Tell a platform story like an Okta PMM
In the world of B2B, moving upmarket means landing larger, more complex customers—think Fortune 1000 or Global Enterprise accounts. These deals are high-value, high-stakes affairs with painfully long sales cycles and multi-threaded buying committees that could give you nightmares. From scrappy startups to scaled enterprises, cracking into that world is never easy. It takes way more than just a great product, it takes trust that actually sticks.
That's exactly what Kevin Gough cracked at companies like Okta, and his approach will make you rethink everything about upmarket strategy. Kevin's one of the most creative problem solvers in the product marketing community, launching game-changing products as the first PMM for what's now Google Cloud, which includes Google Workspaces and Chromebooks for business and education. Since then, he's led category-defining efforts at Okta, Asana, and Grammarly, helping each rethink how they show up in the market and build genuine trust with customers.
Today, Kevin is sharing exactly how he built trust strategies that opened enterprise doors previously welded shut including how Okta took on Microsoft at their own game and won. This isn't about flashy campaigns or louder claims; it's about earning trust that transforms entire market perceptions, one stakeholder at a time.
Mapping the Trust Minefield
Here's where Kevin got brilliant. Instead of treating the buying committee like one homogeneous blob, he mapped out each stakeholder's unique trust requirements. IT directors care about uptime. Compliance officers obsess over certifications. Finance heads want proof of ROI. Each person defines trust differently, and Kevin built narratives that spoke directly to these specific anxieties.
When you start treating trust like a product with features, benefits, and proof points—you can apply proper marketing tactics to this intangible concept. Revolutionary? Absolutely. Obvious in hindsight? Definitely.
The Trust Ecosystem That Actually Worked
Kevin's "trust ecosystem" approach was pure genius. Rather than just claiming trustworthiness, Okta built a fortress of third-party validations, certifications, brand partnerships, and customer stories. The standout move? Launching a dedicated microsite showcasing their uptime data and compliance documentation, stuff that usually gets buried in legal folders where nobody ever sees it.
This wasn't just transparency theater. By putting traditionally hidden information front and centre alongside powerful customer success stories, Okta didn't just claim trust—they demonstrated it with receipts.
Making Trust Everyone's Job
The real magic happened when Kevin mobilized the entire go-to-market team around the trust narrative. This wasn't marketing running a campaign whilst everyone else carried on business as usual. Sales, customer success, product—everyone became trust evangelists singing from the same hymn sheet. Trust transformed from a marketing message into a company-wide mission that customers could feel in every interaction.
For PMMs dreaming of taking their platform story to the next level, Kevin's approach is gold: target your messaging to each stakeholder's specific needs. This doesn't just create better campaigns—it turns your initiative into a compelling, organization-wide movement that builds relationships grounded in genuine trust rather than flashy promises.
Platform storytelling isn't about outshining competitors with louder claims. It's about earning trust that lasts, one stakeholder at a time. Kevin's playbook proves that when you get trust right, even Microsoft-sized giants become beatable.
LINKS:
Rippling (messaging critique): https://www.rippling.com/
Connect with Kevin:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevingough/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: [00:00:00] Kevin, I'm thrilled you're here.
Welcome to the show.
[00:00:03] Kevin: Thanks so much El excited to, to dig in.
[00:00:05] Elle: Yeah, likewise. All right. Well, let's dive right in. I can't imagine anyone would not know this, but just to keep listeners up to speed, can you give a brief overview of Okta for us?
[00:00:17] Kevin: Sure. So Okta makes it easy to sign into all your workplace applications. Uh, it keeps them secure and makes sure the right people have access to the right applications.
[00:00:28] Elle: Awesome, thanks. So, Okta of course is part of the, the case study that we'll be discussing today. So, with that, that the topic that we'll be diving into around that case study is, building trust with the upmarket segment and. I'll just say this isn't a fluffy brand topic that I think a lot of, uh, marketers may think it is.
So for the first segment of the show, let's talk through that case study a bit more. What was going on at Okta when you realized you needed to completely over all the messaging and the [00:01:00] go-to-market strategy for that upmarket segment?
[00:01:02] Kevin: Yeah, definitely. So, so first off, you know, it's funny, we're, we're on a product marketing show, but, uh, this, you know, is not a product, right? Trust is not a product per se. but it, it is something that. We, our kind of insight was we need to market trust the concept just like we market a product. So some of the same tools and techniques.
And so to, to walk you through what you said, uh, Okta was doing great in the bid market, uh, but we were trying to move up, up market to really sell to those large enterprises, and Microsoft was our, our main competitor. They had, you know, 20 year relationships. They had earned credibility. some people had built their careers on it, and so our deals were stalling because our target, uh, customers.
