Bridget Roman

Not sure where or how to start your Ai journey with your marketing team? Follow these steps from Carrie Mahon Unanet CMO. (it's not as scary or a daunting as you might think)

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Great insights into how to leverage inputs and find the opportunity for commitment across the team.

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Read more about the marketing use cases for research, brainstorming, audience targeting, and content reuse that I’ve seen success with in using AI tools.

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2.5 years into a strong marketing career at Adobe, I wasn’t sure that “starting over” in inside sales was a good idea. I was making good money, had a strong network across the marketing org, worked for an amazing manager (Wendy Tanabe), had a great team, and was getting to do some cool projects. Though I was performing well, and had all of the above things to be grateful for, I wasn’t very happy with my day-to-day job. It felt as though I was constantly working on my weaknesses, rather than leaning into my strengths. As my manager and I evaluated what my strengths were, it became increasingly clear that Sales could be a much better fit for me. (Oh you mean my insufferable competitiveness could actually be an asset somewhere??) Some of my hesitations included: - Less money. Taking this leap would mean a pay cut of about $10k, plus the decrease in take-home earnings due to my variable being taxed differently - Less experienced peers. I would be going from working with colleagues who were all 20+ years my senior, to working primarily with recent grads 2+ years younger than me. Not a bad thing, I just enjoyed learning from these people who had become mentors to me. - Less certainty. What if I didn’t like it?? What if I made this leap only to find that I didn’t fit in Sales and would have to start over again? What if I wasn’t good at it? Ultimately, I made the decision in hopes of: - More upside. Yes, the short-term paycut was inevitable, but if I could be successful, it was clear I could increase my overall income much more quickly than I could in marketing. - More growth. Data shows if you lean into your strengths, you will grow significantly faster than you will if you are constantly working on developing your weaknesses. Strengthsfinder explores this in depth. - More happiness. What if I DID like it? What if this WAS a good spot for me? What if I WAS good at this? Short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain. Adam Grant’s words hit me today. The two years I “lost” were absolutely worth the next 10+ years of growth! Within 1 year of leaving marketing, I had doubled my total income (🤯), been stretched far more than I had ever expected, and found unexpected fulfillment in sending cold emails 😂 - this is not sarcasm, I loved it compared to what I’d been doing before! I wouldn’t be here today without making what felt like a huge career risk. I’m so grateful I did. And I’m so grateful for people like my husband, dad, and Wendy who pushed me to make the leap. For anyone who isn’t sure about their own jump, you aren’t alone! Don’t think about the sunk costs, think about the potential gains. It just might end up changing your life for the better 🥲

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The last couple months. I've been building products using Bubble. LOL I interviewed for a mktg gig I didn't get, but in prepping for the interview I became enamored. I've built marketplaces, AI wrappers, mobile apps, & some fun dupe projects. The goal is to get good enough that I can build MVPs for BIPOC or female founders for free. More on that later this post is about Marketing In my roles leading acquisition/retention I've written dozens of PRDs, user stories, experiment briefs, and feature requests and in all that time I never truly understood the complexity of making product decisions. I worked really hard to speak the language of submitting a feature, but didn't spend a ton of time understanding the language of the Product. I also realized I didn't spend enough time communicating the structure of my mktng function. Before I build a product I spend probably 1-2 weeks just white boarding. I write out user journeys, pages, data, back-end etc. I want to understand the structure of the thing and how each part connects. I NEED the big picture. I then do research to see if the pieces within my picture can be improved. This is by far the most important part of building a product (to me), and then I add some designs and pretty stuff. I've never done this for a growth function. I've had it in my head, but I've never drawn it out and shared it with partners. I've shown them pieces that need to be improved, but never the whole picture. Here's what I'd think about to map this out. What channels are you on? What percent of budget break down and contribution to revenue? What are the goals for each channel? What do they require to operate effectively? Where are your users landing? What's the goal? What can be dynamic vs static? What data do you have about users when they land? What's the lifecycle/nurture/retention paths what's the tech stack? Where are the points in that user journey that need to divert for segmentation? What are the key metric for each of these pieces? How are you building inputs (creative, content, design, landing pages)? What tools are you using to make decisions, measure, and form hypotheses? What human/AI resources are you using to operate these things and what are your most common outputs? 1. Draw it out 2. Give each piece a rating 3. Poke holes at it and optimize the structure 4. What does best in class look like? Then share it with your team. Then share it with your CEO. Then share it with your partners. Then add budgets to it and share it with your CFO. Then make it better. This feels complicated, but it really isn't. If you're a small start-up with limited resources then this is an easy job for the marketer in seat. If you're a bigger org then each channel owner should be able to contribute their piece to the bigger picture. If you just don't want to do it pay me and I'll come do it for you in a month's time. 😀

