Seven Essential Product Marketing Strategy and Process Documents, the August 30, 2024 Iteration

Due to the nature of my business, Bredemarket doesn’t usually get involved in strategy. The clients set the strategy, and I fill the tactical holes to execute that strategy.

I once worked for a former 3M employee. You can bet we did this. By Wikimedia Finland – Planning the strategy, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36476412.

But I recently welcomed the opportunity to envision a strategy to achieve a strategy, and in the process defined seven essential strategy documents to kick off a product marketing or general marketing program.

By I, Satyakamk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2507740.

Depending upon how you define product marketing, one of these seven goes above and beyond the product marketing function. I included it anyway, because if you ask 20 people what “product marketing” is, you will get 21 answers.

There’s a reason I dated this. I may want to refine it in the future. For example, some of you may recall how my “six questions your content creator should ask you” eventually became seven questions.

The seven strategy and process documents

  • Go-to-Market Process. I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. You can’t just slap a few things together in three days and say your go-to-market is complete. You need a plan on how you will go to market, including the different tiers of go-to-market efforts (you won’t spend four months planning materials for your 5.0.11 software release), the types of internal (employee) content you will release in each tier, and the types of external (prospect/customer) content you will release in each tier.
  • Performance Report. I listed this near the top because you need to quickly establish your metrics, define them, and how you will gather them. For example, if you want to measure “engagement,” you need to define exactly what engagement is (likes on a blog post? reshares on a LinkedIn post?), and ensure that you have a way to capture that data. Preferably automated data capture; manual tabulation is horrendous.
  • Product and Competitive Analysis. Plan how you will perform these duties. Even in my simplest analyses when I was still with IDEMIA, I planned exactly what data I needed, what data I wanted to capture, and how I was going to distribute it. I refined this during my time at Incode, when a team of four released battlecards in a standard format, with data that highlighted items important to Incode. My subsequent analyses for Bredemarket, which were more comparative rather than stand-alone, refined things still further.
  • Brand Strategy. I must confess that I have never created a formal brand book. But it’s important that you define your branding, at least informally, so that your products and services are presented consistently on all platforms. And so you spell things correctly (it’s NOT “BredeMarket”).
  • Customer Feedback. If you want to institute a customer focus, you need information from your prospects and customers. What information do you need? How much? (Shorter surveys get more responses.) How will you get it? What will you do with it? (“Trash it” is not an option.)
  • Positioning and Messaging Book. Once you’ve created the brand strategy, you need a set of consistent positioning (internal) and messaging (external) content. The positioning and messaging matrix can get pretty complex if you are supporting multiple products, personas, industries, use cases, and geographies. I will again confess that I do not have a standard messaging statement for Bredemarket 400 prospects who are Chief Marketing Officers who need blog posts in the identity/biometric industry discussing privacy concerns in the European Union. My loss.
  • Demand Generation and Content Marketing Parameters. Now in many organizations, demand generation and/or content marketing are separate from product marketing. But sometimes they’re not. What are your plans for demand generation? How will you achieve your goals? What content is necessary?

So what?

As I said, I recently had the opportunity to envision these strategies for a prospect, and have scheduled a meeting with the prospect to discuss these. (Note to “prospect”: these are iterative, and I fully expect that up to 90% of this may change by the time of implementation. But I think it’s a good starting point for discussion.)

The prospect may secure my services, or they may not.

And if they don’t, I can develop these same documents for others.

Do YOU need help defining strategies for your business? If so, let’s talk.

If your company needs a full-time product marketer, contact me on LinkedIn.

John E. Bredehoft on LinkedIn.

If your company needs a part-time product marketing consultant, contact me on Bredemarket. (Subject to availability.)

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Contact Bredemarket.

The KlarnaBots

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has revealed a plan to eliminate his job and replace himself with an AI bot…

…wait, I misread that. Siemiatkowski has revealed a plan to replace OTHER people’s jobs at Klarna.

Funny how these rightsizing moves, with a few notable exceptions, always seem to spare the executives. The brunt will fall on others.

“With almost half the workforce at the company, Siemiatkowski plans to shift customer service and marketing duties to AI. ‘Not only can we do more with less, but we can do much more with less,’ he said…”

Mashable: https://mashable.com/article/klarna-ceo-plan-to-reduce-workforce-fifty-percent-replace-with-ai

I bet customer service and marketing morale is REALLY high at Klarna right now. If it weren’t for the not-so-good job market at the moment, Siemiatkowski might realize his rightsizing goals via attrition before his bots are ready.