Uh, really weren't willing to make the jump to a relatively new vendor, so we really had to gain the trust of the buying committee. And, what we did was really a, a holistic approach. So this was a company-wide initiative that was something, everything from brand to sales. but the question was how can [00:02:00] product marketing contribute to it?
and so that's where, where we came in and we could walk through some of those activities. And ultimately the goal was really how do we uplift, uh, conversions across the funnel. we actually did a before and after, measurement of brand trust scores. So how do we improve those and then increase win rates against Microsoft specifically in that enterprise category.
[00:02:22] Elle: I love that. So, man, talk about going up against a Goliath like Microsoft is huge and while Okta of course now has a very respectable brand and really strong recognition in the market, I could imagine how back then not, not that that was that long ago, but. Could have been pretty hard if you're trying to win with those big enterprises.
and you mentioned so much that I wanna dig into, you talked about how it was a holistic approach and it was a company-wide initiative. Um, and you didn't just slap on, you know, hey, we're secure some kind of badge. Right? you went so much deeper than that. It sounds like you tackled this from like product sales, [00:03:00] marketing, and potentially even, you know, analysts and so many different angles, all while staying consistent on a current narrative.
So I wanna dig a little bit deeper on how you landed on this. I guess, like, what was part of that analysis for assessing the situation? Like why did you, why trust was the main core value that you wanted to anchor on as a company?
[00:03:23] Kevin: Yeah, certainly. Well, you know, I think it was, it was looking at, at our sales data and uh, what we saw was we had a superior product. Uh, if you, if you even did kind of side by side comparisons, uh, people preferred our product capabilities. but we saw just our win rates were not where we wanted them to be.
We also did some market research and understood sentiment analysis of Okta compared to Microsoft, and we also looked at some of the, claims that competitors were making in the market. Claims about uptime or compliance. And we recognized that we [00:04:00] weren't really, at parity, uh, with some of these claims, even though maybe our product could deliver the same amount of compliance or same amount of uptime.
Uh, so it was really looking at both market signals, but also looking at the state of our product. And we really felt our product was ready for the enterprise. So how do we, uh, make market perception match market reality?
[00:04:23] Elle: Got it. Okay. And it sounds like, multiple members of the team and potentially even third parties, you did so much analysis and it's analysis from sales and feedback from sales, looking at your win rates, all of that told a story that. Hey, we have our product can do this. Our product can solve the problem that the customer has.
We just need to step up to the plate so that they can, rely on us for the long haul like they can with a big beast like Microsoft.
[00:04:55] Kevin: Right. There was, I mean, there was kind of a, a vendor consolidation, right? People wanted to choose a [00:05:00] few strategic vendors. So our idea was how could we, we be one of the top five vendors that someone chooses to have a, a long term and hopefully million dollar, uh, relationship with.
[00:05:13] Elle: Yeah. Right. Absolutely. So when you think about it with your team, then focusing on the, I guess, product marketing's role moving forward, you, you have this very, uh, compelling assessment with all this data and the team across the entire, when I say the team, I mean the entire company is rallying around this.
What was, I guess, the task at hand just for product marketing, I guess? How did you get started? What was the big question in your mind?
[00:05:41] Kevin: Well, really it circles back to thinking about trust as a product, right? So if we were to market a product, if we were gonna go to market with a product. What are the components of an amazing product launch or, product messaging and taking that, you know, something that's very tangible, like product marketing [00:06:00] and applying it to something that's a little bit less tangible, like trust.
So really it starts just like when you're, starting to market a new product with thinking about the buying committee and who are you actually trying to sell to, and what do they actually care about. That was, that's true for products, but it was also true for trust. So different members of the buying committee, which we had mapped out, you know, from engineering to product to finance and compliance, we realized they had different, uh, values or different things that they cared about.
When you talked about the concept of trust.
[00:06:35] Elle: Got it. Okay. I wanna talk more about the buying committee process. and I feel like it's worth thing again, when you thought about product marketing's role and looking at this non-tangible thing like trust. Looking at it as a product like what's required, that dedication to, I guess, like redefining that experience from the [00:07:00] customer's perspective and how the customer may experience what trust.
looks and feels like.
So, I would love to now turn this into a playbook and, you know, say that I'm a PMM facing, you know, some kind of like. You know, maybe it's like late stage friction or trying to move up market, whatever. and I've done that research and benchmarking that big assessment that maybe you've done or done in partnership with various folks across the team.
and now I'm realizing I need to build out a go-to-market strategy and some messaging around some key value, you know, whether that's trust or quality or even authenticity. Um, like where do I start? What's step one? It sounds like. Mapping some something. You, you started to talk about buying committees, but I don't wanna get too far ahead.
