Create a new market category like a Splunk PMM
In product marketing, we talk endlessly about positioning, messaging, and knowing your customer—but what happens when the market itself shifts or your product evolves so dramatically that the story you've been telling no longer fits? Today we're diving into one of the boldest moves a PMM can make: shaping or even creating an entire market category.
Whether you're redefining the space you play in, staking your claim in an emerging category, or building one from scratch, this is where strategy, narrative, and business collide in ways that can make or break your product's future. It's exhilarating, terrifying, and absolutely essential when traditional positioning just won't cut it anymore.
Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Michael Olson, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Splunk, who's had multiple at-bats helping companies find and own their market position. Michael's a trusted mentor, recognised as a top 100 PMM on ShareBird, and founder of the Product Marketer blog where he shares real insights from the field. What sets Michael apart is how he shows up as a product marketing leader—he's the person teams turn to when they need someone to ask the tough questions, advocate relentlessly for the customer, and bring thoughtful strategy to every conversation.
In this episode, Michael is sharing exactly how he's navigated the complex world of market category creation, the strategic decisions that shaped entire industries, and what it really takes to position your product when there's no established playbook to follow.
Navigating Change in Product Marketing
We product marketers spend much of our time perfecting our positioning, honing our messaging, and deeply understanding our customers. But what do you do when the sands of the market start to shift beneath your feet, or when your product has morphed beyond the tale you’ve been telling? That’s the moment to dive into the daring dance of creating or reshaping a market category.
Michael shares with us that at its core, a market category is how your customer sees your product. It’s all about framing an unforgettable narrative and planting your flag in the market map.
The Decision Tree of Category Creation
Before you charge ahead, Michael suggests tackling a crucial decision-making process:
1. Create a New Market Category: Is your product a game-changer the world’s yet to see?
2. Redefine an Existing Category: Are you giving a classic problem a fresh, innovative twist?
3. Expand into an Adjacent Market: Are you looking to break into a nearby domain with a fresh perspective?
Think on these to chart the course for lasting success and growth.
Crafting the Narrative: Positioning as a Foundation
Once your target is clear, it's all about crafting that killer narrative. Michael underscores the significance of positioning as the launchpad for your category creation journey:
1. Identify a Big Change: Show you’re plugged into your customer’s world and the shifts they’re experiencing.
2. Frame the Problem: Define the challenges these shifts present.
3. De-position the Status Quo: Rattle the cage of traditional norms and spark a desire for change.
4. Describe the Promised Land: Paint a vivid picture of what life could be like with your solution in place.
5. Frame your Category: Present your solution as the crucial pathway to this new, enhanced state.
As Michael points out, it’s all about positioning—your market savvy, understanding your audience inside-out, and showcasing what sets you apart.
Internal Buy-in and External Activation
Once your narrative is polished, securing internal buy-in is key. We talk about how Michael runs internal roadshows to gain support from all corners of the company. Then, it’s time to take it outside through strategic analyst engagements and punchy marketing campaigns, like thought-provoking reports and useful buyer’s guides, to stake your claim in the market.
A Case Study from Splunk
Facing the challenge of associating Splunk with the booming observability market, Michael refines their narrative, explaining what sets them a cut above the competition. The result? Improved brand recall and leadership status in significant industry reports.
Advice for Aspiring Product Marketers
Michael leaves us with powerful advice: Be pragmatic, and always, always keep the customer front and center. Whether pioneering a new category or reshaping an existing one, language that resonates with your customers is your best friend.
He also encourages aspiring PMMs to venture beyond the comfort of product expertise. Become a market maestro, understanding competitor strategies and market nuances—there's nothing quite like it to bolster your career journey!
LINKS:
Walnut.io (messaging critique): https://www.walnut.io/
Connect with Michael:
Website: https://theproductmarketer.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelolson1/
Sharebird:https://sharebird.com/profile/michael-olson
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: Michael, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:02] Michael: Hey, what's up Al? Thanks for having me on. I.
love what you're doing with this podcast, by the way. I think the world needs better product marketing and you know, there's really no manual for what we do. So a lot of respect for, uh, what you're doing here on this pod.
[00:00:15] Elle: Thank you so much Alright, let's dive right in. Okay, so category creation is one of the most ambitious things a PMM can take on. Not everybody gets to do it, but I would argue that almost all pmms get to influence their position in the market.
So. So before we tackle this head on and before we jump into the case study, help give us some definition around what does it mean to have a market category Exactly.
[00:00:40] Michael: Yeah, I think simply put a, a market category is the position in your customer's mind, where your product plays. And I think as like humans, we naturally wanna categorize things as a way of helping us make sense of our world, right?
And we do this stuff, we do this kind of stuff all the time. Like if I asked you what Haagen Dos is, you would probably say it's, [00:01:00] you know, super premium ice cream.
Or if I asked you what you know, a BMW three series is, you would probably say it's a luxury compact sedan. And obviously those are both B2C examples, but I think, you know, the exact same truth holds in the B2B world. And I personally think category creation is one of the most important things that you can do to set your company up for, you know, long-term durable growth.
Like we're all familiar with the old field of dreams adage that if you build it, they will come. You know, based on the idea that if you launch an amazing product, it's just gonna sell itself. And sometimes that works, but I think a lot of the time it doesn't. Right.
And it's because it's not good enough.
Just to create a great product, you also need to frame the category and create the market in which you play.
[00:01:41] Elle: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking all the way back to my college days. I, majored in psychology in undergrad and I remember learning about heuristics and exactly as you were referring, creating labels and categories just helps our brains and Marvins work [00:02:00] faster and more efficiently. Um, so our jobs as product marketers are to help our customers make those connections for them.
so. Let's now dig a little bit into the case study itself. I know you have a few different examples of this from your career. So let's start with you walking us through a time when you helped create or shape a market category.
