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Marketing in Progress is a spinoff of Work in Progress that digs into what’s moving the needle in B2B. We feature marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners sharing real stories, smart ideas, and no-filter perspectives—so you walk away with practical guidance to help you do your job better.
David Bruce (00:00):
A product marketer should be considered a product expert. You ought to be able to get to a stage where you can actively participate in half of the sales or technical discussions. You should be smart enough about your product, all aspects of your product, so that you can handle lead qualification that's coming in off the web from your marketing activities.
Gayle Kalvert (00:26):
Welcome to Marketing in Progress. I'm Gayle Kalvert. This show is for B2B marketing leaders who are under real pressure to deliver results without a clear roadmap. Each episode is built to give you practical insight you can use right away. We focus on what actually matters, how success is measured, and the decisions and trade-offs necessary for success. If you're trying to cut through the noise, do better work and build credibility inside your organization, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. My name is
Kristin Allaben (01:00):
Gayle Kalvert, and I'm Kristin Allaben. This will be another interesting episode because not only are we co-hosting today, but we're also speaking to David Bruce.
Gayle Kalvert (01:09):
David is a veteran product marketing leader with decades of experience at major tech companies, including Broadcom and IBM. He's built a career navigating large organizations, driving results by focusing on customers and collaboration. By the end of this conversation with David, you'll walk away with practical ideas you can actually use and maybe even a little inspiration to tackle "impossible challenges." Let's dive in. So let's just get into it, David. Can you give the audience a little taste of what does marketing look like when you're working in a big global organization like Broadcom and IBM?
David Bruce (01:48):
Sure. Marketing is a little bit different depending on the organizations you're working in. In a small company, marketing might be three people and it's easy to stay in sync. It's very clear who's in charge and who's not. The bigger the organization you get, the more complex the marketing organization. And a lot of large companies, they have a sort of a move forward via contention model where there's contention built into the system. So there's marketing people from multiple organizations and they have a tendency to look at things a little differently. When you look at a large organization, the first thing to do is understand the various models of marketing and the people from those roles that you might have on your team or that you need on your team. The more you can understand about the company, the better. When I was in one here a number of years ago, it was an incredibly large organization and you could study the hierarchy of the organization.
(02:55):
And the more you could learn about what you were trying to do and who the businesses were and stay focused on the business, the better off you were. I also find that it's good to not be actually what I call a rocket ship. And that is a person who has shot through their career to the point they are by staying very focused in just one space. If you're going to really do product marketing well, you have to have more than just marketing talent. You have to have product skills. You really should have some sales experience. It's good if you can to find a way to have some management experience. The more of those things you can collect, the broader your experience, the better off you're going to be when you're trying to work your way through a project in a large company.
Kristin Allaben (03:46):
David, something you just said, you need to know the type of people that you need or you want on your team. How do you identify those people and how do you get them up to speed when they're coming to you from different backgrounds and they have different contexts?
David Bruce (04:01):
You have to communicate very clearly. You have to ask questions.
Kristin Allaben (04:07):
Can you give us an example of what that could look like in the real world?
David Bruce (04:11):
When I had first started in the world of work and I was in product marketing on a different product set than I work on today. And we had these things called product development teams. They would bring people together from all over the organization once a week to talk about the schedule, to talk about where things are, what objectives, what milestones, et cetera, to keep things in sync, to keep management on top of the product that was getting ready to be released. And this engineering manager didn't understand the pitch that I was making about what we needed to do from a marketing perspective. And he said, "That just sounds incredibly complex and like a lot of stuff that my team's got to help with and your team's got to do. Why do we have to do all of that stuff? The product advantages are there. Why can't we just tell the customer and then they'll know?
(05:07):
" The problem was he didn't understand that everything I had said was telling them. So we kind of had to work on how we tell them. And that took a nice long conversation that at the end, he was a lot more understanding of marketing and I was a lot smarter on the challenges he faced in engineering. That's part of the reason that you want to do these things that makes everybody better. Everybody's smarter. And long term, that makes you a better marketer.
Gayle Kalvert (05:35):
Are you a marketing leader in B2B tech? Do you want to hear what your peers are actually doing? What's working, what they're ditching, and how they're navigating the pressure we're all under? Well, you're in luck. We just launched the Marketing and Progress community. It's a space for sharing ideas, learning from your peers and having fun along the way. Visit creocollective.io/marketinginprogress to learn more and join us.
Kristin Allaben (06:04):
How do you ensure marketing strategies are aligned across groups when there isn't a launch? Maybe it's a specific campaign or something else going on.
David Bruce (06:13):
Even if it's a campaign or even just a tactic within a campaign, those things all have a start and a stop. There's an objective that you're trying to accomplish. There's an audience that you're trying to talk to. There's something that you're trying to say. There's an action or two or three that you want them to do. So all of those are points that you can measure and points where you can start, where you can stop, where you can jump in, jump out. All of these things have that. So if you just treat it like it's one of those things that you've got to start it, you've got to do it, you've got to stop it, it's a lot easier to stay in sync on that kind of stuff.