Like what, what's step one?
[00:07:41] Kevin: Sure, certainly. So, so I really think it is about, you know, we all talk about ICP and the firmographics and personas, but it's really understanding as you move up market, especially to the enterprise, there's a broader set of people in the buying committee as compared to mid-market. So one, we were really expanding.
Our, our [00:08:00] buying committee, it might have been different layers within the IT team, not just the directors, but the VPs and the CIOs. It was also expanding, uh, cross-functionally. So you had chief compliance officers, for example, you had chief legal officers. You had very sophisticated procurement teams. So first we had to kind of map out this broader set of buyers and then that contextualization.
So I'll just give you a couple examples. When we talk about trust for the product team, they actually cared about uptime guarantees. So they cared that the product was gonna be up 99.99% of the time. So if they had a big spike in traffic on their brand new Uber competitor, that they wouldn't lose any of those signups.
So, you know, that was their kind of definition of trust. Whereas the engineering team actually cared about APIs and API documentation. And let's say if we move from. Version 1.2 of the API to 1.4, that it wouldn't break any of their code or any of their [00:09:00] integrations. So that's what they meant by trust.
And so we've came to realize that different stakeholders really had different metrics for trust. So we really had to contextualize that kind of fuzzy concept in a lot of specificity for the various stakeholders.
[00:09:15] Elle: Yes. And what you're saying makes a lot of sense too. 'cause I think, earlier in our conversation, just a few minute moments ago, as we were talking about, well, what does it mean to move up market? And, um, you know, what that challenge is, you mentioned that. in the upmarket segment, these companies are really looking for like consolidation and they're looking to get more with these like, you know, this idea of like best of breed.
And, and I know we're gonna get into more of that a little bit later, but, what you're saying, it makes a lot of sense now then to dig deeper into this more complex, sophisticated buying committee. and looking at it from each perspective of. How, how does this person think about trust and what about this person?
it makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's say as A-P-M-M-I am, you know, on this journey and I've accomplished step one, [00:10:00] I've done all of the mapping and analysis on that buying committee. What's next? What's step two?
[00:10:06] Kevin: Yeah. So step two I really think is, is creating, uh, I call it like a trust ecosystem or your ecosystem. Around your organization, so you've all had seen the cliche of like a used car sales person saying, Hey, trust me, or something like that, you The reality is your brand, your, you know, your statements can only go so far.
So, you need to start to develop and cultivate these third party proof points or very data grounded proof points. so an example would be a product level proof point. So we launched a, an updated trust.okta.com site that had historical information about our uptime and had an updated guarantee. I think it was.
Three nines instead of two nines. And even that uptime guarantee was something that, uh, we had to actually go to bat for internally. So we had to talk to the engineering team, we had to talk to the legal team. We had to talk to the finance [00:11:00] team because there were some risks in terms of service level agreements, and we might have to credit back.
Some amount of the purchase price if we didn't actually meet those uptime guarantees. So product marketing, we really need to make the case that this would help increase sales and move up to the, into the enterprise to offset any financial risk or legal risk that we might be exposing by being more specific in our, even our uptime, uh, for example.
[00:11:27] Elle: Yeah. Got it. It's so helpful. So there's all kinds of different validation points from, you know, maybe third parties that you can look at. I love by the way, and I know we're this too, we're gonna get into more later, but, building out a separate site. To house all this strong validation that you're, that you're building, makes a lot of sense and Right.
It's, it's that, trying to say without saying like, don't just take it from us. Like, don't just take my word for it. Okay, so once you get that validation going, how do you take all that work that you've done with the persona and the buy team and [00:12:00] put it all together in a story that's, you know, backed by evidence, you know, in addition to that, all that third party data and like, you know, even bringing customers into the net mix, like what's the next step?
[00:12:09] Kevin: Yeah, so you, you know, you raised a good point. So I'd say it's, it's more than just you providing that proof. It's things like any third party certifications you have, you think of FedRAMP or HIPAA type of certifications that we also had to kind of advocate as product marketing to get, it's brand associations.
So we actually. Forged some partnerships in, in collaboration with partner marketing with other companies who are actually competing with Microsoft. So you think of Box or Slack or Zoom, I think we called ourselves the Velvet Alliance. Right. and we were kind of the best of breed and so we also got some validation of way if someone used Zoom and they liked.
Maybe they'd wanna use Okta. So that also helped in that kind of trust ecosystem. and then I'd say step three is not just those third parties, but really how to get your customers engaged [00:13:00] and really kind of trying to tie, your trust points that you're trying to, demonstrate with some of the business outcomes.