But let me ask my good buddy Google Gemini. The material below was not written by me.

= =

While AI has made significant strides in customer service and marketing, it’s unlikely that Klarna, or any company, could completely eliminate human involvement.

Here’s why:

  •  Nuance and Empathy: Human agents are better equipped to handle complex customer inquiries, especially those involving emotional situations. AI, while improving, still struggles with understanding and responding to nuanced emotions.
  •  Problem-Solving: Certain customer issues require creative problem-solving or judgment calls that AI may not be able to handle effectively.
  •  Ethical Considerations: AI can perpetuate biases present in the data it’s trained on. Human oversight is essential to ensure ethical and fair treatment of customers.
  •  Unforeseen Circumstances: AI may not be able to adapt to unexpected situations or rapidly changing circumstances. Human agents can often address these challenges more effectively.
  • Customer Preference: Many customers still prefer to interact with human agents, especially for complex or sensitive issues.

However, AI can be a valuable tool in these areas. It can automate routine tasks, provide 24/7 support, and offer personalized recommendations. The most effective approach is likely a hybrid model, combining AI with human agents to provide the best possible customer experience.

Friction Is Bad

(NOT part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Friction is bad.

I know some people think that friction is good, because if you tolerate the friction to get to the thing, then you must really want it.

But more often than not, friction is bad.

Which is why when I create a reel, I try to post the native reel in all places where appropriate.

Take my most recent 8 second “biometric product marketing expert” reel.

But you don’t have to leave this blog post to see the original reel.

See how easy a frictionless experience can be?

More here.

Biometric Product Marketing Expert.

KYI Stands For Know Your InMailer

KYC stands for Know Your Customer.

So I guess KYI stands for Know Your InMailer.

My broad and rich skillset

This afternoon I received an email and a LinkedIn InMail from “Alice Ives,” purportedly with Maharah according to her profile. She wanted to tell me about an opportunity.

The email.

“Your broad and rich skillset will be of great benefit to our company’s development. The employer is seeking a remote consultant. We look forward to discussing further cooperation opportunities with you. Hope to hear from you soon.”

The InMail after “Alice’s” profile disappeared.

But when I asked for her Maharah email address she didn’t respond, and her profile became invisible to me. I don’t know if “Alice” deleted her profile, if she blocked me, or if LinkedIn removed her.

Know Your Customer in the real world

Of course in the real world outside of social media, Know Your Customer procedures can be rigorous, encompassing government-issued identity documents, biometrics and liveness detection, information from public and private databases worldwide, and even geolocation.

But from what I recall before Alice’s profile disappeared, her claimed geolocation was “United States.” Just one possible indicator of fakery. 

Did you spot the others?

Jay Littleton Ball Park Destroyed By Fire

Jay Littleton Ball Park in Ontario, California was destroyed by fire this week.

From the ABC7 story:

The historic baseball field was built in the 1930s with a wooden frame grandstand.

It’s owned by the city and operated by the public works agency. It was designated a historic landmark back in 2003.

It’s been renovated several times, but officials said there was still likely a lot of old wood in the structure, which is dry and burns quickly.

The Ontario Eastern Little League is sponsoring a GoFundMe for repairs.

Jay Littleton Ball Park, August 24, 2024.

Graber For Sale Confirmed

According to Loopnet (and, according to Amanda Matthiesen, Coldwell Banker), the Graber Olive Company property at E 4th St in Ontario IS for sale at an asking price of $4 million.

“They would love a partner or someone to continue the Graber Olive brand but understand the property may be developed.”

(If zoning allows. I’m sure some residents would raise a stink if a condo developer bought the property.)

Oh, and some business details:

“Their online sales are normally $75000 to $150000 per month, including selling to Augusta National for the past 70 years.  This last year due to poor Olive production they elected not to produce the Olives in 2023.”

From https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/315-E-4th-St-Ontario-CA/30543340/

On Attribute-Based Access Control

In this post I’m going to delve more into attribute-based access control (ABAC), comparing it to role-based access control (RBAC, or what Printrak BIS used), and directing you to a separate source that examines ABAC’s implementation.

(Delve. Yes, I said it. I told you I was temperamental. I may say more about the “d” word in a subsequent post.)

But first I’m going to back up a bit.

