Amy Burrows

17 July 2015

Being a Product Marketing Manager at Redgate

When I’m told there is a new product release on the horizon at Redgate, the first thing I do, as the Product Marketing Manager, is meet with the Product Manager. I’ve heard many stories in the past about how easy it is for marketing professionals to slip into a bubble of isolation when preparing to promote a new or improved product, but that just doesn’t work for me.

I need support. I need input. And lots of it; from the sales team, from my marketing peers, from potential customers, but most importantly from the teams who are building the software. To me, that’s a no-brainer. When it comes to understanding the product, they are the experts, and the people I rely on the most.

First Step

So first up, I meet with either the Product Manager or Lead Developer/Project Manager (depending on the size of the team). I’m no developer, and I don’t pretend to be, but it’s imperative to get a good grasp on the features being included. I usually ask a whole heap of questions, including:

1. What are we changing/updating/releasing? I need to fully understand the technical aspects of the release.
2. Why are we doing this? Have customers been asking for it? Are we keeping up with technology changes from outside Redgate (e.g. a platform release)? Does it just make sense to make these changes? Or are there other, more commercial reasons?
3. Who will care about this release? Who are we doing this for? How will this benefit those people and how can we make them care about it?
4. Where does this put us in regards to our competitors? Will these changes really differentiate our software from the competition? Or if we’ve still got a way to go to match up with the competitor’s product, has this just closed the gap somewhat?
5. What will this do for our positioning? Understanding this is key to deciding on the message to promote.

The Release Plan

Once I’ve educated myself about the release, I start to work on a release plan. First off is measurements, or it should be – in all honesty, this is not my strong point but I’m working on it. By looking at the current and past state of affairs for the product at hand, I can make a decision on where we want to get to and then decide what marketing activities will help us to get there most effectively.

Luckily at Redgate we have lots of channels available to us which we can use to promote releases, making things fairly simple to set up. Normally I start by thinking about the fundamentals: Adwords, SEO, website, events, publishing content (articles, e-books, white papers, blog posts), social media, video etc.

How much I do of each really depends on the size of the release. If it’s a small release, which is noteworthy but not revolutionary, then on top of all of the standard check-list release items I’ll maybe ask one of the product team or one of our product evangelists to write a short blog post about it. This can then be pushed out using social media, our newsletter channels and via our website.

If it’s a larger release and we really want to make some noise about it, I’ll work with our publishing team to produce some educational content, maybe an eBook or white paper. I’ll think about whether we need to produce a video to explain the changes or if we can we use our presence at events to promote the release. Do I need to produce collateral to support our sales teams? Can we utilise our community reach and ask relevant influential figures to feature our tool in a relevant session at a conference or user group? Could they host a webinar for us?

One of the things I cherish most about working at Redgate is our Friends of Redgate program – our hub of influential community members who are experts in their field AND big fans of Redgate and our products. I love these guys (and gals!). They make my life so much easier as I can always rely on at least one of them to get on board for a release and help to spread the word, either by blogging about it, speaking about it at events or just by shouting about it on Twitter. They are invaluable.

On top of all this I try to always keep the customer journey firmly in mind; how does the content we’ve produced, plus the channel used to promote it, and then the final call to action all fit together? So many times I’ve been on websites for products I’ve been interested in and have gotten frustrated because my next step is not self-explanatory enough. It’s simple stuff but it’s so often forgotten.

Distilled

I could write so much more about product marketing, this really is just the tip of the iceberg but my take-home message for releases (for me at least) would be:

• Take the time to learn about the product/changes to the product before you make any decisions on how to promote it.
• Promoting educational content on a similar subject to that of your product release is a great way to get people round to your way of thinking without them feeling like you’re giving them the hard sell.
• It’s a cliché, but word-of-mouth really is powerful. If you can get someone influential to say it for you, that’s worth gold.

Interested in being a Product Marketing Manager?

We’re looking for Product Marketing Managers. People who are passionate about marketing and who want to do the right thing. It would be good if you had some experience in the technology space but if not, talk to us anyway. You could be what we’re looking for. So take a look at the latest opportunities at Redgate and, if you want an informal chat first, email me.