That your customer actually cares about. So not about efficiency, but really about those business outcomes and how they're really trusting you to help deliver those business outcomes.
[00:13:18] Elle: I love that. I love that. So it's, there's so many opportunities for the third party component, but then taking what the customer, what's meaningful to the customer, and framing ev all of your capabilities and, you know, the differentiator of your product rather than starting with that, starting with, well, what's really meaningful to our customer and their business and what they're trying to achieve.
and we did that a lot at Cisco as well. across the company, or at least across marketing, we always frame everything that we're doing around business outcomes for the customer. so I can attest that that is a very, uh, effective strategy from a PMM perspective. Okay. So bringing it back to our step-by-step process. We've got [00:14:00] mapping and contextualizing, we've got the, the buyer team, we've got building out the, validation points, you know, maybe that's with third parties and, you know, maybe it's with, you know, metrics that you can provide with the, you know, like you gave the uptime example, and then we have the bringing customers on board, getting them engaged, and really framing the story around, you know, their business out.
Comes, I guess like as you're thinking about all of this, and especially with like the validation with third parties and customers, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about analysts. So tell me, what role do analysts play in all of this?
[00:14:40] Kevin: Sure, certainly. Well, as you, as you move up, market analysts are increasingly critical. Uh, large companies, uh, one maybe don't have the time to evaluate all the different vendors in an ecosystem, and so they look to their. Hopefully well paid analysts to do some of that vetting for them. And there's a little bit [00:15:00] of risk mitigation honestly, too, where you can say, Hey, I made this choice because.
Gartner or Forrester also put them in the leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant. Um, so there's a little bit of bias towards that as well. So I'd say analyst is definitely a long game. my strategy that I've found that works well and also I think works well for the analyst is you both wanna listen and share.
So analysts do have a broad. Based insights into a market. They're talking with all of your competitors. They're talking with all of your customers. So they can share a lot of insights in terms of product roadmap, differentiation, even things like messaging. They can say, well, this message is dead. People aren't interested in that.
Um, so I always wanna listen and learn from them up front, but I'm also, to be honest, always planting little seeds, even in those listening sessions to try to tease out those core bits of differentiation. That we have, against a, a competitor, especially one like Microsoft, where [00:16:00] they've probably had a long-term lucrative relationship with a Microsoft type vendor.
So, I'd say it's a long game in terms of changing vendor perception, but one of the, the tricks, or I've tips, I would say, is really focus on trying to get a question or two, that you can influence in one of the magic quadrants. So, For example, for Okta, we really did a great job with integrations.
We had literally thousands of integrations, which made it very easy to sign in to all these new cloud apps. And that was something that we were much, much better than our competitors on. So we were successful in getting that question in one of the magic quadrants, and that really helped to improve our score and our perception.
And ultimately we became a leader in the access management, uh, magic quadrant.
[00:16:48] Elle: That's so strategic. So, I totally agree. The Magic Quadrant, strategy from a vendor perspective, it starts way before you actually get the [00:17:00] questionnaire from Gartner, um, or you know, magic Quadrant or whatever, equivalent other. Um, yeah. IDC. Yeah.
all of them. And I think it's so strategic to think about plant when, when you plant those seeds and the way that you were able to do it with your differentiators, so that you ended up getting your differentiator as a question on the questionnaire as just really smart thinking.
okay. So it sounds like step four would've been like building out that analyst strategy, which maybe you should I, from a timeline perspective, now that I'm thinking about this. You know, some of these things are happening in parallel, right? It's not like you do one check, then you do the other one check.
Like you have to be thinking from a timing perspective, some of these things are happening. You know, I. either earlier on in the process, I can imagine, for example, like planting those seeds with Gartner. It's an ongoing strategy. You just have to make Sure. all that goodness that you're doing in the first few steps with like, mapping out the buyer team and building out, um, the validation and the, and the [00:18:00] customer objectives, right?
Like you're bringing that into the analyst strategy, right? Like is that kind of what you guys did at Okta?
[00:18:08] Kevin: Yeah. Well, I, you know, honestly, I think it became a year long initiative for us because there are things, I mean, you think of some other long lead times like to, to do the uptime guarantee. Engineering needed to do a little work, to get the certifications. We actually had to apply and get audited for, you know, SOC type two or HIPAA
or
FedRAMP. so I think that there is, of course, there's some quick wins. I think the customer stories, like, you know, a JetBlue case study that says they trust us with a thousand flights a day. That's something you can do, you know, in a month. Whereas some of these other things are longer lead time. So I wouldn't say don't start until you have everything, but I think it's probably gonna be a little bit more of a, of a rolling thunder, um, as you're rolling this out.