Role-based access control

As I noted in a LinkedIn post yesterday:

Back when I managed the Omnitrak and Printrak BIS products (now part of IDEMIA‘s MBIS), the cool kids used role-based access control.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6907222.

My product management responsibilities included the data and application tours, so user permissions fell upon me. Printrak BIS included hundreds of specific permissions that governed its use by latent, tenprint, IT, and other staff. But when a government law enforcement agency onboarded a new employee, it would take forever to assign the hundreds of necessary permissions to the new hire.

By Love Makes A Way – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovemakesaway/15802177909/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101171928.

Enter roles, as a part of role-based access control (RBAC).

If we know, for example, that the person is a latent trainee, we can assign the necessary permissions to a “latent trainee” role.

  • The latent trainee would have permission to view records and perform primary latent verification.
  • The latent trainee would NOT have permission to delete records or perform secondary latent verification.

As the trainee advanced, their role could change from “latent trainee” to “latent examiner” and perhaps to “latent supervisor” some day. One simple change, and all the proper permissions are assigned.

But what of the tenprint examiner who expresses a desire to do latent work? That person can have two roles: “tenprint examiner” and “latent trainee.”

Role-based access control certainly eased the management process for Printrak BIS’ government customers.

But something new was brewing…

Attribute-based access control

As I noted in my LinkedIn post, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released guidance in 2014 (since revised). The document is NIST Special Publication 800-162, Guide to Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) Definition and Considerations, and is available at https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-162.

Figure 2 from https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-162.

Compared to role-based access control, attribute-based access control is a teeny bit more granular.

Attributes are characteristics of the subject, object, or environment conditions. Attributes contain information given by a name-value pair.

A subject is a human user or NPE, such as a device that issues access requests to perform operations on objects. Subjects are assigned one or more attributes. For the purpose of this document, assume that subject and user are synonymous.

An object is a system resource for which access is managed by the ABAC system, such as devices, files, records, tables, processes, programs, networks, or domains containing or receiving information. It can be the resource or requested entity, as well as anything upon which an operation may be performed by a subject including data, applications, services, devices, and networks.

An operation is the execution of a function at the request of a subject upon an object. Operations include read, write, edit, delete, copy, execute, and modify.

Policy is the representation of rules or relationships that makes it possible to determine if a requested access should be allowed, given the values of the attributes of the subject, object, and possibly environment conditions.

So before you can even start to use ABAC, you need to define your subjects and objects and everything else.

Frontegg provides some excellent examples of how ABAC is used in practical terms. Here’s a government example:

For example, a military officer may access classified documents only if they possess the necessary clearance, are currently assigned to a relevant project, and are accessing the information from a secure location.

Madame Minna Craucher (right), a Finnish socialite and spy, with her chauffeur Boris Wolkowski (left) in 1930s. By Anonymous – Iso-Markku & Kähkönen: Valoa ja varjoa: 90 kuvaa Suomesta, s. 32. (Helsinki 2007.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47587700.

While (in my completely biased opinion) Printrak BIS was the greatest automated fingerprint identification system of its era, it couldn’t do anything like THAT. A Printrak BIS user could have a “clearance” role, but Printrak BIS had no way of knowing whether a person is assigned to an appropriate project or case, and Printrak BIS’ location capabilities were rudimentary at best. (If I recall correctly, we had some capability to restrict operations to particular computer terminals.)

As you can see, ABAC goes far beyond whether a PERSON is allowed to do things. It recognizes that people may be allowed to do things, but only under certain circumstances.

Implementing attribute-based access control

As I noted, it takes a lot of front-end work to define an ABAC implementation. I’m not going to delve into that complexity, but Gabriel L. Manor did, touching upon topics such as:

  • Policy as Code
  • Unstructured vs. Structured Rules
  • Policy configuration using the Open Policy Administration Layer (OPAL)

You can read Manor’s thoughts here (“How to Implement Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) Authorization?“).

And there are probably ways to simplify some of this.

AI Articles in Ten (Not Five) Minutes—But I Can’t Tell You Why

More on the “human vs. AI vs. both” debate on content generation, and another alternative—the Scalenut tool.

The five-minute turnaround

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118555856.

I’ve been concerned about my own obsolescence for over a year now.

I haven’t seen a lot of discussion of one aspect of #generativeai:

Its ability to write something in about a minute.

(OK, maybe five minutes if you try a few prompts,)

Now I consider myself capable of cranking out a draft relatively quickly, but even my fastest work takes a lot longer than five minutes to write.