[00:02:21] Michael: Sure. So we'll do a.
little bit of a throwback here. Uh, I started my career outta school as employee number eight at a pre-series, a pre-revenue startup. Uh, called Jan Rain, and I spent, uh, six years there as we scaled up to about 200 employees, 15 million in recurring
annual revenue. And when I first joined, we had just built and launched our flagship product, which was this thing called social login.
Like, have you ever visited a website, you know, where you can use your existing Google or Facebook identity to like
create an account on that site? yeah.
Yeah. So it's a nice time saver right over like needing to fill out
a registration form from scratch and
remember yet another
[00:02:59] Elle: Another [00:03:00] password. Oh God. There's nothing worse.
[00:03:02] Michael: Totally. And this was a long time ago, so this is like when we were still writing down our login details on Post-It notes instead of, you know, using something like One Password. So anyway, this company I worked at, we basically invented that technology and pretty early on after launching this social login product, we realized that the market problem wasn't big enough for this product alone.
In order to build like a big company around it there, you know, simply put like there wasn't gonna be enough money in that banana stand for us to reach a state velocity. Uh, and we needed to think bigger. So we got to work basically building out a broader product portfolio, including like a website registration as a service product, and a customer profile database to enable digital marketers to be able to store demographic and psychographic data for people who created an account.
On their website, and this was actually all kind of new to the world technology at the time, you know, for companies to be able to buy something like that as a service instead of building it from scratch. And [00:04:00] we really only had one competitor, a company outta the Bay Area called Gigia that was like doing anything close to what we were doing.
And initially we tried positioning this, you know, new portfolio as a user management platform for the social web. But it was kind of a mouthful. It like totally wasn't barbecue speak or customer language. it really didn't connote any value, so it just didn't stick. And so we got to work, in like 20 13, 20 14, basically defining and building a category as the space where our products played.
And eventually we coined and led the creation of the customer identity and access management category. And that's a market that our competitors later standardized on analyst firms who covered digital marketing technology have since
[00:04:44] Elle: Yeah. It's like a crazy, huge market now.
[00:04:47] Michael: Yeah.
And it's, and it's a term that's still used today to refer to products for public companies like Okta and Microsoft and
[00:04:54] Elle: Even Cisco. Yeah.
[00:04:56] Michael: Yeah.
totally. So, I ended up, uh, moving on, [00:05:00] you know, to a new gig at a company called Puppet after about six years. But our, our little startup got acquired by Akamai, which is a $3 billion public company. And, um, you know, essentially became Akamai's flagship customer identity and access management, uh, product offering.
[00:05:13] Elle: Awesome. Okay. Wow, what an incredible story. So I would love to take this case study and now let's create some practical steps that A PMM would take to shape the market category for their own product. So, um. Guess in your mind, what's the first decision that a PMM m would need to make? Is it really about creating something that's brand new? Is it redefining an existing shape a space? Is it, attaching your product to, you know, a category that already exists? Like, I guess like, help us understand what the PMM needs to do first.
[00:05:46] Michael: Yeah.
I think you kind of nailed the decision tree basically. I think the first question you need to ask yourself as a pm m is, you know, one is my company introducing a new to the world thing where we're creating a brand new market category where [00:06:00] none previously existed. Two, are we solving an existing problem in a new way in order to differentiate from incumbents?
And actually what we're doing is redefining an existing category that we already play in. Or third, are we expanding into an adjacent market? That already exists and basically trying to reposition our company to play in this category either through, you know, new Product development.
or through acquisition.
So, you know, I, I think you, you have to kind of start thinking long term and asking questions like, Hey, in three to five years, what do we want to be known for? You know, as a company, uh, buyer buyers.
[00:06:34] Elle: Yeah. And just the way that you were describing the decision tree, it sounds like it, anchors on what the customer's problem is and is it a problem that has not been solved, thus, a net new market, a problem that is currently being solved, but your company's currently not solving for it or is, is new to solving it.
So that would be kind of shifting the market [00:07:00] or, know, something around, around that nature is, is what it really feels like and that would require some, deep understanding on what your customer's pains are and really knowing the problem, um, that your company is solving for or will solve for. as the company evolves.
So I guess once you've made that call and you realize that you need to go forth and maybe create a new category, we'll say, just for the sake of creating this, you know, kind of, practical steps, what would step two be after you kind of work your way through the decision tree?
[00:07:33] Michael: Yeah. I think you know, from there everything starts with positioning and getting your category narrative actually written down on paper. And so, you know, first I, I guess like if you're wondering why this is even a PMM thing in the first place and why we're talking about it on this. Podcast. I would argue it's because category creation at its core is a positioning exercise, and I think every product marketer needs to make it their business to be experts at positioning.
And [00:08:00] to do so really requires like a mastery of, you know, your market, your buyers and their needs, and understanding of what makes you different. And then also the ability to actually craft a strong point of view. That can influence others on your thinking. And you know, in terms of kind of the framework that we use, like, uh, you and I talked about this actually earlier.
Like I'm a big fan of Andy Raskin's thinking on narrative
design.
like go look him up on LinkedIn if you haven't heard of him. He is, he, he writes a lot of great thought leadership around how to craft sales messaging and. B2B messaging that resonates. But we basically used a lot of his thinking to structure our category narrative at Jan Rain.
And I've, you know, kind of run the same playbook at Puppet and New Relic and my current role at Splunk. And I'll sort of stub out like the five main sections of that narrative. And then maybe we can kind of, you know, I can dig back into my, uh, in the history book and we can talk about how we did it at Jan Rain, but.
the first step is really to name a big change in the world. And this is basically the market context in which your customers live. And, you know, as a PMM, like you wanna establish credibility and empathy by showing [00:09:00] that you understand your customer's world and the changes that they're experiencing and how those might impact them in the future.
And then next, you wanna identify the problem that that change creates and its impact and the consequence of not solving it. And I, I think this is probably the most important step in building a category because from my experience, the companies that frame the problem the most persuasively, those are the ones that.
actually like define categories and win.
And they're the ones who get customers to like buy into their vision for solving it. You know?
