, then there’s a GIF, and then there's a video before some more text is added. This breaks the piece up and makes it more dynamic.

“I think video is the best way to add another layer into your product strategy to make sure that the content is dynamic, and that the content is engaging for the customer when they're reading it because it's harder to read an article that's maybe thirteen pages of straight text; I like to see the breakout, visual elements, and elements that explain it. As a buyer, it’s much easier for me to consume content like that.”

How to create a product video marketing strategy by use case

Michael Pirone, Co-Founder at Vidico, shares his invaluable strategies and tactics for how to create a product video marketing strategy by use case - specifically looking at customer acquisition, driving engagement, and customer retention.

How to use product video marketing for customer acquisition

If your goal is to acquire new customers through video marketing, you need to start with a strategy.

Refining your strategy will enable you to consider your ideal customer demographic, market competition, and future trends. You will then need to consider the appropriate distribution channels for this strategy.

For a SaaS company, the strategy could be getting users to increase ARR. Whether this is a B2B or a B2C, the standard distribution for that strategy could be Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok (yes, even for B2Bs).

These channels are ideal to start with, as they allow you to test and track metrics with ease. Then, you'll need to strengthen your distribution strategy by utilizing digital PR; you'd be surprised to see the distribution rate you can get if your PR campaign incorporates video content.  

As for the style, a customer acquisition campaign can use video content that’s either live or animated. However, it’s important to note the style should be guided by the campaign and your audience.

If we refer back to some of the things that matter to users in their viewing habits, one particular example from Cascade springs to mind, in which humor is used to capture the viewers’ attention.

The video performed very well – it was 60 seconds long, and most viewers watched it to the end, which is unusually high.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind when it comes to customer acquisition with product video marketing:

For ToFU (top-of-funnel): program a 90 second to 2 minutes long-format ad.

For MoFU (middle-of-funnel): follow with a 30 second MoFU ad to the viewers that watched over 30% of the first video.

For BoFU (bottom-of-funnel): target 6-9 second ads for double site visits or visits to landing pages like a demo, trial, or sign-up pages.

The first 5 seconds are everything: mention your company brand, ideally through your company logo (and specific product name), and also a catchy product one-liner or creative platform tagline.

Cut-downs are a must: use a funnel with multiple cut-downs at different durations (e.g., 90/30/9 seconds).

How to use product video marketing to drive engagement

Your product video marketing strategy shouldn’t just be limited to bringing in new leads and onboarding new customers. You also need to define a robust strategy that’ll help you engage your audience and existing customers.

As part of your engagement strategy, you shouldn’t be going straight to social and sending out a full-scale messaging blast, and trying to make sure the video is on every channel you own.

Instead, create a 3 to 5 step Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) cadence that links to the video target page, ideally on your page or website.

Use the same distribution tactic as in the above case and watch your engagement skyrocket. The video style here can be an explainer or an app video that shows product context through the UI or abstracted UI. Here's an example for Digital Ocean:

It is more of a long-form, two-minute video, but it has product abstraction written throughout it. Even after eight months, the video still has some significant ROI thanks to its story-driven approach. The video was mainly distributed through EDM and posted on YouTube.

“Eight months later, the video still has legs. The ROI we were getting, the cost per acquisition, and the ARPU (average revenue per unit) just for the views have really been effective. The cost has been low per customer when they’re transitioning from our YouTube to our website and purchasing our platform via that video.”

Adam Harder, the Senior Video Operations Manager at Digital Ocean

Here is another example, this time from Square.

In essence, you want the users to watch your video all the way through and understand how they can extend the use of your product and platform.

Here is what you need to keep in mind:

• Localize if you’ve got a global presence. For example, in our projects with Square, we localized through translated voiceover and subtitles for Japan, UK, Mexico, and Australia. Localization strategy is a very inexpensive way to scale content production for your international audiences.
  
• You don’t need to spend time talking about the problems. By this time, users have already passed that stage, and you need to focus quickly on the benefits. Engage viewers by highlighting what they can expect.
  
• In the intro, you should introduce the name of your product in the first 5 seconds. For example, this is Digital Ocean Checkout.
  Utilize a ratio of 90% benefits and 10% CTA. Lead with the benefits followed by an obvious next action step that relates to a deeper interaction than just viewing the website. For example, start for free today or book a free demo.

How to use product video marketing for customer retention

Your third goal with your product video marketing strategy should be to retain existing customers, decrease your churn rate, and improve your NRR (net revenue retention). So, how should you go about maintaining users, and what type of content can be created from that perspective if NRR is the goal?

Here, your goal is to make a tangible impact with your videos. For instance, taking a beginner to an intermediate level or an intermediate to expert level. This way, users can get more value from your product and understand workflows they didn't previously.

You'll often find these types of videos in the style of how-to videos or walkthrough videos.

Here is what you need to keep in mind for your retention product marketing videos:

• Deliver in 2-3 minute chapters: Break long-form workflows into easy-to-digest, shorter-form how-tos. If you need a longer duration, opt to create a playlist or video group instead.
  
• Make sure there is a direct link to Support: The CTA, in this instance, should provide a link to support if the user has any additional questions.
  
• Use a typographic thumbnail: Ensure that users can find the answers they need quickly.

Shooting awesome video content for your startup - with minimal budget

I don’t know about you, but when I think about brand videos, I think of big lights, fancy cameras, extensive editing and music, and lots of money…

But when you’re a start-up, you don’t tend to have all of that to hand. Unfortunately, starting a new business isn’t necessarily all that glamorous, and you need to think about creating video content that captures your audience’s attention, but with a minimal budget.

At our sister community, CMO Alliance, Copywriter Will Whitham spoke to Maury Rogow, CMO of The Video Bot and CEO and Founder of Rip Media. In their conversation, Maury spoke about his experience in the Hollywood film industry, and how you can bring some of the approaches he learned into your video marketing.

From his response, the secret seems to be about your storytelling and marketing techniques rather than equipment.

He said:

“We don't need to go too far down the Hollywood path, this is all about getting to execute and that kind of thing, and to be able to sell. Let's talk about some of my rules of story, and how we do it.

“You can go pick up any old book and you can find the three-act structure. I've broken that down and made it more useful in marketing terms. What I call it is the EPIC story structure. It's an acronym.

“E would be to engage and have empathy, it's a little bit of a double. You've got to engage people and that means you've got to disrupt their day, that's in the first six seconds. You've got to grab them, you got to have their hook, any of these terms, but if you don't grab people in the first six seconds, think about YouTube, click out, skip, done, you've lost them forever.

“Or until you've come back around again and hit them with even more budget. But the goal is not to spend so much budget getting those eyeballs, you want to engage people. So in the first six seconds, you've got to grab people with empathy, which means I understand where you are, I understand your problem.

“And this little piece that I'm talking about right now, the background of that really comes from when I was in very heavy, high-tech marketing and sales. We had competitors, I was at a company called GeoTel and we ended up being acquired by Cisco Systems for over a billion dollars, it was amazing.

“But we had so much competition, that was either so much bigger or so technology-rich, that we were running around in fear every day that if we don't sell enough, we don't get enough leads, we don't create enough value, and revenue, one of these other companies could get scooped up or purchased and really explode - or they're gonna win our customers.

“It was insanely competitive, what I started finding is, they might have a great product, but they don't have a good story and they can't simplify their story. So they weren't grabbing people.

“In fact, some of their technology was good but they couldn't tell that story so we beat them.

“Now on the other side, I think we had the combination of all three, it was magic, we had amazing technology, but we kept it simple to get in the door, to grab people with what's your problem, let's address your problems right off the bat, and then come up with the solution which of course we add, and do that in an engaging way in exchange for dollars. I mean, there's the basics.