“Who cares, John? No one is demanding a five minute turnaround.”

Not yet.

Because it was never possible before (unless you had proposal automation software, but even that couldn’t create NEW text).

What happens to us writers when a five-minute turnaround becomes the norm?

The five-minute requirement

I returned to the topic in January, with a comment on the quality of generative AI text.

Never mind that the resulting generative AI content was wordy, crappy, and possibly incorrect. For some people the fact that the content was THERE was good enough.

OK, Writer.com (with a private dataset) claims to do a better job, but much of the publicly-available free generative AI tools are substandard.

Then I noted that sometimes I will HAVE to get that content out without proper reflection. I outlined two measures to do this:

  1. Don’t sleep on the content.
  2. Let full-grown ideas spring out of your head.

But I still prefer to take my time brewing my content. I’ve spent way more than five minutes on this post alone, and I don’t even know how I’m going to end it yet. And I still haven’t selected the critically important image to accompany the post.

Am I a nut for doing things manually?

You’ve gone from idea to 2500+ word articles in 10 minutes.

By GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1109869.

Now that I’ve set the context, let’s see what Kieran MacRae (quoted above) has to say about Scalenut. But first, let’s see Kieran’s comments about the state of the industry:

Sure, once upon a time, AI writing tools would write about as well as a 4-year-old.

So what does Scalenut do?

With Scalenut, you will reduce your content creation time by 75% and become a content machine. 

The content gets written in your tone of voice, and the only changes I made were adding personal anecdotes and a little Kieran charm.

From https://www.scalenut.com/.

But…why?

Why is Scalenut better?

Kieran doesn’t say.

And if Scalenut explains WHY its technology is so great, the description is hidden behind an array of features, benefits, and statistics.

Maybe it’s me, but Scalenut could improve its differentiation here, as outlined in my video.

Differentiation, by Bredemarket.

What Scalenut does…and doesn’t do

I should clarify that copyrighting is but one part of Scalenut’s arsenal.

Scalenut is a one-stop-shop AI-powered SEO writing tool that will see you through keyword selection, research, and content production. Plus, you get full access to their copywriting tool, which can create more specific short-form content like product descriptions.

You optimize SEO content by adding NLP keywords, which are the words that Google uses to decide what an article is about.

MacRae cautions that it’s not for “individuals whose writing is their brand,” and Scalenut’s price point means that it’s not for people who only need a few pieces a month.

But if you need a lot of content, and you’re not Stephen King or Dave Barry or John Bredehoft (not in terms of popularity, but of distinctness), then perhaps Scalenut may help you.

I can’t tell you why, though.

(And an apology for those who watch the video; like “The Long Run” album itself, it takes forever to get to the song.)

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odcn6qk94bs.

Bredemarket’s Five Secrets to Hosting a Successful LinkedIn Audio Event

Bredemarket, the curious wildebeest, wanted to learn more about LinkedIn Audio Events. So I hosted my own. Based upon my now-extensive experience in this medium, I can share my five secrets to hosting a successful LinkedIn Audio Event.

Don’t start early

Um…I failed to do this. The event was supposed to start at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time, and I started at 7:58.

Meticulously plan

I didn’t do this either. I scheduled the event at 7:41, 19 minutes before it was supposed to start, and only 17 minutes before it actually started.

Use the best audio equipment for stellar sound

Um…this was on my phone, with no headset.

Host from a quiet place with no distractions

I definitely failed here. I started the event outside the (former) Yangtze Reataurant on very busy Euclid Avenue in Ontario, California. If anyone had joined the last-minute event, they would have heard all sorts of traffic noises.

Have a purpose for the event

This is the only thing I did right. My purpose? To learn the mechanics behind LinkedIn Audio Events. I didn’t learn everything—since I was the only attendee, I couldn’t channel my inner Anna Morgan and invite another speaker to the stage. But I figured out some of the mechanics.

Lessons learned

(Personal preference: I don’t refer to this as a “post mortem.” No one died.)

In addition to the lessons implied above (plan, ensure a superior audio experience, etc.), I learned that you will never get to listen to this morning’s event. LinkedIn doesn’t post recordings of the event after the fact. So I can lie and say that I shared the most scintillating details, even though I didn’t.

But I achieved my purpose, and maybe I will host a real audio event some day.

I did some more experimentation this morning, but my other experiments were live video tests on Facebook, on the Bredemarket page (not the groups; another lesson learned).