[00:09:31] Elle: Yeah.
[00:09:31] Michael: so, and then I think the third step is really about depositioning the status quo. And this is super important because it's what really reinforces the need to explore new ways of thinking while sort of poking holes in the old way, uh, and the incumbents you displace.
And this is kind of the part of your narrative that gets people out of do nothing mode. or like, why can't I just, you know, continue operating the way I always have? And then next kind of four step, step of the narrative is really about describing the Promised Land. This is, again, an Andy Raskin concept.
[00:10:00] You can think of it as like the overarching need or the ideal state that you want your customers to be able to get to. And it's not a laundry list of features. I don't even think you should be like talking about yourself here or your company or your products. This is all about. Getting your customers to buy into the importance of solving the problem and to paint a vision for what great looks like.
and then last, uh, kind of step or you know, section of the narrative is really about framing your category then as the thing that's needed to help your customers get to the promised land. And this is where. I think you actually can start pivoting to talking about yourself a little bit and it, and where it becomes really important to sort of state like the requirements or the capabilities that are needed to get there.
And so that's really a golden opportunity for you to kind of like inception your differentiators in the minds of, of a customer.
[00:10:53] Elle: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for walking us through that. you reminded me why I love [00:11:00] the Andy Roskin framework for narrative design. So much. It's so others oriented. It's very customer focused, as you pointed out, majority of the framework. Is entirely about the customer and the market and the problems that they're facing.
They don't even introduce you or your product until the very end. and I, the other thing that you mentioned, that's part of the framework that I just wanted to call out what I have in, in my personal positioning framework is that the. Ineffective alternatives, right? Like making sure you understand like the status quo and like why that doesn't work.
Like the old way of doing things, why that doesn't work. Um, and putting that, wrapping that up, the perspective of the customer. So I'm really eager to hear an example of the walkthrough. Are you able to walk us through an example from the identity access management product
category, I guess, that you
[00:11:55] Michael: I'll, I'll, do my best with, uh, the caveat that this is like, you know, dating [00:12:00] back into 2014, mindset, but I, Yeah.
I think you nailed it by the way, on your point. Like, you know, when you think about sort of structuring sales messaging as like kind of, you know, why change, why now? Why us?
A lot of times the why us isn't necessarily us versus a competitor. It's like us versus status quo and doing nothing. And you know, B2B vendors lose a lot of deals to basically do nothing. Like the customer made no decision. And so I think that's where it's, it's really important to kind of frame that promise land.
Um, and to de position the status quo is sort of like light of fire in prospects to wanna change.
[00:12:34] Elle: I completely agree.
[00:12:36] Michael: Yeah, So.
anyway, when, when we did this at Jan Rain and kind of pioneered the customer identity and access management space, um, we, we basically applied this like, you know, this, this kind of category, narrative structure, uh, to building out our own narrative and then using it to activate it and, and get the market to kind of standardize on it and.
As I remember at least like the, the change that we kind of articulated was [00:13:00] like, Hey, if you're a digital marketer in 2014, your customers are now interacting with your brand across an ever exploding number of devices and touchpoint. This touchpoint, this was like early in the days of everybody having a smartphone and starting to like transact online via mobile devices in addition to like websites on their computer and the old way of.
Being able to like, kind of get a, a view of your customer and their behavior. And their activity was basically by like cookies that were attached to a web browser. And so when you think about, you know, consumer switching devices, the old way of tracking consumer behavior through cookies like no longer works because if I go to your website on my personal laptop, but then I go to your website a day later on my smartphone.
You would have No way of knowing.
if that was the same me, you know, in, in both instances. So, we basically position that as like the change in the world and then frame the customer problem as essentially like you have this fragmented view of your customer's [00:14:00] identity and it's really hard to be able to, you know, see who your customers are, understand what makes them tick, and understand behaviors that they're taking, you know, interacting with your brand to help you better serve them and better engage them.
and we really kind of framed like the, you know, tracking cookies that were device specific as like the villain, to
be able to deposition the status quo, if you will. And so we framed up, you know, we framed up like the promised Land as essentially. Being able to have like a unified identity for your customers and being able to under understand their demographic data, their psychographic data behaviors they were taking as they were interacting with your brand in a unified view.
that the solution was really, you people to register and create an identity on your website. Um, and then having the ability to like. Understand, you know, psychographic data around their interests that, you know, you would get from like their Facebook profile if they logged into your site using their Facebook identity.
then to be able to also start to correlate behavioral [00:15:00] data that, you know, that people were taking as they were interacting with your brand with that demographic and psychographic data. So that was kind of the promise land that we framed and then. You know, we sort of described, the category, uh, that's needed was really around customer identity and access management, being able to like, unify the identities for your customers, but Then also control access, um, you know, in a way that was secure around like, how they could interact with your, with your website and, uh, with your brand and transact and, and that kind of stuff.
And, and then actually.
framed up our differentiators as like the requirements or the key capabilities that you needed in order to get to that promised land.
[00:15:36] Elle: Yes. Okay. So in your example, so much of the narrative was about what's happening in your customer's world and how their behaviors are changing customer's. Customers is what
I meant. and then it evolved to what?
That translates to for. Your ideal customers, right? Like, how they can either seize this [00:16:00] change as an opportunity or how they would be kind of left behind as the world is shifting. So, um, example of using the framework. Thank you so much for walking us through that. Okay, so now I wanna jump back to then.
The steps that, right. That A PMM would, would need to take. So we talked about the decision tree, then we said, just, just hypothetically say we're going forth with creating a, a brand new market category. And, um, you said the first thing that A PMO would need to do then is to. Do some positioning, write up a narrative, ideally with the framework that you just kind of walked us through.
So I guess like what happens after that? Like once you have this beautiful narrative, what do you do with it? What stakeholders do you need to run it by? Who do you need for buy-in? a little bit about that.