“I feel like other people were celebrating their technology so much that they started talking about themselves more than what they could do for the customer. That's what bounced them out the door and got us our foothold in place. So that all became, how are we doing that?

“I looked back at our presentations, my presentations, literally the decks as well as what we would say and talk about. So all that became the E in EPIC, which is empathy. The P is the big one, which is the pain or the problem the customers go through. I'll go through it real quick, so E is the empathy and engagement and then the P, the pain or the problem.

“I is the impact, as well as the integrity of your solution. And C is the change in their life and or the call to action. What are we going to do?”

Tips for creating video content

Sonduren Fanarredha, Director of Product Marketing at Airbase gave his advice on creating video content. Here’s what he had to say.

Q: What are the most common mistakes people make when introducing video content to their strategy? What advice would you give to prevent product marketers from making the same errors?

A: “Your video content will hopefully have longevity and live on for quite a long time, so plan it; you need to make sure the value proposition and the story that you want to tell is there. Then, make something of value.

“High-quality content, just like any form of content, is the core pillar to make sure that you're going to be successful. On top of that, you need to make sure that you script it out so you capture all those benefits of your product to display to your prospect and differentiate in that way.

“If, for example, you try making a video for a product demo off the top of your head, you're going to miss things, so you want to make sure you plan that out effectively, make good quality content, and understand the needs of your prospect.

“Then, you’ll have a great video asset that you can chunk up into pieces, and distribute to your other teams to make them successful. And I think those are the two things that you need to look out for.”

Video demo recording guidelines

Al Sargent, Head of Product Marketing at Arango DB provided us with some very handy guidelines for recording video demos. He has split them into four categories: clean-up, legibility, audio, and other. Read his insights below.

Clean up

You want viewers to focus on what you’re demonstrating, no distractions, No unnecessary cognitive load.

Dock: On Mac, should be auto-minimized with a minimum set of apps pinned on the bottom. Just pin apps that are used in the demo. Don’t show the date - that just calls attention to a demo being out of date before its time.

Launch bar: In Windows, similar to the macOS Menu Bar, minimize the number of controls and information shown, don’t show the date.

Menu bar: Minimize the number of controls and information shown, e.g., don’t show battery level, airplay, date/time, and user name. Inconsistencies can lead to continuity glitches when you string separate videos together.

Desktop image: Show a plain colored desktop background, don’t show a default image for the OS version, that will make your demo age quicker.

Desktop: Remove icons on the desktop, you don’t want viewers wondering if these are part of the demo.

Competitors: Don’t show any references to competitors unless there’s a good reason. Your viewers can pause and screengrab any frame in your video, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself. Seems obvious, but I’ve seen this occur in videos.

Notifications: Turn off notifications; turn on Do Not Disturb on macOS.

Users: When using fake user names in your demo, have generic names, don’t have trademarked names (Luke Skywalker) or whimsical names (Some One) or employee names. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer champion showing your demo to their senior executives - would your user names make them cringe a bit?

Profile images: Use images that you have permission to publish, stock photos often look fake. Employee headshots can work well, assuming you’ve gotten written consent (just an email or Slack message works).

Location bar: To avoid browser history, search history, and bookmarks from showing up when you type a URL, clear these out of any browser you’ll use.

Favorites: To avoid favorites from showing up in a blank browser window (which can confuse the viewer into thinking they’re part of our demo), remove all these.

User interface colors: If your product allows for custom color schemes, use the defaults across all videos, so you don’t have continuity errors.

Browser size: Maximize your browsers to use all-screen real estate.

Legibility

Empathy is key here! You’re probably recording on a nice big monitor with good office lighting that’s just a couple of feet from your eyes.

But your video might be viewed on a screen from the back of a large conference hall, or in a customer’s meeting room with a lousy projector, on a mobile device when commuting to work, or on a small viewport on some webinar system, or by a budget holder over the ripe old age of 40 who needs reading glasses due to presbyopia - a condition experienced by one-third of Americans.

So, there are a lot of good reasons to make it easy for viewers to read everything you’re showing.

Quality: Record at 1080p or better, it’s ok if this slows down the computer during capture. You can always drop frames in post-production. 720p is not enough! Often we need to do screen grabs from videos and 720p grabs are often fuzzy.

Aspect ratio: Record all videos at 16:9, not 4:3, and ensure that browser windows are maximized to fit this aspect ratio.

Readability: Record the video on a laptop, not a large monitor. If you’re demonstrating a web app, hit command+ (ctrl+ on Windows) a couple of times so that the font is easier to read from a distance. If you’re demonstrating a non-web app, make your fonts bigger on Mac or Windows.

Visible clicks: Have a single, subtle circle appear on click for all videos, so you are consistent (QuickTime > Dropdown button > Show Mouse Clicks in Recording).

Audio

Video first, then voiceover: First record your video, then later record your audio track. You always pause the video if you need more time to get your spoken points across.

Sound quality: Find the quietest room you can, with the fewest amount of glass (which causes echoes). Get a nice noise-canceling microphone such as this one. Keep it in a foam cover to minimize echoes.

Write it out: Write out, in spoken English (simpler than written English), everything you say in easy-to-read, bullet-point format.

Sound natural: When speaking your talk track, sound conversational; avoid sounding like you’re reading.

Other

Filenames: If you have multiple video files, the video filenames should start with their sequence number so you can assemble them more easily.

List of integrations: show as many supported integrations as possible.

App version: Use the latest version of your app, or even a beta version if available (and close to the final version) so that your video doesn’t age as quickly.

Video content checklist

Next up is a video content checklist created and provided by Michael Pirone, Co-Founder at Vidico. Read on to see what he’s included.

“Keep the following in mind to define a winning strategy that will help you achieve your goals:

Decide on a strategy first

“Always start with a clearly defined strategy. Once you develop the strategy, all the other aspects of your product video will begin to fall into place.

Pick 2-3 distribution channels

“You can leverage many distribution channels to get the word out about your videos and your product. Spend time learning about your target audience and share your videos where they will make the most impact.

Create tons of assets with your videos

“It is also helpful to get as many assets from each video effort as possible. For instance, you can create cut-downs, GIFs, stills, etc. By doing so, you will be packed with a wealth of assets from each video you put out, and you will be able to repurpose your videos and distribute them to other channels.”

20 recommended video marketing tools

Video marketing’s on the rise full stop, but in the world of product marketing, the opportunities are endless.

From sales training and product demos to new feature announcements and quick explainer films, there are lots of use cases for videos and with the apps, we’re about to run through, sharp results don’t require expertise or in some cases, even money.

With this in mind, we’ve popped together a collection of video marketing tools that’ll fine-tune budding Tarantinos, coax hidden Kubricks, and expose secret Spielbergs.

Lights, camera, action. 🎬

There are a ton of awesome product marketing tools on the market. The great news? We have 200+ that have been vetted and tested waiting for you in our PMM Tech Stack.

Movie Maker

Movie Maker’s a Windows app that can be used to make videos out of photos, video clips, and music. Outside of the basics, some of its most popular features include text captions and slides, photo enhancement filters, 30+ transition effects, 30+ fonts, and an animated pan-zoom for still photos.

Website: microsoft.com/en-us/p/movie-maker-10-tell-your-story/9mvfq4lmz6c9

Cost:

Avidemux

Avidemux is simple in offering but comes without a price tag.

It supports various file types (like AVI, DVD, MPEG, MP4, and ASF), has cutting, filtering, and encoding functionalities built-in, and is compatible with Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows.