[00:18:54] Elle: Yeah. Yeah. Helpful tip. Okay, so, once you get all of this strategy in [00:19:00] place and you're, you have some of those quick wins as well as, you know, the long term, uh, plan all in place, what does this look like from a customer's perspective?
[00:19:09] Kevin: sure. So, you know, I think really to make this or any initiative successful, it's about how to deputize the entire go-to-market organization so you're kind of getting the same message across all surfaces. I mean, very explicitly and visually, we redid our website. We, we chose some really rich purples, you know, and kind of financial services type imagery that said, Hey, you know, trust us we're serious.
But it was also about, uh, the sales team and giving them a trust playbook, you know, with a specific assets and collaterals around compliance that they could actually present to customers. it was partnering with the customer success team as well. So how can we give the customer success team information around these enhanced capabilities that might drive improved [00:20:00] renewal rates or expansion into areas of the business that they hadn't quite been comfortable trusting Okta, uh, previously.
So, um, that I think was part of the success was everyone was kind of a trust ambassador for the company.
[00:20:14] Elle: I love that everyone was so involved and when you do that, especially earlier on as I, it sounds like you guys did this with building out the, the go to market strategy. Everyone got to, I guess, like see that plan as it was coming to fruition and I'm, I would, be willing to assume that. Even take part in shaping it.
So then as you go and, and do that, step five of, to use your words, deputizing, the entire go-to-market organization. It's not the first time they're seeing or hearing it as in, I don't know about you, but I've certainly experienced, um, I would say even mistakes that I've made, like not looping sales in early enough when I'm building a strategy and then I go to do some sales enablement and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:21:00] Hang on. And then I get great feedback, but it's feedback I should have and wish that I gotten, would've gotten earlier on. Um, so it's, it's good then. cause then by the time you go and launch, they're eager, willing, and they have an appetite for this great content that you're putting together. Like that playbook, that the trust playbook you mentioned, which sounds really cool.
Um, and helpful for the team.
[00:21:22] Kevin: Yeah. Well, I think, I think what was, particularly, uh, important there was showing the, the other cross-functional partners metrics that would be meaningful to them that we could move, or we believe we could move with this. So corporate marketing and customer marketing, it was brand perception we could move that we believe we could move, um, lead generation and conversion rates.
And win rates in, uh, the enterprise market. So that meant our enterprise sellers were more engaged and we believe we could improve renewal rates as well by this in the enterprise segment. So that meant our customer success team [00:22:00] was engaged. 'cause the metrics we thought we could move were aligned with the metrics that they were gold upon.
so there was a symbiotic relationship there.
[00:22:08] Elle: Yeah. Okay. And can you talk a little bit more about the microsite that you, um, or the, the Okta team built, I guess, like what was the goal of that microsite and what kind of content did you put on there? I know earlier in our, in our chat you mentioned, um, that you put some of that validation content on there.
What else was, did you use that site for?
[00:22:27] Kevin: Sure. So I mean, I'd say the, some net new aspects of it was one, the kind of visual dashboard of our uptime over time. So it was literally a heat map. You know, where you saw green and yellow and red and hopefully not a lot of red. Right? Uh, that kind of said, Hey, we're being, it was a transparency, so we're being transparent with you over six months.
And so you can actually be confident that what we're claiming is actually, what we're, what we're delivering. So that was one. The second was kind of fun is we actually had increasingly been hiring security [00:23:00] researchers and regional chief information security officers. So we use this as a, a launchpad for publishing security research to improve our thought leadership and credibility.
[00:23:13] Elle: That is so smart.
[00:23:14] Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. And then the, the third one, which was kind of low hanging fruit, and I actually think a lot of companies might have this, is there was a lot of documentation that we had to go through for these various certification processes. You know, SOC type two or HIPAA or FedRAMP, and typically that lives in some shared folder, and if some customer asks for it, you send it as a PDF.
Um, so it, you don't get a lot of marketing value from it. But we actually put that all online and so we had a whole compliance section and so it enabled us to be much more front footed and those questions and conversations earlier. Customers could discover it themselves or sales reps could just kinda link to it and it just, once again, it forced kind of that we were buttoned up and the transparency to [00:24:00] remove friction in the process.
[00:24:01] Elle: that's the exact word I was gonna use. Transparency. It's like you removed all the blockers that typical B2B intentionally puts there.
[00:24:10] Kevin: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:11] Elle: So for customers or prospective customers to get all this information and do some of the diligence themselves upfront, I mean, even when I'm doing buying for marketing tools.