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Hi all - Sharebird invited me to do an AMA on Sales + Demand Gen alignment - a topic near and dear to me! You can ask questions and sign up to get my answers emailed to you via the link below.

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This is certainly a change in direction from Google. A lot of time and energy was spent in the marketing and MarTech space planning for this change for it to seemingly be all for naught. However, the conversation it drove around first-party data was an important one, and one that I think ultimately benefits marketers and customers in the long run. #customerexperience #firstpartydata #marketing #martech

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As someone who’s worked in product marketing for the majority of my career, I’m passionate about the unique value this function can play in the success of companies at all stages of growth. I recently had an opportunity to connect with Mary Sheehan on this topic for The Women in Product Marketing podcast by Sharebird, and would love for you to tune in!  On the podcast we discuss:  ✨ Key skills to succeed in a product marketing career ✨ How to balance intuition and data when making decisions ✨ How to influence product strategy to achieve product market fit...and more!   Listen here: https://lnkd.in/g6CXG2En #podcast #womenintech #productmarketing #pmmskills

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Product marketers love templates like a DJ loves a killer playlist—because it’s all about setting the right vibe every time! Hear me out... Just like a perfectly curated mix keeps the party going, templates keep our messaging/positioning/comp intel/etc. on point and ready to rock (and yes, of course I'm using this analogy because Ive been to a LOT of concerts lately🤘) Check out my recent templates on Reforge including battlecards, messaging docs, and GTM frameworks: https://lnkd.in/eaPcnFkH What I love most about Reforge is that you're not just posting templates, you're actually providing context and the "why" behind them. And context is everything! Is there a specific template you're interested in me sharing?? Let me know, and I'll work with the team to get them up (because I have a LOT to share!) 😊.

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We need a Staples "That Was Easy" button. If you've ever tried to cancel a subscription, it can devolve into a game of "Where's Waldo?". Adobe is now facing the digital music from the U.S. government for making subscriptions that are too hard to cancel. It may also be a warning for other businesses that use a subscription model to reevaluate their business practices. You can't Photoshop this. In Adobe's case, the company seems to have a little bit too "Indiana Jones" by using tactics that force customers down a gauntlet of pitfalls and dead end tunnels. It's all made worse when customers are then put at risk for early termination fees to discourage them from canceling. 'Unlike and Unsubscribe' is harder than you think. But if we're being real here, cancelling online subscriptions you no longer use isn't exactly easy. Managing subscriptions can be a headache, and unfortunately, the problem is consistent across the board regardless of the service. Uncanceling streaming services like Netflix, cloud storage providers like Apple iCloud, and even digital newspaper and music subscriptions can be frustrating, as they often hide the cancellation option deep within their apps and websites. This, combined with the ease of forgetting about free trials that convert to paid subscriptions, can lead to months of unnecessary charges before you even realize it. While this may not be enough to pull out your hair, try finding contact info or even (gulp) a phone number for many of these services. And if you're thinking of using a chatbot, those are effective some of the time. But throw in anything complicated beyond what the color of the sky is, then you'll have to connect to a human. A human...if can get one. Yay when you do until you realize you're about to get a hard sell to stay. The subscription model has been a great source of recurring revenue for business. There's no doubt about that, and it certainly offers a variety of benefits. But, the tactics used by some companies (not just the ones allegedly by Adobe) are pretty blatant. It's no wonder the FTC proposed a 'click-to-cancel" rule', which would require companies to make cancellation as easy as signing up, here are some tips to help you take control now and cancel those unwanted subscriptions quickly. Of course, it's still just a pipe dream at the moment. Like Indiana Jones, you'll have to fend off the barbarians at the gate on your own. That begins with checking your credit card statements for recurring charges and using subscription tracking tools. And if you wind up sticking with services after they offered a discount for staying, keep track of those too because they all end https://lnkd.in/gd9STrFB #subscriptions #adobe #ftc #doj #government #apps #membership