[00:16:54] Michael: Yeah. I, I mean, you kind of nailed it. Like at this point I think you basically need to become an internal salesperson, and [00:17:00] when we did a similar exercise at another job when I worked at Puppet, which was more like kind of redefining the existing category in which we played. Uh, we literally set up internal roadshows with groups of five employees at a time for like live reads of the narrative to get feedback to improve it, but then also to like secure buy-in and basically get the whole company mobilized on the story and on the narrative.
And you know, my take is like if you're in a startup or a mid stage growth company, that probably means like going all the way up to the CEO for feedback and buying, especially if you're working in a founder led company. but if you're in a large established company Like the one that you know, you and I work for,
Cisco.
that probably means stair stepping the narrative, you know, up your leadership chain, maybe to like the CMO, the chief Product Officer and the chief revenue officer would be like my realistic take.
And, you know, I'm a big fan by the way of starting with the sales team. And getting their [00:18:00] input and buy-in first, because it really goes a long way as you're internally selling, uh, toward making your narrative more credible. Um, if you can point to like 5, 10, 20 folks on your sales team who are bought in and believe that that's the right story to be telling with customers and the right category to be playing in.
[00:18:19] Elle: Yeah. I wanna double down on something you said to bring the sales team along with you and getting that buy-in. I made the mistake earlier on in my career where I knew to work with the product team, but then we're like, all right, the messaging's done. Like, let's roll out to sales. And they're like. Wait a minute, like, you know, they had a lot of really great feedback, but it caused some, adjusting timeline and schedule and iteration on my end, but very early lesson in my career to bring the sales team along with you as you're crafting the narrative and the
[00:18:55] Michael: Oh, for sure. I have like totally crashed and burned so many [00:19:00] times in my career where I've like built messaging in a vacuum and then like presented it in a TDA moment to the sales team and nobody on the sales team has seen it or reviewed it and it just like. Didn't land well at all. And so like the, I think, I think you're totally spot on. like the biggest thing you can do outside of what we're talking about today, just like anytime you're crafting new messaging as a pm m, is make sure that.
by the time you're doing like an enablement session to get it in front of your field, you can point to like five people in the room and say like, raise your hand.
If you helped contribute to the development of this narrative, if like your voice kind of came through in this, I think it, it really lends a lot of credibility to make sure that it's been pressure tested
with
[00:19:41] Elle: Yeah, and I will even say most leaders that I have presented messaging and positioning to, they will ask, has sales seen this? Has what? What does sales think? Or even in, as I've been presenting to. Pretty senior folks at Cisco will have, you know, maybe [00:20:00] the GM of the business asking, you know, turn over to his, his or her counterpart in sales and say, have you seen this?
What do you think? And it goes a long way when they have seen it. So,
so many proof points there. Okay, so now you've got everyone rowing in the same direction. Everybody's on board internally, um, after however many, you know, iterations you have to take. So what happens after that? How do you actually get that market category to stick in the market?
[00:20:33] Michael: Yeah.
I think once you've got like the internal buy-in on the positioning and the story, then you need to actually activate that narrative externally and, um. I'll share kind of a couple examples, like when, when we did this at Jan Rain and at my next company, again, the the mid stage growth company puppet that was trying to redefine the existing category in which we played, we basically started with like a full court press with the analyst community that wrote research for our buyers.
And you know, we did it through like strategic advisories. [00:21:00] Briefings to share our positioning and customer stories and new innovations and routine inquiries to get feedback on it all throughout the process. And our goal was really to persuade the analysts that this was a big enough problem and a big enough market to actually categorize it.
And then to steer their view of the market requirements or to, you know, to use like a Gartner term, like the critical capabilities, to align to what differentiated us in, in kind of the goal of giving us an unfair advantage. And, you know, the, the Jan Rain example I shared earlier at the beginning of my career.
One of the main MarTech, analyst firms called Coppinger Cole, they eventually created a customer identity and access management vendor comparison report, and named Jan Randy, overall leader. And when I was at Puppet and we were redefining our existing category. We were able to influence Forrester to create a wave report for the categories.
We saw it called infrastructure automation. And we were also named the overall leader. And so, outside of ar I think That's like the first place that I would sort of double down on [00:22:00] activation, um, is to get the kind of external independent neutral validation that Yes.
this is the category. analyst firms play a big role in influencing buyers and end users, right?
but outside of that lining up category, thought leadership and awareness campaigns also plays, I think a big role in getting the category to stick. And some of the things that I've. You know, seeing work well are state of reports. I'm a huge fan of those. know, we do at Splunk today, we do an annual state of observability report every year, and it is the biggest body of research on the planet
for For what it means to do observability. Well, observability is the category in which we play. And you know, to give you an example, like last year we surveyed more than 1700 people to inform the report. Uh, and when I was at Puppet, I, I didn't have anything to do with this, but I worked with an amazing PMM named Alana Brown, who spearheaded an annual state of DevOps report, which was also the largest research of its kind.
And we got a ton of [00:23:00] mileage. This report every year because it was an opportunity to reinforce the importance of our category infrastructure automation as like a key requirement for doing DevOps well, and. I think some other ideas like for playbooks that work well for activating your category, like more down funnel.
Um, I've also found it works well to create things like buyer's guides for your
category where it comes off as more like vendor neutral, but again, you sort of position the. Requirements or core capabilities in a way that maps to your differentiators. And then also golden. RFP templates are great, know, to kind of, again, help steer buyer requirements in your favor.
And then last thing I'll say, and I'd love your take on this, is if you're a B2B vendor. Don't sleep on peer review sites like Gartner Peer
Insights Trust Radius G two, like these are a great opportunity to hard code your ta your like category into the taxonomy
that these
sites [00:24:00] use to label your company and.
It since it's 2025 and we can't do a podcast without mentioning ai. I do think peer review sites are more important than ever. Like when you think about
chat GPT or Gemini kind of becoming like the primary interface that your prospects are using to research products rather than like visiting your corporate website directly.