Website: avidemux.sourceforge.net

Cost: free

VSDC Video Editor

VSDC is a non-linear video-editing tool with tonnes of visual and audio effects (colour correction, object transformation, object filters, transition effects and special FX), adjustable color blending parameters, chart-making capabilities (including pyramids, stacked bar, line, scatter, Gantt, etc.), and a built-in DVD burning tool.

And much, much more.

Website: videosoftdev.com

Cost: free

VideoPad

Compatible with both Windows and Mac, VideoPad supports most video formats, comes with more than 50 effects and transitions, markets itself as the fastest streaming processor around, lets you fine-tune your colors, and has a free sound effect library to pick and choose from.

Website: nchsoftware.com/videopad

Cost: there is a free version but it’s for non-commercial use only

Blender

Blender’s an open-source 3D creation suite and supports the entire process - modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, and motion tracking, video editing, 2D animation pipeline, the lot.

Website: blender.org

Cost: free

Kdenlive

This is another that’s open-source but this time it’s for video editing.

Kdenlive’s features include configurable interfaces and shortcuts, 2D title functionality, effects (including color correction and audio adjustments), proxy editing, automatic backups, and the ability to host virtually any audio or video file.

Website: kdenlive.org

Cost: free

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve’s the industry standard for color correction, but the video editing software does more than just that.

From dual timelines and image stabilization to dedicated trim interfaces and single-click movement between editing, color, effects, and audio, its list of features is long and equips you with everything needed to create a Hollywood-quality finish.

Website: blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Cost:

HitFilm Express

HitFilm Express is a free, professional-quality video editor. It works on Windows and Mac, requires an internet connection, and comes with full 2D and 3D compositing, more than 400 effects and presets, tutorials, and unlimited tracks and transitions.

Website: fxhome.com/hitfilm-express

Cost: free

OpenShot

Yet another free, open-source platform to make the video marketing tools of choice cut.

A lot of people like OpenShot for its fade, slide, and bounce animation frameworks; video, slow motion, and time effects; 70+ languages; easy title editor; 3D animations; and unlimited tracks.

Website: openshot.org

Cost: free

Lightworks

Lightworks is a piece of video software and has been used in the likes of Pulp Fiction and The Wolf of Wall Street - which surely says something in itself!

It’s intuitive to use, comes with 100s of sound and visual effects, and can be exported in any format (DVD, AVC, YouTube, Vimeo, and more).

Website: lwks.com

Cost:

Wistia

Some of Wistia’s most popular features include customization (of things like the play button) to ensure your branding’s reflected; interactive tools (like CTAs, email gates, and annotation links); auto-playing the next video in line on your channel; and leads (from new subscribes, for example) are automatically sent to your CRM.

Website: wistia.com

Cost:

“A new feature called Wistia Channels allows us to create a selection of videos in a very modern clean style and embed them wherever we want on our website. It helped us get more videos posted on our site where our visitors are going and increase nurturing initiatives for long sales cycles.”

Matthew Morookian, Senior Product Marketing Manager at APEX Analytix

Loom

With Loom, you can easily show not tell. It makes video part of your day-to-day communication by recording you and your screen, either simultaneously or standalone, and then sharing it with a simple link. No exports. No uploads. No other apps. Just easy.

Website: loom.com

Cost:

ScreenFlow

Brought to you by Telestream, ScreenFlow’s a piece of video editing, screen recording, and sharing software.

Some of its most highlighted features include access to 500,000+ media clips; iOS recording; transition, text, animation, and freehand annotation tools; GIF-building functionality; and multi-track editing, markers, and color labels.

Website: telestream.net/screenflow

Cost:

Soapbox

With nothing but a Chrome extension and webcam, Soapbox has everything you need to create high-quality videos.

For many product marketers, it’s a must for explainer and training videos, demos, tutorials, and feature updates. As well as easy recording, transition, editing, and distribution tools, it comes with built-in analytics and alerts to measure activity.

Website: wistia.com/soapbox

Camtasia

Camtasia’s a go-to for product demos and works on Windows and Mac. As well as screen recording, its editing features let you add effects, music, audio, titles, annotations, callouts, quizzes, transitions, and PowerPoint slides, and zoom, pan and animate your recordings.

On top of product demos, it’s also popular in the PMM community for things like video tutorials, how-tos, explainer videos, training videos, and webinar recordings.

Website: techsmith.com/video-editor.html

Cost:

Vidyard

Record using your screen and camera, personalize your videos with things like user and company names, get automatic transcripts, A/B test up to 16 thumbnails, add engagement data, and see who’s viewed your video, how long for, off what device, and from where in the world. All with Vidyard.

Website: vidyard.com

Cost: pricing isn’t available for their Support and Corporate Comms packages online

Vimeo

Vimeo is your friend for all things video hosting. They’re embeddable and ad-free, you control who sees them - and when, the whole team can feedback in-app, you can publish videos anywhere - on any device, and with certain plans, unlimited streaming comes as standard.

Website: vimeo.com

Cost: all prices based on annual billing

YouTube

We’re sure this one doesn’t need much explanation, but YouTube’s a video hosting and sharing platform. As well as the basics, you can live stream, dictate privacy settings, set custom thumbnails, add external annotations, create a custom channel URL, and target your market with adverts.

Website: youtube.com

Cost:

TechSmith

Specialising in screen recording and screen capture software, TechSmith’s home to Camtasia, Snagit, Relay, Screencast, Video Review, Relay, Morae and Jing (soon to be replaced).

Website: techsmith.com

Cost:

QuickTime

QuickTime is a free bit of software that lets you play, record (including screen recording), edit and share audio and video files.

Its editing capabilities include trimming, splitting, cutting, copying, pasting, deleting, flipping, and rotating.

Website: apple.com/quicktime

Cost: free.

And there you have it! 20 of the best video marketing tools for PMMs. Head to our product marketing tools directory, where you’ll find even more tools that'll help you refine your practice, iron out imperfections, and enhance your team.

Narrative design - an underestimated strategy. And yet, essential when it comes to creating breakthrough product narratives, and successfully positioning your product to help it stand out from the crowd.

Want help getting started?

This mini eBook lays the foundations for a solid narrative design strategy. Think of it as the perfect introduction to the function.

Already an Insider member? Grab your copy here (no form-filling required 😉).

What’s inside this eBook?

Download your FREE eBook and gain access to the most essential insights into the strategy, including:

• What is narrative design?
• How does it fit into product marketing?
• Why is narrative design important?
• What’s needed before developing a narrative design strategy?
• The narrative design structure

Plus, some sections are taken directly from the Narrative Design Certified: Masters course to give you a preview of what to expect - you can’t say we don’t treat you. 😉

Want more?

All of the information within this eBook has been provided by Marcus Andrews, Director of Product Marketing at Pendo.io, and the creator of the Narrative Design Certified: Masters course we have at Product Marketing Alliance.

Marcus knows narrative design like the back of his own hand - having helped build the strategy into what it is today. He has countless experiences working with well-known professionals in the field to build and develop the function, including April Dunford and Dave Gerhardt.

Completing this course will help you:

📖 Blow away marketing leadership with your storytelling skills.

🔥 Help your company stand out from the crowd.

💪 Elevate yourself and your product marketing function.

🚗 Drive real and tangible organization-wide change.

👊 Learn from the man who’s spearheading narrative design.

Break through the noise and win in even the most crowded markets.

Learn how to harness the power of tools, teams, and tactics to leverage your next product launch.

About the GTM workshop

PMMs are strategic thinkers, so while some might think we “make the content look pretty”, we have an exciting role to play working with cross-functional teams.

And that’s where this GTM workshop comes in. Get ready to be hands-on over three one-hour sessions, as we dive into stakeholder responsibilities, messaging, positioning, and competitive intel using frameworks, templates, and structure that you can apply to your next go-to-market.