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Many thanks to Kelly Hopping and Demandbase for inviting me to the podcast! Kelly asks super thoughtful questions and she was a lot of fun to talk to about marketing leadership at different growth phases. Be sure to put NextGen CMO on your go-to list for podcasts, and have a listen to our conversation. Link in comments. #b2bmarketing

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Are you driving demand gen or marketing for an established brand? Finding Former Users is your secret weapon. I'd bet a significant percentage of your new business leads and pipeline come from people who used your product at a previous company. I’ve seen this firsthand, working with a dozen businesses that asked their high-value leads, "How did you hear about us?" In my experience, the more established the brand, the bigger the share of pipeline that comes from these Former Users. One SaaS business I worked with saw this trend grow over two years, with an increasing share of their pipeline driven by Former Users. Deeper analysis consistently showed me that Former User pipeline is high quality pipeline, with better win rates and faster sales cycles. Side note: If you consider yourself a Sales-aligned Marketer, these 2 KPIs should always be top-of-mind. Think about it from the buyer’s perspective. After successfully using your solution or service at their previous company, they’ve leveled-up into a new role and they want to crush it. Anything you can do to remind them how your solution or service helped them before will improve your chances of winning their new employer's business. Here are some things to consider: 1) Work with Customer Success and/or Account Managers to understand how they’re managing personal relationships, not just their accounts. 2) Explore solutions that help you find Former Users and build dedicated campaigns or 1:1 outreach to reconnect with them. 3) Use LinkedIn's "Company (past jobs)" filter to build audiences of potential users who worked for your biggest customers and create campaigns tailored to them. 4) Ensure you can identify leads and pipeline associated with prior use to validate your efforts. Ask about it on lead forms or have Sales validate it in Opportunity records. Finally, in large-scale messaging, avoid being overly specific. These data tools aren't perfect, but an augmented brand reminder can still be very effective.

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I'm a big fan of Beam Content 💡and jumped at the opportunity to participate in their Content Gap survey (and it's very rare for me to take a survey that takes more than about a minute). Now the results of their survey are out in their "Closing the Content Gap" report. There are tons of great takeaways--one that stood out to me is that 69% of content marketers and 72% of non-content marketers believe content marketing will become more important moving forward. With GenAI tools making it easy to create mediocre content, I see the demand increasing for high-quality content marketing driven by research and subject matter expertise. The report has a ton of other great insights about how content marketers and GTM work together, how teams measure content success, and how content marketers keep up with audience preferences. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gH6UhiNK

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"It's refreshing to work with a marketing team that isn't the brand police." This came up in a recent conversation and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. In many companies, Marketing teams spend so much time telling everyone what they can or can't do. But really, our job should be all about supporting growth. From Sales to Product to HR, our Social Mobile Marketing team is here to help. Whether it’s crafting sales pitches, designing an Experience Center, or creating a Go-To-Market strategy, we're in it together. And guess what? This year, we're focusing even more on outbound and growth marketing to support for our awesome sales team and help them hit their targets. And yes, it’ll be on-brand. But more importantly, it’ll be done together. #Marketing #GrowthMarketing #SalesSupport #Teamwork

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Here’s a simple way to think about where you spend time as a PMM: How do your outputs align with these categories? 1) Growth: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation 2) Engagement: Usage, Retention, Advocacy 3) Monetization: Pricing, Packaging, Cross-Sell, Upsell Depending on where you are in the product lifecycle, your efforts will lean more toward one category than another. Clarifying where your work fits makes it easier to demonstrate your impact. #productmarketing