[00:24:20] Elle: Totally. Absolutely. Yes. I think you're spot on. And, I would also recommend digging into popular forums for your, where your ICP hangs out, even like Reddit. read, um, an article somewhere, I can't remember where it was now. I'll have to try to find it. But it was an article that talked about where various, Generative AI tools get a lot like source a lot of their information across the web. And for example, it, it lists a number of different sources, right? But like, Reddit was one that came up for chat, GTP, just as an example. It's not, of course, not [00:25:00] the only place, but one of the sources where it gets its information.
So, um, I think that's such a great idea, uh, source that. You gave us so many tips and playbooks and ideas here. I wanna circle back to, some feedback you gave around getting the analysts buy-in early, uh, particularly for, you know, B2B uh, SaaS companies. I think that's so important as someone who. Um, has had to put together multiple, forms for the Gartner mq or submissions and the critical capabilities and forester waves and all the things.
I And there are so many opinions about this. I've heard a lot of ver pretty senior leaders. Both at small companies and large companies who are of the opinion that like, oh, everything is pay to play. Like, oh, you only get into the leadership quadrant or the the leader category if you know you've paid some [00:26:00] ridiculous amount of money.
I disagree with that actually, as someone who's been on the Gartner side. And have, I've worked hand in hand with analysts. I disagree with that. I personally believe that you should, pmms should look at analysts as a partner or a sounding board in how they're developing messaging, but I don't, I don't have too much experience on this for category creation.
So curious from your perspective. when you start engaging with an analyst on something like this, how do you go about it? Do you try to get their feedback first and let them kind of like think it was their idea? Or do you say, Hey, here's what we think. What do you think? Is this what you're seeing too?
Do you use them as validation? I guess, like talk a little bit about what that engagement looks like.
[00:26:49] Michael: Yeah, I, first off, I Totally. agree with you by the way. Like I don't think of analyst relationships as pay to play at all. I have literally worked in companies [00:27:00] where there's been like a magic quadrant for our category where, um. Vendors have been named a leader that weren't even Gartner clients. So, uh, I think
you're spot on.
Like, you know, the, the analysts like you, you should think of them as trusted advisors and neutral experts on your market. And a sounding board for feedback on product strategy, on positioning strategy, including like a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today. and by the way, yes, they can become an influence, you know.
Opportunity for you, because at least in the case of like a Gartner or a Forester, you know, they're actually advising end user clients that you're also trying to sell to if you're a B2B
company. Right. so it's, it's both for sure. But I would say like my experience with, uh, with category creation is, um, analyst feedback early on, to help sort of.
Kind of essentially be like market requirements to help shape the direction of your category. Narrative is really essential. And then once you've got that category narrative and that positioning like nailed down on paper, getting like either through strategic advisories, [00:28:00] if you're working at a company that can afford that, or briefings where you can brief them on the positioning and then immediately follow that up with an inquiry where you just ask questions and just listen and get their feedback.
I think that's the best way to pressure test it. And validate it before you, you know, kind of roll it out to the market more broadly.
[00:28:19] Elle: Yeah, such a great tip. my personal experience from working on the vendor side with Gartner as an example, as we're, as we've developed out messaging, for a net new offering, we incorporate some of their feedback and even their voice, their language into the narrative. And then when they hear it later.
I like to think that it makes 'em feel good that they see their own, you know, contributions to our narrative, coming out to market. So, very helpful. Okay. And so you mentioned a couple of playbooks, like for example, the state of observability, I think, um, report. What else do you do on the go to market side?[00:29:00]
How do you make sure, like sales enabled or the rest of marketing, Is rowing in the same direction? Like how do you take that beautiful narrative that you put together and got buy-in for and then put it into the market? What does kind of some of that stuff look like?
[00:29:13] Michael: Yeah. Again,
you know, I, I talked about internal roadshows with smaller groups earlier being the biggest thing that
I've found works, works to get like your sales team and your marketing team enabled on your category narrative. I am not. A big fan of one way communication channels, like internal webinars, you know, for rolling out.
Yeah, for rolling out.
[00:29:31] Elle: Anyways.
[00:29:32] Michael: Right. And it's like, it's not the right forum for rolling out new messaging. it's obviously like a bigger time investment as a PMM to like have to road show and do the same thing with a bunch of small groups. But I think it's a better way to most importantly, get like feedback from your sales and marketing teammates to pressure test the narrative and see if the work that you've done actually resonates or help have them help make it better.
But then secondly, to actually secure their buy-in so they can carry that narrative down the field. To [00:30:00] customer conversations and derivative marketing campaigns and content. Um, so I think that's, to me kind of the key for getting it to stick and getting your sales and marketing teams to start to, sing from the same playbook, so to speak, not to mix metaphors.
[00:30:14] Elle: I love that. Yeah. So helpful. And then bringing it back to Splunk, I know you gave a couple of examples already. you mentioned when we were, uh, preparing for this conversation that, um, rather than creating a new category for Splunk, your big task for Splunk was to attach your offering to this huge market of observability as a market category.
So can you talk a little bit about that, like talk about your approach to that and maybe what from the framework that you outlined did you use. for this new task of kind of attaching Splunk to this existing huge market category.
[00:30:47] Michael: Yeah, for sure.
So, uh, maybe just a quick level set like on Splunk for if, for anybody who hasn't heard of it. Yeah.
so Splunk's, a cybersecurity and observability platform. And what that means is we basically help it [00:31:00] operations, engineering, and security teams. Keep their software and their digital systems, like their websites and their mobile apps and their supply chain management systems that they use to run their business.
We help keep all that stuff up and running and performing and protected, you know, from like security threats, for example. And, course, and this is why you and I are coworkers, like, uh, Splunk was acquired by Cisco a little over a year ago. We're now operating as a business entity of Cisco. But, uh, if I can give a little bit of kind of the story as it relates to Splunk, it was very much a case of.