With a blend of group activities, plenty of Q&As, and case studies, we’ll go beyond the templates and apply them for a truly interactive session.

How does it work?

This workshop will take place as three one-hour sessions with Holly Watson, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at AWS, so you can go away and digest the learnings before coming back for more.

During the three sessions, you’ll examine a case study with the presenter and begin to create your own GTM strategy, incorporating key stakeholders, budgetary constraints, and timescales into your strategic plan.

You’ll also refine the offering and prepare your launch plan, before presenting to your peers at the end of the workshop and receiving immediate feedback from the presenter.

What's included?

🎥 Two hours of relevant and invaluable OnDemand content carefully selected from the PMA archives.

🎁 Bonus footage such as fireside chats, podcasts, and articles from leading PMM experts.

📁 A guided reflective journal that will form part of the workshop activities to help you organize your thoughts and develop a fully realized GTM launch.

📝 A set of standard templates and frameworks to assist with your own GTM launches.

🏅 Certificate of completion.

⏳ Access to an exclusive workshop alumni channel.

"This workshop is great for any marketer trying to strengthen their GTM launch process. The content is very relevant and impactful especially for a PMM that doesn't focus on GTM strategy. I'd highly recommend this course."

Crystal Crouch, Senior Manager of Product Marketing Insurance Partners at KeepTruckin

By the end, you'll be able to:

🔥 Weave together the three components of your company’s overall strategy - your product roadmap, sales pipeline, and marketing programs - into a comprehensive plan with clearly defined goals, stakeholders, milestones, and outputs.

🔥 Live at what we call “the intersection” of your organization’s product, marketing, and revenue teams.

🔥 Successfully launch your organization’s next big idea or capability.

This presentation was delivered by Alex McDonnell, Market, and Competitive Intelligence Lead at Airtable at the Competitive Intelligence Summit, 2022. Catch up with a variety of talks with our OnDemand service.

Hey! I’m Alex McDonnell from Airtable, speaking to you from Toronto, Canada.

You’re here because you’re the go-to person at your organization for all things competition, or you soon will be. When a competitor drops some major news about say a new product launch or a major acquisition, that’s your time to shine and help the organization make some sense of it.

But it's not always so easy. Sometimes competitive news can cause panic. Other times it gets dismissed completely. How do we navigate that? How can we help our organizations process competitive news while keeping their cool?

I'm gonna do my best to give you the tools to do just that. You're gonna learn from all the mistakes that I've made running three in-house competitive intel functions over the last nine years.

In this article, I’ll specifically be focusing on:

• When you know you have a problem,
• A few crucial competitive intelligence principles,
• An outline of a solid competitive intelligence action plan,
• Common takeaways,
• Your cool new crispy news briefing, and
• How you can learn more from me!

You know you have a problem when…

… you recognize the chat below. Whether it's on Slack, Teams, or whatever chat channels you use at work, somebody drops a link to some competitor news with a message like, “Have we seen this?” or “Did we catch this?” and you get extreme reactions one way or the other.

You might see competitor-dismissive reactions, where your colleagues aren’t paying enough attention to what the competitor is doing or thinking about how we might be able to learn. That sounds like, “Who cares?! That product’s gonna suck!”

Alternatively, you might see competitor-obsessed reactions, where they panic about every little thing without putting any of it into context. “This is not good news! They're closing in on our differentiators. I'm totally freaking out!”

Just dropping the link to some competitor news, with no context or no takeaways, creates these extreme reactions. This isn’t constructive and doesn’t help anybody. That's why we call it “the link and stink”.

I've been there. It still happens – people post the link to something that they've just seen, and an emotional reaction ensues. It's on us as competitive intelligence pros to help the organization make sense of this news in a more constructive way.

Weekly free product marketing live session.

Customer insight is the key to evolving and improving your business. But how do you make sure you're truly listening to them?

In this week's PMMnow, Cate Vanasse, Head of Customer Marketing at Cisco Meraki will share the journey you can take to turn up the volume on customer voice in a centralized and scalable way.

Key takeaways include how to:

• Identify and align with owners of customer feedback channels across the business.
• Map out a path to centralize customer insights and make them discoverable and actionable to all employees.
• Build a strategy to close the feedback loop with customers in a meaningful way.

About the speaker

Cate Vanasse has a passion for transforming the B2B customer experience to create healthy, lifelong customers and advocates. Cate started her career in the manufacturing and computer hardware space in PR, communications, and demand generation roles.

She shifted her focus to customer marketing in 2010 and led successful B2B customer marketing teams at Expedia Group. Currently, Cate leads the voice of the customer, advocacy, and lifecycle marketing strategies at Cisco Meraki.

The world is full of gatekeepers and competition, which makes it significantly harder to find a job in any industry, let alone one as fast-paced and ambitious as product marketing.

But we at Product Marketing Alliance want to open those gates and show you the steps you can take to get into the industry and make a name for yourself as a PMM.

What’s inside this guide?

Download your FREE guide and receive indispensable information on:

• The skills needed as a product marketer.
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Sink your teeth into this delicious treat - our gift to you! 👇

Eager for more?

And if that's not cutting it, we’ve got something that's sure to quench your thirst for knowledge.

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Transitioning to Product Marketing: Fundamentals

Product marketing is a cross-functional, dynamic, and rewarding profession that plays a crucial part in the success of any business.

The Transitioning to PMM: Fundamentals course will empower you with the knowledge you need to start a career in this exciting and ever-evolving field.

When planning a competitive enablement program in a crowded selling environment, you should ask the following questions:

• How can we make sales reps more successful?
• How can we position reps as subject matter experts across our multiple industries in front of prospects?
• How can we educate representatives to understand our competitive landscape better?
• How can we provide them with the right insights to win more business?
• How do we, as a CI team, get feedback and know what's working?

I recommend taking a managed approach to develop the sales team and enable them to position themselves effectively in front of customers.

You’ll find real-time, fresh, actionable intelligence is your secret ingredient to better educate on new skills, improve proposals, and strengthen enablement with content.

Utilize the new generation of competitive intelligence platforms

When creating your competitive enablement program, the intuitive way is to research two different areas:

1. Sales enablement
2. Competitive intelligence

After more than 100 hours of deep-dive research and calls with sales, CI and enablement leads, I learned people see these two fields as silos. They miss the vast potential of combining enablement with competitive insights.

The good news is modern CI tools are more robust and sophisticated than the traditional platforms that led the market 10+ years ago.

The evolution of CI and tech capabilities is essential for all selling teams, especially remote teams.

The new generation includes features such as:

• Having one central competitive hub the CI team can use to manage their content;
• Shorter, memorable, but value-based content in a "cheat sheet" style;
• Battlecards are updated in real-time - reps can add feedback to the battle card, and changes are automatically available across sales platforms;
• Mobile option - reps can access battle cards on the go from their mobile device before meeting prospects. This is super important for a remote sales team;
• End-to-end integration lets you share insights in existing sales tools like Seismic/Highspot, Slack, Google Drive, Salesforce, Gong, and others.

Modern tools also make it easy to track and measure the success of what you implement. So you can judge if your CI efforts are helping you win more deals. This allows you to iterate and adjust quickly.

You can now be super specific, curating only the most relevant competitive intel. Blend this information with the intel arising from competitive conversations going on internally.

The end goal is to convert this data to solid market, industry, and product-level insights - and add it to sales enablement, strategy, and product content.

Use These 10 Tips to Optimize Your Sales Content | CIA

Sales enablement is all about deal support. Sitting between sales and marketing, your sales enablement team exists to support your sales staff with key information at crucial moments. Information about competitors and about your product. All in line with your brand messaging.