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Pro Tip: Always ask for vendor references, especially when their projections seem too good to be true. In my new role, I've been evaluating various vendors. Recently, one made some, let's call them, aggressive projections. I expressed skepticism and then asked for references, they refused. Huge red flag alert! 🚩 This experience reminded me that due diligence is non-negotiable. A vendor should be more than willing to provide references. Key takeaways: 1:Trust your instincts 2:Always ask for references 3: Be wary of those who won't back up their claims Have you encountered similar situations? How do you vet potential vendors? Share your experiences below! #BusinessTips #VendorManagement #DueDiligence #ProfessionalAdvice

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This X thread from the ever-insightful Kelsey Hightower has been living in my head rent-free for the past week. The entire discussion is worth reading, but what particularly caught my attention was the final statement: “Eventually, you'll end up automating the abstractions and repeating the cycle.” https://lnkd.in/esaScqbm I’ve been building platforms long enough to have seen this several times. I’ve seen the evolution from manually installing software via SSH and RDP to using automation tools like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and Terraform. I also enjoyed seeing the abstraction levels rise from VMs and storage to things like Heroku, Kubernetes, and FaaS. Regardless of the tech used, the most successful platform teams I saw adopted the “innovate, leverage, commoditise” playbook. Simon Wardley has written a lot of interesting things about the application of this pattern regarding business: https://lnkd.in/eZiBVx76 If you’re building a platform, providing the correct abstractions (and APIs) for your platform components is vitally important. However, providing a mechanism to “automate the abstractions” and create other compounding higher-level abstractions is the key to long-lasting success. I saw this with the rise of package managers (APT, RPM, etc), Chef cookbooks, and Terraform modules. Enabling teams to build platform components consisting of components (consisting of components) is the most effective way to scale. Innovate, leverage, commoditise. As infrastructure has become more diverse and developer requirements more demanding, we’re now seeing a necessary rise in the abstraction of platform components. At the same time, the Kubernetes Resource Model (KRM) and K8s API have evolved to fill this gap. Platform-building tools like Crossplane, ArgoCD, and Kratix all use the K8s API. Diving a little deeper, let’s take a Kratix Promise as an example. Anyone in the organisation can write a Promise to expose an “X-as-a-service”, where X is required to enable the deployment and operation of their apps. Innovation is relatively easy. Often, platform teams provide Promises for core services and related workflows to manage organisational policy and scalability requirements. Outside of this, any team can create their own services with Promises that build on the core Promises: https://lnkd.in/ehDjqECR The real magic happens when the platform teams identify Promises that are being reused or have the potential to be leveraged by other teams or organisations. For example, a financial risk management team creates a fraud detection Promise from lower-level Promises (consisting of several apps, compute, storage, etc). This type of Promise can be pushed to a marketplace and reused as a building block for other teams. Promises can be easily commoditized and reused within the bank, offered externally as-a-service, or form part of a larger Promise. And as Kelsey stated, the cycle begins again.

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I'm going to be hiring for our marketing team next year - and here's the advice I'm following to make sure I DON'T write a 💩 job description Paul Stansik has helped make a hire or two (or hundreds) for his portfolio companies So when I had him on our podcast, one of the topics I knew we had to get into was how they attract the right people + set appropriate expectations for the job And when he boiled it down to 3 question framework, I couldn't wait until I could use it myself for some of the upcoming roles I'll be hiring for The 3 questions? 🤝 What does this person need to do to establish immediate credibility and trust with the team? ⭐️ What are the 3 things that they need to do in the first 6 months to be considered a success in the role? 🤓 What are the essential skills that they need to hit the ground running? If you can speak to these three things in your job description, it'll be better than 99% of what's out there as it's specific, relevant, and tailored to what the hiring manager needs in this role uniquely for the organization - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - And for those curious, here are the 4 roles we'll be looking to add to our marketing team over the next 6-12 months: 💙 Community Marketer ✏️ Content Marketer 🍾 Field Marketer 🏴‍☠️ Product Marketer

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