I wanna do as much research I can before I have to pause my own buying process to wait to talk to a salesperson, to, for them to do their pitch. And then we go back and forth. Like, I just wanna do as much diligence on my end as I can to make my shortlist. Before I go forth having some engagements. So it's helpful, to, arm your prospective customers with that information so they can get it themselves.
Um, and then the other thing that you mentioned, that strategy that you did of hiring these, you know, security experts to author some content it all helps to build that [00:25:00] trust that you're trying to achieve. So I just wanted to call that out as, Being really helpful.
Very cool. Yeah, Okay. So quick recap on everything, you know, we talked about so far.
so step one, we talked about, um, mapping out the buying committee and like contextualizing around the buy team. Um, you talked about step two of, building out the validation points, and that could be everything from your own product validation to third parties. Um, step three, you talked about, tying everything to mm-hmm.
Business outcomes for your customers, and then step four. having an analyst relations strategy and then step five to, deputize the go to market org. And all of these steps maybe, you know, are happening in parallel. So not necessarily a one after the other type of thing.
But, uh, a lot of goodness here.
And I guess like the one thing that I don't know if we talked about yet is. When all this is said and done, you know, you're, you're in the, you've got your story in the market, you've got this brilliant [00:26:00] microsite up. what are the metrics that you use to make Sure. that a strategy like this is working?
[00:26:06] Kevin: Sure. So we had, we had done a brand study, so we were able to do a measure of, of increased in brand perception. So that's kind of the top of the funnel as much as anything. we were also able to measure, uh, win rates. So increased win rates specifically against Microsoft or other. Competitors in the enterprise segment.
Also, we saw a, an uplift in those renewal rates in the enterprise segment, so we weren't losing deals back to Microsoft. And then we were looking at a lift in pipeline, specifically in the enterprise segment. So really, uh, it was, uh, initiative that, as you said, it was multi-threaded, but was able to deliver on a number of different dimensions across the, the buyer journey.
[00:26:48] Elle: Yeah, I could imagine being part of a team and as you're doing maybe team check-ins or you know, a road show or of some sort on some of the [00:27:00] results. Maybe it's even like a company all hands. I could imagine the celebration when you see some of those, all that hard work that everyone had been working towards for so long.
Payoff, that's, that's really awesome. Okay, so final question for you on this topic, Kevin. So for any PMM out there who's trying to move their product up market, and maybe they're focusing in on some non-tangible value like trust, what's one piece of advice that you have for a PMM who's in that situation?
[00:27:28] Kevin: I think it was really the unlock was, uh, getting much more specific on the buying committee and really contextualizing this idea of trust or really any product feature to have it be specific to either the KPI or the strategy or the value that that specific member of the buying committee was pursuing.
And so that allowed us to really be crisp in terms of. The value that we were gonna deliver to them on trust. And it also kind of [00:28:00] created these new work streams with collaborative partners like engineering, with like sales, like, uh, customer success that enabled us to expand the initiative beyond just being a, a product marketing initiative or marketing initiative to truly a, a company-wide initiative.
[00:28:17] Elle: Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. So, and I really appreciate how you and the team thought about what trust looks like across that buyer team, and it made it so, so much more personal and more genuine when you do it that way, versus just applying to what you want trust to be and then slapping it across all the content.
You know, it sounds like from the very beginning. You, you, when I say you, I mean you and, and the rest of the Okta team. Um, you know, you did all this research around really understanding like what are, what signals gave customers that confidence to move forward and what proof they needed to do that. it's.
Obviously speaks that it was very successful by doing that approach. and you didn't just throw some, you know, generic [00:29:00] trust signals into the mix either again, like, not just like slapping a badge on a, on, on the website. You actually built something that's personal and human. Um, so I love that. It's, it's really helpful and appreciate you taking the time to walk us through this playbook.
Alright. Okay, so closing out that segment and moving on to.
the next, next segment of our show is the messaging critique. Okay. So this is where we as product marketers get to analyze real world market or messaging. And the fun part is, Kevin, you might guess get to pick the company. so before we get started, I'm gonna walk through, um, some quick round rules.
So. You're gonna tell us what the company is that we're going to analyze today. and then once we do that, we're, you're gonna walk us through the messaging. Um, you're gonna tell me one thing that you're loving about the messaging, something that stood out about the product, and then you're gonna tell me something that you wish the PMM would've done differently as they were building out that messaging.
And then finally. We're gonna do a quick fun brainstorm around how could this PMM take [00:30:00] it, uh, to the next level, how, you know, maybe they could create, um, some fun content or a new creative campaign, something that the PMM could think about. it's all about refining our craft. No negativity. Just a thoughtful, constructive critique.