Competitive Intelligence AllianceAlex Walton

Nine tactics for creating your CI sales adoption playbook

Start planning your competitive enablement program with nine proven tactics in mind:

1) Facilitate org alignment

CI Implementation requires broad org alignment.  To succeed, we should earn the trust and interest of Subject Matter Experts - top-down and bottom-up.

2) Publish regular content

You should publish content every week to drive sales reps' awareness. Build expectations before the official rollout.

3) Give Account Executives recognition

Give Account Executives recognition and partner with top performers to identify champions. Sales reps care a lot about public recognition like being the month's best seller. Celebrating success helps drive engagement with CI tools and incentivizes champions to spread the word throughout the sales organization.

4) Hire a CI owner

Hire a CI owner for enrollment. Or, you can split this responsibility between a few PMMs. Assume you need a full-time position for the first six months of rollout to ensure successful, stable implementation.

5) Differentiate messaging and positioning

Competitive intelligence research differentiates messaging and positioning. All major product go-to-market plans should include CI insights. Go beyond regular competitive landscape research to differentiate messaging and positioning and assist sales in sales cycles.

6) Use CI tools

Using CI tools enables you to forecast a roadmap for sales. Ensuring in-depth visibility of your product themes and market trends.

7) Carefully plan sales content and training

Sales content, training, and deal support are pillars of competitive enablement. Plan them together in collaboration with your sales enablement team.

8) Meticulously design battle cards

Prioritize battle cards based on your biggest threats. Launch the platform after a minimum number of top competitors' boards have been completed for credibility and retention.

9) Use goals and KPIs

Start implementing your competitive intelligence platform as part of a high-tier product go-to-market strategy. Include goals, KPIs, your internal marketing plan and channels, soft launch, and timeline.

Your objectives can include the number of competitor battle cards covered, a weekly digest email, champion engagement, platform usage, the number of deals impacted, etc.

Ten-step plan for actionable intelligence

When we built our competitive intelligence adoption playbook, we planned it as a ten-step flywheel:

1) Build allies with sales champions from different groups

Strengthen your relationships with the top 20% of sellers in the company.

Make them the first employees to experience the CI platform, share their pain points, and have them vote on the content you curated. Your champions will create buzz for your program across the whole sales team, easing your CI rollout.

Whenever a local or national call takes place, be there to pitch how CI can help them close more deals.

2) Establish a cross-org CI committee

Start a committee with a diverse set of managers from various departments.

Discuss:

• Market trends;
• New technologies;
• The current competitive landscape;
• And potential future competitors.

Analyze industry barriers that might make an indirect competitor a direct threat. Point out companies' acquisitions and irregular hiring patterns. Those discussions are eye-opening!

3) Supercharge SWOT and trends reports with CI

Create SWOT analysis reports to evaluate competitors' short- and long-term threats.

Identify patterns in tech adoption and growing trends you can adopt to your advantage. This helps you focus on developing new products to get ahead of the competition and win market share.

4) Complete two competitor battle cards each month

While this sounds tactical, it came from a strategic perspective.

Set the goal of ten completed battle cards for when you roll out your competitive intelligence platform. Cover your top competitors and make the platform robust enough that sales use it weekly. Check the top AE searches on the CI platform to learn which competitors' names they hear in the field and what is trending.

5) Send weekly tips and tricks, and digest emails

Sending weekly digest emails boosts awareness and sets expectations for your intelligence insights.

6) Integrate with all key enablement platforms

Integrate all your existing sales channels and platforms to work together seamlessly. Create a central hub for your sales representatives to manage, maintain, and discover all their content.

7) Open a competitive Slack channel

Your competitive Slack channel will fast become the go-to place for your reps to report what they’ve heard in the field. A place for reporting on competitors, and sharing real-time news, sales wins, and insights. All the content is sent back to your competitive intelligence software so you can gather insights in your central hub.

8) Conduct win-loss interviews and train account executives

Add fields to CRM sales opportunities and start to document and track all won and lost deals against competitors. Conduct interviews to learn why you win or lose to your competitors, then follow this up with sales training and education. The goal of this training is to win more deals and improve the sales process.

9) Conduct surveys, get feedback from the field, and adjust your content

Combining sales feedback, client interviews, win-loss surveys, and intelligence data makes it easy to improve your sales collateral with fresh insights.

10) Close the loop with KPI measurement

Measure your success with clear parameters, including sales engagement and feedback cadence, to iterate, adjust and continue the flywheel.

These ten steps are a roadmap for driving the adoption of any sales program. You may not hit all ten steps immediately, but use this as a guide for successful planning.

Supercharge your organization with insights

Start with the sales team, but plan to enable your entire organization with what you learn from competitive intelligence.

By starting with sales, you tie your program to revenue immediately. That'll give you visibility and support from other teams like revenue, product, strategy, and executive leadership.

Diversify the types of content you create and inject them with your CI insights. Your new content might focus on one or more of the following areas:

Sales

1. Create a competitive sales “kit” to help sales "learn how to win." Include pre-recorded sessions for new hires as part of your onboarding process.
2. Create “product fast facts” sheets, offering an understanding of your products and where they fit in the competitive landscape.
3. Content that helps sales reps to understand prospects' needs. Include details on how your products solve prospects' pain points.
4. Live battle cards of top competitors, including product and pricing comparisons, info on their strengths and weaknesses, and strategy details. Include conversational landmines too.

Product

1. Weekly product release notes for sales. Bucket these based on value and usage with themes and industry trends in mind
2. A yearly sales roadmap helps reps have better conversations around upcoming features and updates, particularly when competitors' tech capabilities are mentioned.
3. Improve the competitor research in every product GTM plan for new product launches and add new fields like "Where we win versus our competitors”.
4. Add Capterra competitive rankings to proposals, sell sheets, pitch decks, and other sales collateral to highlight your wins.

Strategy

1. ELT competitors SWOT & trends reports: Combine competitors' info from public resources and internal feedback with analysis to create forecasting reports.
2. Comparison decks illustrate how your company compares to specific competitors, especially when they announce new products or acquisitions. Also useful when you notice irregular hiring in a particular field.
3. Pricing and bundling comparison decks: when you create the pricing-bundling process, improve your research with insights about competitors' approaches and offerings.
4. Product naming decks - fuel product naming research with CI insights. For example, how competitors name their products with a unique hierarchy and internal logic.

ROI & KPIs

Lastly, I would like to share a few of our KPIs after one year of implementing our competitive intelligence platform, which became one of our most robust CI tools.

In the first year, we tracked the following key success indicators and saw great results:

• A steady increase in active users;
• Extremely high week-on-week sales usage;
• Consistently high open rates for digest and “tips and tricks” emails;
• Vast coverage of most of our competitors, both direct and indirect, via battle cards;
• Correlation between battle cards/content consumption and the number of won deals.

These KPIs reflect how we measure success, but there are many other metrics:

• Conduct net promotor score surveys and gather testimonials from reps;
• Assess sales confidence;
• Track deal velocity;
• Track average deal size;
• Check competitive coverage increase (the number of tracked competitors);
• Competitive win-loss ratio…

…and many more!

My best recommendation for organizations planning to implement a competitive enablement program for the first time is to create a sustainable advantage by leading a "culture and cadence" of CI across the entire org. Start with sales, but don’t stop there.

Investing in CI tools today will put you in a better competitive position in the short term and increase your sales, and revenue from new deals, in the long term.

Many SaaS marketers find themselves facing a rather confusing problem. Leads keep booking onto sales calls - and yet they’re a poor fit for the software.

Why does this happen?

When you’re getting low-quality leads - and struggling to fill your pipeline - the root cause could be in your website’s messaging. After all, your website is the most important touch-point in a B2B customer’s journey. The messaging can therefore make or break your sale.