The third, uh, element I talked about in that decision tree toward the top of the pod, around like attaching our brand and our company to an existing, you know, emerging category. And so when I joined Splunk, a little over three and a half years ago, we were the clear market share leader in a segment called log management, which was being rapidly subsumed.
By a broader new observability category that you know today has like a $23 billion tam, and that observability category had emerged as a [00:32:00] mashup of a bunch of once distinct software monitoring categories and. We had just made several acquisitions to expand our product portfolio for this emerging observability category, but we were kind of struggling with a perception gap where people still first and foremost thought of us as either a log management company or a security company, and we kind of lacked the unaided recall for observability among.
Emerging buyers, uh, you know, for this category of tooling, like engineering teams. And so when I got here, like we got to work sharpening our positioning to ensure that our strategic narrative sounded different from how, you know, observability competitors talked, and that we were both, you know, framing the customer problem a little bit differently using our state of observability report findings as kindling for describing the promised land.
And then also we, we took a lot of great care and attention to make sure that we were framing our differentiators in a compelling. Clear way and persuasive way as basically the [00:33:00] requirements, you know, to get there, like the requirements to achieve the promised land. And in the last three years we've, we've now been named a leader in 19 of the last 20 observability related analyst vendor comparison reports that have been produced.
And we've seen big improvements in Splunk's unaided recall, you know, among observability buyers. So I think like, to kind of summarize it or put it simply like. We are far more likely to be immediately shortlisted and name dropped when observability buyers are asked to rattle off, you know, the names of leading vendors in the category than we were three or four years ago.
[00:33:32] Elle: That's awesome. Yeah, it's, it feels good to see some of the hard labor, uh, come to fruition, um, as you start to see yourself, or not yourself, but see your organization, more prominent in the market. That's awesome.
okay, so let me just summarize a little bit 'cause we talked about so much here.
first up is A PMM would have to walk through that decision tree of, am I creating a new market category or you know, is it something else? And then it's crafting the [00:34:00] positioning, which leads to the narrative. Ideally leveraging the framework you provided and then, internal buy-in, being that internal salesperson for your messaging and your narrative, and then activating on that.
And that's with some, you gave a ton of great ideas for top of funnel type of assets. Um. That you can do every year, which is great. and then getting analysts buy-in to help affirm this new category. and then to all the way to enabling sales. So my last question for you on this topic is, what advice do you have for a product marketer who is trying to either pivot market categories or reshape theirs or, create an entirely new one?
[00:34:43] Michael: Yeah, I I would say it's extremely hard to get a new category to stick, particularly when you're like using. made up branded terminology. So my advice is be pragmatic and make sure that you're always putting the customer first. So, you know, don't [00:35:00] be too bullheaded about feeling like you always must create a new category versus attaching yourself to an existing one or redefining an existing one.
And you know, think about like the main goal of category creation again, is to frame the position in your customer's mind where your product plays. You know, the reality is like if you create a category, if you try to create one that's too narrow or abstract, or doesn't use customer language or doesn't immediately create that aha moment, you know.
when you describe it to your ICP, you're probably better off figuring out how to redefine and evolve the current category where you play or attach yourself to an existing one.
And then, unsolicited, but like, you know, kind of one other piece of advice that's only semi-related. I coach like my team on a lot is like if you're a PMM, particularly an earlier career product marketer, I'd say force yourself outta your comfort zone. And what I mean by that is often when you first get into product marketing is a career path.
The initial focus is on becoming an expert in your own product and how it works, and even competitor strengths and weaknesses. And [00:36:00] that's all good and it's necessary. But I think the next step in product marketing awesomeness. Is to become an expert, not just on your own products, but on the broader market, your buyers and the context in which your products exist.
And a lot of the great pmms that I've worked with, they actually make it their business to become experts in. How competitors position themselves, how they go to market, including the ICPs and the segments that they target relative to us where they have strong product market fit versus where they don't like how are they balancing product led versus sales led GTM strategies.
And I think this type of strategic market insight only helps you lead from the front when it comes to things like creating categories, but it also can set you up as a PMM for growth and leadership opportunities down the road.
[00:36:46] Elle: Yeah. I love that tip. I think it's so helpful to help. I kind of readjust your thinking. And you're right, it is especially an especially good tip for an early in career product marketer. If I look back to when I was really early on, I [00:37:00] thought I had to be an expert in my own product, but then I, I felt like I wasn't, when I was showing up to conversations then with customers or partners, I realized that my knowledge kind of stopped there.
but certainly after I went to business school and after I, you know, my time at Gartner, I realized how valuable it was to come at it as if I were an external consultant or.
[00:37:24] Michael: Yeah.
[00:37:25] Elle: or an analyst, and let me really understand my customer's problem and to your point, the context that they're operating in.
And okay, well what are the, all of the possible solutions to this problem that I'm. Finding and then digging a little bit into competitive intelligence. I love starting with what is the customer's problem that they're trying to solve? And not only how does my problem solve it or how does my solution help with that problem, but also why?
And same thing with our competitors. Why is our [00:38:00] competitors solution better? and that's where you really start to understand differentiators and when those differentiators make more sense for a customer and can, you can write all of this back to win-loss data and there's so many ways that you can kind of connect it and drill deeper.
So I. More conversations for another day. Well, awesome. Thank you so much. And that concludes the first segment of our show. so now it's time for the second segment, which is so much fun. It's the messaging critique. This is where we as product marketing experts get to analyze real world messaging.
And the fun part is, Michael, you as my guest, get to, uh, pick the company that we talk about. so I've got three ground rules. For how we do the messaging critique. After you tell us what the company is, uh, first you're gonna tell me what you love about the messaging or what stood out about the company.
Um, then you're gonna tell me something you wish the PMM would've considered differently, um, as they were creating the messaging. And then finally, [00:39:00] we're gonna do a quick fun brainstorm on. Where the PMM can take the messaging, to the next level. you know, maybe it's some fun content that they can create or, you know, creative campaign.
all of this is about refining our craft. Um, meant to be no negativity, just thoughtful, constructive, uh, critique. So let's
get into it. Big reveal. What is the company that you would like to critique?