So let's get into it. What is the company that you would like to analyze today?
[00:30:20] Kevin: Yeah, so the company I wanna look at today is rippling. It's kind of an everything in one tool for small businesses. It does hr, IT financial things like spend management, payroll. So I think it's interesting because it's kind of a platform. But the buyers are pretty different. Typically a HR person versus an IT person, versus a finance person, they really have to try to reach a really diverse set of buyers.
But for a system or a tool that's, that pitches itself as all in one.
[00:30:53] Elle: Yeah, you really distinct buyers that, that you mentioned, right? Like you, I think you said it, [00:31:00] hr, finance, those are very distinct buying centers. Um, okay. So for those of you who wanna follow along, check out rippling.com. It's R-I-P-P-L-I-N g.com. okay, so tell me about their messaging. Like right off the bat.
No, I guess just starting at like with their head, header and subheader, what are you seeing here and what's working and not working?
[00:31:20] Kevin: Yeah, so their, their header is, employees get more done with rippling. And here's what I like about it, is they're not, because they have such a diverse set of buyers, they're not trying to get something that touches every single buyer. They're talking about the end. Consumer, which is the employee. So hr, it, finance, ultimately they in some ways have to be in service of the employee, and if they can help the employee get more done, then that delivers value across the business.
So I like how they've kind of thread the needle where this is something that all three of those buyers probably wanna have [00:32:00] happen.
[00:32:00] Elle: Yeah, so it's kind of like uniting these very distinct buying centers around one common goal. and I heard this, maybe I heard it from a different guest on my show, I can't remember, but I heard this one time where you can tell how good a product is by like when you take it away from your end user. And how they react to you taking it away.
Like Slack is an example of that. Like when you take away the like, like every employee is not the buyer of Slack as an example, but if you take that tool away from them, they're gonna be really bummed about it. So applying that same similar idea here. Obviously I don't, I've never used rippling. I'm not really sure, you know, not speaking on it from that perspective, but the idea is that like uniting all of these different buying centers around.
giving a tool that employees appreciate or like, ideally right, they're getting more done. that's maybe a good, a good way to test how effective that tool is and, you know, so a definitely consideration for [00:33:00] those different buying centers. so you like that aspect about it. Okay. And what's something that maybe the PMM could have done differently as they were building out some of their messaging?
[00:33:09] Kevin: Sure. So it's interesting just looking at the site itself. There are many calls to action, which is see rippling, uh, get a demo. All of those drive to a reg form. So to me, it's really clear that this site is owned by demand gen, you know, it's, it's designed to perform, you know, and so in some ways you kind of see like.
The org chart when you look at a website and sometimes it's very brandy and sometimes it's very producty. Well, this one is very, uh, revenue marketing and that, I mean, this is a hypergrowth company, so, and it's also SMB, so the. Cost per acquisition is key to the profitability of the product. So I get it.
what I would love to see as just a visitor of the site is surfacing a little bit more [00:34:00] of the interactivity and engagement, you know, a little, just a little of a teaser demo or, uh, a teaser quote from, an existing customer. just something that kind of, I'd say humanizes. The product a bit more is I think, um, what I'd love to see on the site.
[00:34:18] Elle: I completely agree, and I was thinking that as you were saying, so for example, on their website here, they've got this great headline, this really strong message, employees get more done with rippling. And then on the side they have a stat, like right next to that they have a static image and it's, I think it's a replication of what their product looks like.
and that's not bad. in fact, I like seeing what the product looks like. I liked product imagery. I just think they could have done, there's, um, so much more opportunity with that real estate to tie the imagery directly back to employees getting more done. And maybe they're trying to show that with.[00:35:00]
Showing the, you know, they've got talent benefits, like it spent, payroll, like all in that one image. So maybe they're trying to show an all-in-one. In my opinion, it's a little too much and it makes the, it makes your customer, your ICP have to work a little too hard, I think, to make that connection. So I would like, I would like to see them maybe just some brainstorming around how could they make it easier for visitors of the site or their ICP to make it easier for them to, to draw the connection with whatever imagery they use with that.
really strong, you know, messaging that they have. So, curious what you think about like the imagery?
[00:35:40] Kevin: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I'd love to see if, if their site supported it. I mean, that could be an animated gif. It could be a little. Carousel, it could be something that kind of has some action or activity around it. Uh, because the workflows are interesting. I mean, you see enrolling in benefits assigning a computer or assigning a corporate card, you know, once you, once you zoom [00:36:00] in two, two times and you see some of the capabilities, you're like, oh, this looks good.
So I think that surfacing these workflows in, uh, an engaging fashion and maybe a couple of these workflows. I think could really, um, kind of add a little bit more specificity, uh, to the, to the product.