Now, you might already have your website’s bases covered. You’re talking about your benefits, mentioning your value prop, using customer reviews, etc.

But you could be losing prospects who hold internal anxieties and concerns about your SaaS. When your website doesn’t address such worries, the prospect’s doubts may win the internal tug-of-war.

So to reduce these anxieties, your website messaging should help them overcome ‘conversion obstacles’ that hinder them from signing up.
This can help increase your chances of converting more prospects.

Ultimately, your messaging should make it easy for B2B prospects to defend your SaaS in team arguments.

In this article, I’ll cover conversion obstacles that prevent your prospects from converting, looking deeper at solutions to:

• Your SaaS not being a priority causing low motivation in prospects,
• Overwhelming prospects when onboarding,
• Uncertainty about how safe and secure your SaaS is,
• Prospects feeling overwhelmed to get SaaS buy-in,
• Uncertainty on whether your SaaS is meeting business needs,
• Confusion over why prospects should choose you, not a competitor,
• Pricing your SaaS too high for your target audience,
• And uninformed messaging strategies.

Which conversion obstacles prevent your prospects from converting?

You can learn the anxieties prospects have by reviewing transcripts from your demos, sales calls, chatbots, and customer support conversations.

You can also ask your sales team to reveal which objections commonly come up, based on their own observations.

But the question is: how exactly do you overcome these objections in your messaging?

CRO expert Joanna Wiebe recommends that you conduct ‘Obstacle Interviews’ to find out exactly how current users overcame their obstacles.

For example, a user might have believed that ‘your SaaS won’t work for our business.’ They may have overcome this worry by reading case studies that convinced them of your value.

Here’s another example: your user might’ve ‘forgotten they needed your software’. They may have overcome this obstacle by seeing your retargeting ad.

Learning this information can help you discover effective marketing methods that help reduce anxieties - so you can prioritize conversion-boosting tactics.

But some methods are less obvious.

Let’s review common SaaS objections that your prospects might have. As well as the solutions that could work for you:

Prospects feel low motivation - your SaaS isn’t a major priority

Competing priorities can commonly happen in B2B when ideas and concerns seem scattered across teams. In such situations, your messaging has a tough job: it needs to turn low motivation into high motivation.

Luckily, neuroscientific findings have consistently shown what tends to motivate humans: our problems.

In a scientific paper, the behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman observed that we tend to perceive losses more significantly than gains:

“A good is worth more when it is considered as something that could be lost or given up than when it is evaluated as a potential gain.”

So we don’t like to lose things more than we like to gain things - which is a persuasive principle known as loss aversion. This is corroborated in an analysis of 3,000,000+ demo calls by Gong.io - who found that the most successful sales calls don’t just rely on benefits, but also use loss-aversion.

The problem is that your B2B decision-makers tend to have completely different concerns from your end-users.

So it's time to strategize. Which pain points do decision-makers tend to feel that can be linked back to your solution?

You might choose claims like ‘save money’ and ‘save time’. But as direct response Copywriter Amy Posner tells me, such statements have become overused and now feel like ‘white noise for the brain’.

So it’s time to dig deeper. Which specific concerns do your executive prospects have?

Case study: how to convert decision-makers using messaging

In 2017, the start-up Gitprime (now Flow by Pluralsight) was still a new tool in their market. Their software helped measure business and productivity for software engineering teams.

But they faced a significant issue: the engineering market had what legendary Copywriter Eugene Shwartz calls a ‘low sophistication’ for Gitprime’s value prop. These prospects didn’t know such software existed.

The founders decided to hire the team at Copyhackers to create high-converting website messaging. Copyhackers soon realized that there was another issue: Gitprime solves engineering problems that execs tend not to notice.

So during the research phase, the Copyhackers team asked themselves: ‘which problems are decision-makers aware of that can be tied back to Gitprime’s engineering prop?’.

To find out the answers - and gather Voice-of-Customer (VoC) data - they analyzed Gitprime’s demo calls, sales recordings and also held interviews with the Gitprime team.

Here is the final copy (informed by VoC) on Gitprime’s product page, aimed at executives:

Notice how the copy brings these internal problems to the execs’ attention - by focusing on what execs actually care about. These concerns include: making organizational decisions, prioritizing innovation, and (shock horror) being ‘outpaced by agile start ups’.

These eye-opening statements can alert execs into taking action, rather than delaying booking a demo. After all, a feeling of urgency is considered one of the seven principles of persuasion. Remember that a common obstacle many of your prospects will face is inertia/inaction.

The Copyhackers team also used a very direct and authoritative tone-of-voice. Rather than using general statements like ‘we solve engineering measurement problems’, the copy is incredibly specific with its points. Specificity is another important key to creating high-converting messaging.

So what were the actual results?

With help from the new messaging, Gitprime saw a 200% increase in demo sign-ups on their website. The new copy helped prospects overcome their conversion obstacles – by using VoC and increasing the reader’s motivation.

You can also increase motivation by reminding your prospects of the troubles with their current solution

At this very moment, many of your prospects will be relying on an alternative solution to solve their problems. Your best prospects will be experiencing certain struggles with this solution - thereby feeling frustrated.

Such difficulties are known as the ‘Pushes of the Now’, according to the Jobs-to-be-done methodology, which propels the prospect to consider switching to your SaaS.

These curious prospects might visit your website to see whether your solution will save them from such frustrations. They may wonder: will you let them down too? Or can you finally be the escape from their struggles?

Here’s how you can handle switching-oriented messaging.
Proposify contrast their value against their prospects’ current proposal solution - in a tongue-in-cheek manner:

This ‘before and after’ style can be effective at increasing your web conversions. Why does it work? Because this tactic taps into a cognitive bias known as the Contrast Effect.

In fact, when Gong.io conducted their sales call analysis they found that before and after stories tend to be more successful than claims of ROI. The latter can arouse more skepticism, whereas our brains seem to innately enjoy before and after stories more (when used effectively).

Observe how ProfitWell uses the Contrast Effect to compare their prospects’ current pain points with the possibility of happiness and success:

This contrast helps to put the prospects’ current pains at the forefront of their minds. The copy creates a narrative: the prospect is losing money today, but can finally put an end to these losses - when they sign-up for ProfitWell.

Such a simple comparison can help spur the prospect into action.

What about when prospects don’t care about less exciting SaaS features?

Let’s admit the truth: some SaaS features are considered to be just plain boring to prospects. Your sales team will observe this nonchalance during calls early in the customer’s journey - mentioning these features results in a lack of enthusiasm from prospects.

This can create a conundrum for you. Your website needs to describe all of your features, even the supposedly ‘unexciting’ ones. But you don’t want to risk losing your prospect’s interest.

Let’s see how Proposify handles this.

Their notifications and reminders features may sound boring - that is until they frame the features in a way that’s relevant to the prospect’s concerns.

Here, Proposify taps into the persuasive principle of loss aversion. Sales teams want to know how their leads are progressing with the sales deal - so Proposify frames the notification feature as a problem-solver.

ActiveCampaign takes a similar approach:

They didn’t frame the contact management feature as ‘creating more leads’ - instead, ActiveCampaign’s messaging speaks about not losing another sales contact. As we know, our irrational brains process the loss of something valuable as more important than gaining something valuable.

This tactic can therefore help increase the uncertain prospect’s motivation - so they’re more likely to sign-up for a free trial or book a demo.

You might consider how you can use more loss-oriented copy in your website, rather than solely speaking about gains.

Your prospects feel overwhelmed by the work to set your SaaS up

Prospects are often skeptical of your messaging. Especially about secret costs you may be hiding - like training time, onboarding, and adoption. These are known as ‘labor costs’.