[00:39:27] Michael: Let's talk about Walnut.
[00:39:31] Elle: Okay, so tell us about it. What is the product? Who's their, ideal customer?
[00:39:35] Michael: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, like I feel like their messaging on their website is so clear that I feel like I can answer that question even though I've actually, I.
don't work there and I've never actually used their product. Uh, but basically they're an interactive demo platform, so a tool to enable.
B2B, marketing, sales and customer success teams to build and run interactive demos of their own products for [00:40:00] prospective
customers.
[00:40:00] Elle: That's really cool.
[00:40:01] Michael: yeah, I feel like their target customer is kind of people like you and me. You know, like I've spent a lot of my career as a PMM responsible for building out scenario based or use case demo scripts, you know, to teach like our sales engineers on what to show and what to say when they're demoing our products to prospects and, you I'd expect they would target pmms who want to embed like an interactive click through demo of their product on their website.
In a free trial or a self-serve c try buy experience. And then, um, I also imagine like, they target sales teams directly, you know, that want to be able to enable those sales teams with like, you know, use case oriented demos to be able to show in a customer buying process. and I think there's probably a third persona too that I see from their website around, uh, targeting customer success teams directly who want to build, like self-serve onboarding and adoption content for new customers, uh, where you know, you can use their product to actually demo the, for specific use cases.
[00:40:59] Elle: [00:41:00] Yeah, and it's so clear and direct. Right at the top of the page on their website, it just reads interactive demo platform for marketing and sales. That's exactly what it is. So there's no like, okay, what are what? What are they doing? I have to do some calculus to try to make sense of the buzzwords as.
very many. B2B SaaS companies do, unfortunately. Okay, so what do you, what else? You said, you mentioned that it's very clear and direct. anything else about the messaging that you're really loving?
[00:41:28] Michael: Yeah, I just think like generally is a best practice, especially for B2B messaging, I think like. Good messaging kind of needs to do four things. It has to be relevant, you know, like is it germane to your target audience and their day job? It's gotta be differentiated. Like, does it sound different from how competitors talk?
gotta create like the immediate light bulb moments or aha moments. Like it's gotta create clarity and then it's gotta get you motivated. It's gotta create like interest or intent. And I.
feel like, you know, looking at their website, I feel like they kind [00:42:00] of nailed all four of those things. Like, I mean, on their.
I'm looking at their homepage, they literally have a section that says who Walnut is for
[00:42:07] Elle: I love that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you,
[00:42:10] Michael: Yeah, totally. It's like it's got audience specific use cases and value props and then I feel like it's easy to quickly understand what they do. Also, like, you know, they use like very clear conversational language to describe what they do, but they also kind of nailed it.
So what. And for what it's worth, and you talked about this earlier, Elle, like I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek and start with why. But I actually think when it comes to like B2B websites, you, need to really quickly nail down what you do in order to orient visitors on your category. I think Walnut.
does that really well.
Like they start by declaring their category. They're an interactive demo platform, and then they quickly pivot to the benefits and like you can see above the fold on their homepage. Give your audience a hands-on product experience, measure deal and prospect engagement, increase site conversion rates.
Like if they, [00:43:00] if they just said those value props with no context on what they do or how they pay it off, it would sort of start to sound generic or imprecise. But I feel like you're better able to contextualize the value props when you first understand like, oh, they're an interactive demo platform.
The other thing with Walnut, they've done a good job of is like they're kind of drinking their own champagne, right? So like, you know, you look on the homepage, they've embedded an interactive demo of their product right there, like to show how their product works, which is like super meta. But it's actually a great way to like experience the product in less than five minutes and get a sense for what it can do and how you'd use it.
And then I think last, like, there's just not a lot of fluff that I see on their website. Jargon, like their messaging is simple. It's to the point, and it's just super easy to figure out like what they, what they do, and why you ought
[00:43:47] Elle: yeah, yeah. Like to your point, they give you the minimum information that you need to keep you interested, to get you interested, and then just as you scroll, it's show, don't [00:44:00] tell.
With, with a demo, and I think that could be really powerful. Okay. So what's something you wish the PMM would've considered differently as they were building out this messaging or this experience?
[00:44:09] Michael: generally I am not a fan of like stylistic feedback 'cause I think it's very subjective and personal preference oriented. So I'm gonna kind of break my own
ground rules here, but, um. But I'm, I'm trying to reach for like, some things that they could maybe improve just to take it to the next level.
But for me, like, um, personally or stylistically, I always like seeing website messaging that's a little irreverent or whimsical. Um, and I think B2B messaging, like it can be so dry at times, you know? I think it really helps you stand out and gives prospects kind of the warm fuzzies when they think about you if you're a little bit more irreverent.
And Walnut does like a little bit of this with headlines, like why do si, why do top sales teams go nuts about Walnut? But I think they could lean in a little harder on this vibe, especially since like their ICP is primarily sales and marketing teams and growth companies, [00:45:00] right? Like sales and marketing people tend to have a lot of personality.
Um, so I think they could embrace that a little bit more in some of their copy.
I dunno,
[00:45:07] Elle: Yeah,
[00:45:07] Michael: do you think?
[00:45:08] Elle: I was gonna say the same I felt like when I look at the top, while I very much appreciate that, it's very clear. I understand exactly what to do. I understand the benefits. Right away, I wish it felt a little bit more like a story or like they made it more meaningful. Because right now it just feels, it's almost too generic that I don't even really, like, I, I'm not motivated to read it,
you know, and unless I really need a demo platform.
I'm not super motivated to like, continue scrolling. And I feel like the, the big image on the right is like kind of interactive when you hover over it. It feels like, at the very top right when you go to the side, they've got this quadrant with these little, with the faces. And as you hover your mouse over each of the faces.