[00:36:18] Elle: I completely agree. I think some kind of like animated gif or something that showed like a process, cause as you're saying it, like, like showing it as a story, would be really effective. I do love that they have all the, the proof points, with all of the, um. You know, star ratings that they have. Um, so that's really effective too.
And they've got great customer stories on here as well. Um, so what's something that the PMM could consider to take it to the next level?
[00:36:46] Kevin: You know, I would be curious about how they use this landing page, because part of me says maybe there's a bunch of microsites that they've created for it, for hr, for, uh, you know, so maybe there's a whole play of [00:37:00] you're actually targeting specific ICPs. Bringing them to an IT or an HR specific landing page, having more specific messaging, and then kind of over time expanding into these other areas.
So I would be curious about their land and expand strategy and maybe go deeper on, um, some more targeted microsites or landing pages, specific to those buyers.
[00:37:26] Elle: Yeah. You know, when I click, I clicked on each one of those CTAs, those call to actions for each of the buying centers. And it looks like it has a special one, and the others don't. There's just like immediately looks and feels different and the, the actual URL is different as well. So it's really interesting.
I wonder if something that, as you're saying is kind of the strategy, but maybe there's another way that they could be thinking about it, as you said, to take it to the next level. very cool. Any thought, any quick, like, [00:38:00] last thoughts on rippling?
[00:38:02] Kevin: Well, you know, the other thing I like that it, it was, it was pretty popular a while back, but I, I'd say it's fallen out of favor, but I like that they have that what's new at rippling? Uh, carousel. I, I think if you have enough news, uh, that if people are coming back to the site or have a little time to explore, I do like how they're surfacing the latest and greatest it's case studies.
It's, it's launches and so this also just gives honestly PMM surface area to do a little bit of of promotion while keeping the site fresh, without having to do an entire site redo, which can be time consuming
[00:38:39] Elle: Yes. Oh my gosh. I know. and hard, just, um, hard for a PMM to try to get, even if you will, you know, update messaging for example. Or you have a new creative story to tell and you want it featured on the site. Oh my gosh. Could take forever take, especially getting it on a homepage. So yeah, that's a really good call out.
okay, cool. Well, hey, rippling, [00:39:00] pmms great work. We like your strong messaging and we've got some ideas for you if you're open to it. alright, so that concludes the messaging critique segment. So Kevin, there's one thing I wanna do before we go. I like to make space for what I call a moment of gratitude on the show, um, because in product marketing.
None of us get here alone. We always learn from each other. Definitely building on each other's work and we're all better for it. So before we wrap up, I wanna say a genuine thank you for your time and effort. you know, all the preparation that went in on your side ahead of this show and sharing your, playbook on, Okta and all the time and insights you shared.
Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it.
[00:39:44] Kevin: Thanks. It was a lot of fun. Al,
[00:39:45] Elle: Yeah, of course. And I would love to now turn it over to you who's maybe one or two pmms, who's made a real impact on your career. This is a great time to give them a little shout out.
[00:39:55] Kevin: Sure. I definitely have a, a, a few outs, um, from across my career. [00:40:00] Wanna give a shout out to Jeremy Milo From my time at Google, he was, instrumental in helping me think about kind of zero to one product marketing.
So I think we launched 13 different products during my time there. And so really just building up that muscle of understanding the ICP and taking it to, to market and figuring out what channels to sell it through. I wanna give a shout out to Ed Sama from my time at Okta. Ed is, is kind of a master craftsman.
Of product marketing. Uh, he has a blog that's taught me a lot, but also we work together closely. So kind of all of the, the fine tuning of the craft, especially around pricing and packaging, which I think is something that's increasingly important as, especially with AI workloads and cloud workloads.
We're kind of innovating new ways to price and package offerings. And then, uh, Puja, Ramani from my time at Asana. And this was a really fun one. We were, we're trying to figure out the product-led sales motion, which kind of takes the best of product-led [00:41:00] growth and sales-led growth and combines 'em together, in innovative ways.
So I really enjoyed my time working with her on that.
[00:41:07] Elle: I love it. You really had some amazing mentors, uh, across your career. That's awesome. and this is my last question for you, I promise. Where else can we access your expertise? Is it best to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:41:19] Kevin: Sure. Uh, happy, happy to have a chat. I always like talking to people, starting companies, so if you ever want a, an hour of, of free time, uh, to riff, I'm, I'm all for it.
[00:41:29] Elle: That's awesome and very generous of you, um, as is with all the rest of the effort and time that you've already given us. So thank you so much. Um, and thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take and the next step of your own journey.