Let’s look at some B2B VoC data. When a Dutch financial SaaS was considering signing up for Hotjar, they felt worried and suspicious about any hidden costs that Hotjar could be hiding:

“A lot of tools try to sell you on the low price. But they “forget” to tell you that implementing can cost more, in time and money, than most people think.’

“[Luckily] Hotjar was easy to implement, and it offered tremendous value for a great price.”

Even if your software is easy to implement and use - don’t expect such facts to be immediately obvious to your prospects. You might be the expert in your SaaS, but as UX research has found: prospects tend to have ‘fuzzy mental models’ of new solutions.

It’s the job of your website messaging to fill in these information gaps and help reduce any suspicion of hidden costs.

Help your prospect overcome their anxieties about onboarding

You’ll need to address these onboarding-related concerns directly. Here are some different ways you can go about this, like using social proof:

Reviews from your real customers can help reduce your prospect’s skepticism.

Another anxiety-relieving tactic, recommended by Copyhackers, is to use the phrase ‘even if… [insert the prospect's objection]’.

Just like ProfitWell does here:

You can also remind users of how you make their lives easier in other ways. Such as the annoyances your SaaS frees them from:

When prospects become too overwhelmed with anxieties, like setting your SaaS up, they can lose sight of the bigger picture. Reel them back in by focusing on the benefits.

Your CXO prospects are worried about how safe and secure your SaaS is

When C-level execs visit your website, they’re often on a fact-finding mission. They want to tick their boxes to say that yes, when they use your software their data will be safe.

In a study, researchers spent time with a big enterprise as they considered procuring certain cloud-based software. The researchers wanted to learn the prospect’s inner perspective - particularly their deepest worries.

Their findings were simple: the foremost concern for this big enterprise was ‘data locality and security’. The second biggest worry was ‘authentication & authorization’.

This confirms what we already know: safety and security is a major, conversion-blocking concerns. If you don’t address these concerns directly on your website, you could lose prospects.

Here are different ways that SaaS companies handle safety in their messaging:

Notice how Zoho uses its messaging to make the prospect feel in control:

Why is Zoho’s messaging effective? Because it induces feelings of confidence and optimism, which are among the four most persuasive emotions - as found in a B2B report analyzing decision-making in organizations. In fact, the report discovered that these positive emotions could increase your chance of winning business by 50%.

If you don’t want security concerns to detract from the rest of your copy, you can pop them in your FAQs

This tactic can help you expand on safety information in more depth - without having to use long blocks of text in your main website copy:

It’s also worth your while to remind prospects of how many other users have trusted your SaaS:

Your prospects feel overwhelmed by the work to get buy-in for your SaaS

Many SaaS prospects have been burnt before. They’ve used similar software to you but the time and effort didn’t pay off. So feelings of suspicion can be a major conversion obstacle for you to overcome.

If your prospects are worried about convincing their team, you should help them advocate for your solution.

You can do this by reminding them of current pains that are so intense, they’re willing to go through the procurement process just to be free of them. Consider using famous copywriting formulas like Problem, Agitation, Solution (P.A.S.) to create a smoother flow, like so:

You should also make it easy for prospects (who are passionate about your SaaS) to defend you in arguments. In Unleash Possible: A Marketing Playbook that Drives B2B Sales (2016), Samantha Stone advises tech teams to:

"Stop chasing the elusive CXO who really doesn’t care about your offering, and instead arm your [decision-making] champion with the tools they need to successfully build consensus internally, justify the change in their organization, and ultimately make a purchase."

Note that in her research into tech marketing, Samantha Stone found that 81% of non-C-suite employees influence purchasing decisions. Your messaging should therefore incite end-users and managers to feel confident about you - so they can advocate for your SaaS.

To boost the confidence of your advocates, help them defend you from ‘but what if…’ questions during internal arguments. First, you’ll need to know what kind of objections and misconceptions your prospects commonly face. Again, you can find these answers in your chatbot and sales transcripts.

Here’s how Qualaroo (customer feedback SaaS) stomps on one pertinent objection:

You should also distract your prospects’ attention away from short-term pains (like getting team buy-in and filling in contracts) by reminding them of long-term gains. Increase the believability of your claims by using real customer data, like so:

And rather than throwing numbers at your prospects, you can also unpack these data points by including customer quotes:

By highlighting your customers’ outcomes - as well as the data points - you can help your messaging become more memorable to your prospects.

Your prospects feel uncertain about whether your SaaS will work for their business needs

You might have heard this excuse a bunch of times - ‘I’m not sure if this is right for us at this moment’.

The solution is simple: help your prospect feel certain that your value can be adapted to their own needs.

For example, highlight the customizations your prospect can use within your SaaS. For Staffbase, it’s the ability to brand their newsletters:

Note that ideally, you shouldn’t don’t bury the mention of important points within your body copy, like in the above example.

Instead, emphasize your objection-stompers in your subheads - as most web visitors tend to scan copy rather than read meticulously (as found by UX research).

You might also want to ease any misconceptions about limitations to your software:

If your prospects are hesitant about your value and feel it won’t be right for their brand – convince them that you understand their concerns. For example, Lunchbox knows that its restaurateur prospects can often see marketing in their industry as ‘boring’ and forced. So here, Lunchbox handles this objection:

Good-quality leads can often have misconceptions about your SaaS. These misconceptions can drive them away from your website and cut you out of their shortlists.

But when you address these significant objections, you can increase the likelihood of them staying on your website and considering your SaaS. So you can soon convert them.

Your prospects don’t understand why they should choose you and not your competition

Differentiation statements are necessary. Your prospect needs to understand why they should pick you over the alternative options.

If you don’t make your differentiated value clear, your prospect may either reject you or come up with their own story. This made-up narrative could be wrong and based on misconceptions.

So let’s see how top marketers handle differentiation concerns.

When Conversion Rate Experts (CRE) optimized Crazy Egg’s homepage, they created much longer copy - which ended up increasing the page length by more than 20 times, compared to the original.

And the new homepage copy was effective - Crazy Egg’s conversion rates rose by 30%.

So what did CRE use all that copy to do?

• They showed how Crazy Egg compared against Google Analytics and Clicktale because prospects saw these tools as major competitors.
• They used more social proof like testimonials and a list of companies who used Crazy Egg, so they could gain trust.
• The homepage provided results of a college study, to make Crazy Egg’s value look more believable. At the time, Crazy Egg was a new solution in their category and the market was not very sophisticated when it came to heatmaps. So web visitors had a major objection - they didn't know why they should bother signing up.

Your messaging should also address any switching costs your prospects might face.

In the Jobs-to-be-done methodology, switching costs are known as your prospects’ ‘Anxieties & Habits of the Now’. After all, your prospects may be worried about any data or information that they lose when they switch from one solution to yours (their ‘data costs’).

That’s why ConvertKit - operating in a very oversaturated email market - points out that they have a ‘free concierge migration service’.

This can help relieve the anxieties of ConvertKit’s switching prospects - ‘phew, I won’t lose all my current email data’.

So how can your switching prospects enjoy a smoother and more seamless experience, when they sign-up? Can you ease your prospect’s concerns about ‘data costs’?

Your prospects think you’re too expensive

Your messaging should constantly justify your price, even on your pricing page. This is not the current trend in SaaS - most pricing pages tend to have minimal copy, like so:

But the SaaS Copywriter and Consultant Josh Garofalo points out something important. Many web visitors land on your homepage - then go straight to your pricing page. This happens even before they’ve viewed your feature pages (you can validate this claim by reviewing your user recordings and heatmaps).