A different benefit pops up. for example, [00:46:00] when you hover over one of them, it says simplify pre-sales. I don't really know what that means. or I mean, I can guess at what that means. Of course, then, uh, there's streamlined customer onboarding, right? There's all kinds of little, I guess, benefits. I don't feel like that space, that real estate on the page is being properly utilized.
I'm not sure if they're giving enough. Context to truly engage with their ICP just above the fold. I'm just not sure. I'm just, I guess I'm not sold yet
that this interactive quadrant is, doing the storytelling enough.
[00:46:36] Michael: Yeah, maybe that's a great point. Like maybe what they could do more of is like, depositioning the status quo, right? You know, is like
kind of context or framing for like why you
need an
interactive demo platform. Like, hey, when somebody goes to your website and they just see like generic illustrations or static screenshots.
You don't get the aha moment. what if they
could like click through and actually [00:47:00] see your product in action with a five minute commitment? Like, you know, that like, I don't know, something like that could be a little bit more helpful for like getting lighting a fire under people Why they, why they need this product.
[00:47:11] Elle: I completely agree. I like that they're, they're top line messaging, the header and subheader above the fold. I like that it's very clean and clear and helps me understand exactly what they do. But I think they can do more with, as you put it, like.
Adding the, the why you should care. And I think you said like deconstructing the status quo and, focusing more on that like the customer problem and why I even need a demo platform to begin with. I see the benefits. I get the benefits, but, um. I'm not sold yet, so I'm eager to see where they might take this a bit further.
any last thoughts you, you wanted to add on, on Walnut and if a PMM from Walnut reached out to you and said, Hey, can you gimme some quick pointers? What, what's kind of some big takeaways you might say?
[00:47:57] Michael: One other, this may not [00:48:00] be at all practical, but um, one other idea I had as I was kind of going through their website the other day was, since Walnut is often used by marketing teams to build public facing demos that you would embed on your own website, I was reading through some of their case studies and I found myself wondering like, what would the product demo created through Walnut actually look like for some of the customers That are featured in this case study?
And if they could get customers to agree to it, I think it would be kind of cool for like their case studies to actually embed the example interactive demo that was built through Walnut
for That customer's actual product. And I mean, put yourself in the shoes of like, you know, um, like vertical marketing campaigns or sales outreach sequences and be like, Hey, this is how other vendors in your category
[00:48:46] Elle: Yes.
[00:48:47] Michael: product with the help of Walnut.
[00:48:48] Elle: That is such a good idea. Right? Like a, like an A BM style campaign for your, oh, I love that idea.
We gotta get someone from Walnut to, to run with that.
[00:48:59] Michael: [00:49:00] Yeah, for sure.
[00:49:00] Elle: Oh, maybe they're already doing it and we don't know, but very cool. Awesome. Okay, so, before we go, I wanted to just pause and. I have a moment of, gratitude as I like to do in all of my episodes.
I feel like product marketing is so special because none of us get here alone. We're constantly learning from each other, building on each other's work. I'm probably, I'm definitely gonna steal a lot of the playbooks that you shared today. Um, and we're all better for it. So. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to say genuine.
Thank you so much, Michael, for giving me so much of your time and giving the product, marketing community so much of your time and your insights. you so much. We really appreciate it.
[00:49:41] Michael: Yeah. thanks for having me on. It's been a lot of fun and, and, uh, like I said earlier, like I've learned a lot from how, you know, just listening to you and your other guests and it's helped me level up as well. So
ups for what you're doing.
[00:49:53] Elle: We're so lucky we're in this very gen, generous, um, community of pmms. Um, well, I'd love to [00:50:00] turn it back around to you and ask who are one or two pmms who have had a real impact on your career? Maybe this is a good time to give 'em a little shout out.
[00:50:07] Michael: Sure. Yeah.
I mean, I've been really lucky to get to work with and for a bunch of. Stellar product marketers, but, um, maybe I'll give a few names. Like one of my biggest mentors, uh, is Tim Zonca, who hired me at Puppet in 2014. He ran product marketing and then eventually became CMO there, and I learned a ton from him about how to be a better PMM.
He's now the VP of portfolio Marketing at. Uh, company called Commvault. And then another one who comes to mind is a guy named John Rooney. Uh, I worked for him at New Relic. He's now VP of Product Marketing at Unity, and he taught me a lot about. How to manage PMM teams and then also how to work with executives and how to sort of operationalize product marketing frameworks.
And then, if I can, like one other person I'd love to give a shout out to is, uh, GIA Thiel I both worked with and for her, um, for, for a few years earlier in my career. She's. I think now [00:51:00] a senior director of Solutions Marketing at Equinix, and she is one of the best in the business at building credibility with sales teams and crafting sales messaging that actually gets used
[00:51:10] Elle: That's awesome.
[00:51:11] Michael: So, uh, she's awesome. as well.
[00:51:13] Elle: Uh, you're so lucky you had different mentors and coaches for like different parts of the product marketing career and different kind of focuses and emphases. That's really awesome. Yay. Well, thank you to those pmms and those leaders for helping to, uh, shape. Michael and letting him bring some of those experiences onto the rest of the community.
And I promise, this is my last question for you. Where else can we access your expertise? Is it best to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:51:43] Michael: Sure, Yeah. I would not call myself an expert, but, uh, I'm always happy to connect with folks on LinkedIn for sure. Uh, pretty easy to track down there. And then I also occasionally blog about, uh, product marketing and share frameworks and tips And ideas@theproductmarketer.com. So [00:52:00] feel free
[00:52:00] Elle: Yeah. out too.
And your AMAs on Share Bird.
[00:52:04] Michael: Yes. Yeah, Share Bird's an awesome community. If you're not a member, definitely go sign up. It's, it's great to listen and learn from other, uh,
[00:52:11] Elle: yeah. yeah. We love Share Bird. Awesome. Again. Well, thank you so much, Michael. This was so fun. And thank you PAMM listeners for joining us on this adventure today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take in the next step of your own journey.