He goes on to say:

“If you believe anyone who reaches your [SaaS] pricing page is 80% sold, you'll be lazy about whether and how you use social proof. [...] Instead, include social proof that talks about ROI (saved money, more money, saved time, etc.) around your pricing table. This "shrinks" [your] price.

“For example, SaaS costing $400/month might sound expensive, but what if you have testimonials [that claim your SaaS is] like having a full-time employee that never calls in sick, asks for a raise, or makes mistakes?”

Here, you can see an ROI-focused testimonial placed above OptinMonster’s pricing table:

This is a very strategic move that can help increase pricing page conversions.

Your messaging strategies should be informed by customer research

To handle objections, you need to dig through your research data to find out what the most common objections are.

Sure, it takes time to review data findings. But this is your chance to frame your prospect’s narrative in your favor - so they can convert.

Remember that each of your web pages has a different context and therefore, different potentials for objection handling. For example, the SaaS Copywriter (and Founder of Case Study Buddy) Joel Klettke tells me that ‘demo sign-up pages should be focused on reaffirming the [software’s] value and countering objections in as little space as possible’.

Elsewhere on your website, you have more room to handle objections. Your case studies could handle the anxieties that your prospects felt about buying into your SaaS (in the ‘Before’ state) as opposed to only focusing on relevant pain points.

When you cease to only talk about your value and instead allow your messaging to counter objections - you can finally help reduce your prospects’ anxieties. The kind of anxieties that stand as obstacles between you and the sale.

Handling objections helps your prospects become more confident about you. When their team isn't convinced about your value, your champion can create much more convincing arguments - because they actually know the answer to all these objections.

Thanks to you using strategic messaging, you helped control the narrative in your favor. This can help you increase conversions - so your sales team can close more deals.

Wanna learn more?

Product messaging is how we communicate a product’s value to potential customers and is crucial to any product marketing strategy. However, it’s very easy to get wrong.

Sign up for our Messaging Certified: Masters course to gain the best possible knowledge on the strategy. The certification will be taught by Bryony Pearce, Chief Marketing Officer here at Product Marketing Alliance.

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Create messaging that compels action. Clearly articulate your product’s value. Capture your market’s attention. 👇

The latest addition to your eBook library, ‘Get the message: Your ticket to compelling product messaging’, focuses on a skill you and every product marketer has to master: product messaging.

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A taste of what’s in store

Get the message: Your ticket to compelling product messaging is jam-packed with a stream of insights that’ll propel your product messaging.

Here are three tips for working cross-collaboratively to ensure cohesiveness in your messaging when bringing a product to market.

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When you’re launching a new product or feature, you need to provide your stakeholders with the information to effectively create content that supports your messaging.

Set expectations for how these interactions will play out. Some key variables to consider are:

• Timelines: How far in advance will you provide messaging to your teammates?
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• Reviews: What does the review process look like? At what stage do you want to review the content that’s being shared with the market?

3) Keep an open flow of communication

Messaging is dynamic. When new features, capabilities, or enhancements are added to your product, you’ll likely need a messaging refresh.

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If you build strong messaging assets, keep communication open, and collaborate with your teammates, you can ensure your messaging will be utilized within content, and you’ll be able to go to market successfully.

Get more exclusive intel

Why is this eBook important to you?

92.6% of respondents in your State of Product Marketing Report 2022 identified messaging and positioning as a core responsibility in the product marketing role - it’s an area product marketers simply have to learn with precision.

If you don’t communicate your value proposition effectively, convey your benefits, and demonstrate you’re able to meet your customer’s needs, prospective customers will seek an alternative elsewhere in the market, and our product won’t perform to its optimum potential.

‘Get the message: Your ticket to compelling product messaging’ is exactly what it says on the tin - it’s your golden ticket to tips and tricks that’ll help you and your team create messaging that’ll resonate with your audience.

Choosing where to invest in your learning can be a momentous decision, so we're here to give you all the background info you need before becoming a master at product marketing.

Introducing: Meet the Masters - a podcast series dedicated to discussing the key facets of product marketing, with renowned experts who have been there and done it.

In the very first episode, host Charley Gale speaks to Yoni Solomon, VP of Product Marketing at Gympass and master go-to-market strategist.

They discuss Yoni's biggest successes and challenges with go-to-market, the difference between GTM and a product launch, and how to go about renaming an existing product.

Plus, they talk about what you can learn from the Go-to-Market Certified: Masters course we have at Product Marketing Alliance - a course that Yoni himself built from his experience and expertise in the field.

A little bit about Yoni

Yoni Solomon is an award-winning product marketer and advisor. He has been recognized as one of the world's 50 most influential PMMs, and is on a mission to rewrite the book on go-to-market for the next generation.

He’s passionate about a variety of areas within B2B tech marketing besides GTM, including positioning, pricing/packaging, portfolio management, people enablement and training, demand-gen, and content, to name a few.

A bit more about Go-to-Market Certified

Led by Yoni himself, Go-to-Market Certified: Masters is an industry-standard, self-paced curriculum designed to help you nail your GTM processes from here on out.

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Cross-functional collaboration is the process of working across various teams and departments, relying on eaches expertise to reach a common goal. When implemented successfully it creates a well-oiled machine, allowing all departments to work to the best of their ability through open communication and establishing a sense of synergy within the organization.

Product marketing sits at the intersection between key areas such as sales, product, marketing, communications, client success and more. All of this makes product marketing an integral player for successful cross-functional collaboration.

It is an absolute must-have skill for any product marketer, whatever company, region or industry you work in. PMMs very often act as the glue that holds operations together and work to ensure that everybody is pulling in the same direction.

Join this months' PMM Talks and hear our experts discuss:

• Should the role of maintaining cross-functional collaboration sit with the PMM or is it a company-wide effort?
• What are some of the key skills PMMs need to effectively collaborate cross-functionally?
• How to create buy-in from internal stakeholders.
• How to ensure other teams have access to the information that matters in the most useful and impactful way.

This session is live and interactive so come armed with your burning questions 🔥

Tune in live, for free, or catch up with all sessions OnDemand with a PMA Membership.

Meet the speakers:

Igor Kranjcec, Head of Marketing at MediaToolKit

Igor is Head of Marketing at Mediatoolkit, leading a team of Product, Digital, Content & Customer marketers. He’s been in customer and product marketing for 5+ years mainly focused on SaaS products in both the B2B and B2C world. He helps SaaS companies grow through the implementation and execution of product marketing, product analytics, external knowledge management, retention, x-sell and up-sell activities, building relationships & loyalty.

Aliona Margulis (Arkharova), Product Marketing Manager at Satisfi Labs

Aliona has more than eight years of proven track record in driving from scratch Product Positioning and Messaging, GTM campaigns, and acquisition & engagement marketing strategies. She implemented marketing campaigns in Europe, the USA, CIS, and Asia. She has experience working in FMCG, Travel, Consulting, and Tech companies.

Iris Stein, Director of Product Marketing at BreezoMeter

Iris is Director of Product Marketing at BreezoMeter. Iris has led various teams over the past decade at multiple Product Marketing roles while specializing in messaging, positioning, competitive intelligence, marketing strategy, GTM, and sales enablement at both global startups and large corporations including advertising, telecommunications, safety and security, and environmental intelligence industries.

Div Manickam, Author | Mentor | PMM Talks Host

A mentor, author and product marketing influencer with 10+years of B2B SaaS product marketing at Fortune500 and startups. I am exploring a portfolio life one day at a time. I recently embarked on a journey with stress and anxiety, mindfulness and essentialism, diversity and belonging. I am committed to breaking the stigma and be a voice for the unspoken. Taking a leap into the unknown, I have self-published books on my journey, most recently on “Mastering the art and science of Product Marketing”.