Gayle Kalvert (06:49):
I have a question related to that. David, you said that some organizations force that kind of collaboration, others don't. So for anybody who's listening now, and they could be at a smaller company with a smaller marketing team, we see this struggle with marketing teams of all sizes. What is your approach to getting coordinated with teams when it's not forced? How do you make maybe those individuals that want to go off on their own and be individual contributors to be aligned with the group?
David Bruce (07:22):
Well, there should be something that we can find in common. There's a reason that you want to work with the team if you can do that because you've got help, you've got people to back you up in case you have to do something else that can keep things moving. The thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you understand why you want somebody on that project team. And you really have to have a reason. You need to be able to tell them right up front, "Here's why I want you here. Here's what's in it for me to have you on my team. And now let me share what's in it for you.”
Gayle Kalvert (08:00):
And one thing that always unifies everyone is success, mutual success. Being focused on the customer helps ensure success. Can you talk to that? It sounds obvious, but it is not always the case that marketers and executives are really focused on the customer.
David Bruce (08:20):
The customer is truly the only unifying thing that you have. A successful project might be valuable to your career, but if you stay focused on the customer instead, then all of the senior levels of management in a business are focused on that customer because the customer is where the revenue comes from, it's going to be good for the business. We all have our own personal agenda, but top of the stack is staying focused on accomplishing the agenda of corporation. You get better and better as a marketer. The more customers you can talk to, more customers you can work with, the more customer segments that you can work on, you're going to learn more about business in general.
Kristin Allaben (09:04):
What do you find is the biggest difference in marketing today compared to when you started?
David Bruce (09:10):
Tools, technology, and other widgets. Marketing started back in the early 1900s with this thing called brand marketing. And a company by the name of Prudential started that because they associated their name with a giant rock. That was brand marketing. That's a very simple form of marketing, right? We show you a picture of a rock and we say we're as solid as a rock. Some companies demonstrate their value to you like take Nike, for example, they do it without a word, just with a swoosh. And the same sort of impression is being conveyed. There's a lot of tools we get to use. We get to play with a lot of cool stuff today. Lots and lots of tools that help us measure what humans are thinking and what they're saying and what they're reacting to and what they're not. We have the ability to do a lot more things via technology to manipulate the humans that we're trying to talk to.
(10:07):
And when I say manipulate, I don't mean manipulate in a bad way. I mean, educate, help them...
Kristin Allaben (10:13):
Gently persuade.
David Bruce (10:13):
Pick a product. Persuade. Absolutely. If I know you're looking for a leather briefcase and I know about the kind that I think you're going to like based on the ThinkPad that I know you're carrying around or the Dell laptop or whatever it happens to be, that's what I'm going to put on sale. Sign's going in the window and I've got a really snazzy polished one that I'm going to set right up there for you to see because I know you're walking down the street. The tools are dramatically different from where we started and where we are today, but the act of marketing is still taking your product and making the distinguishing statements about it that make it feel better that similar products and getting those statements in front of a human, a potential buyer, customer.
(11:02):
The very act itself is still pretty standard to where it started, but the way we do it is just dramatically different.
Gayle Kalvert (11:10):
One of the things that you've spoken to us about is making sure as a product marketer that you have enough technical knowledge to be fluent in the customer and the product. How can product marketers achieve that?
David Bruce (11:26):
It depends, of course, on how complex your product is. And if you're marketing a very simple product that's been around a long time, then you probably already start off with pretty good knowledge and you can learn about it in a fairly quick timeline. We don't have a lot of those things today. We seem to develop things today that are highly technical and complex and have multiple user designs, right? Pick up four cell phones and put them on operating systems at four different levels. And it's amazing the differences that you see. My take on it is that a product marketer should be considered a product expert. You ought to be able to get to a stage where you can actively participate in half of the sales or technical discussions. You should be smart enough about your product, all aspects of your product, so that you can handle lead qualification that's coming in off the web from your marketing activities.
(12:28):
You should be able to talk to the customer, you should be able to answer questions. If you have to have technical help on everything that you write, everything that you build, you're probably not there yet. You can get there, but the way to do that is continual education. You got to read about it. You got to read how your competitors talk about it. Read how it's actually used. Read what customers say. People have to scrap fear and they have to join customer discussions. Even if it's just to listen, find out what the most important person has to say about your product. Listen in on design meetings, not to make irrelevant suggestions, but just again, to listen and make relevant ones if you think you've got them. Go to the events, join the education session. I was fortunate enough a number of years back when I moved into a cybersecurity discipline that the CTO and I were working together on some presentation material and they asked if I needed a mentor.
(13:29):
Absolutely. Why wouldn't I talk to the CTO of the thing that I'm supposed to be marketing?
Kristin Allaben (13:35):
Right. This also goes to what you were saying before, David, about not being afraid to ask the questions, number one, and seeing those moments of uncertainty as a learning opportunity. So those customer conversations where you're going a little too deep, well, maybe the next time you talk with a customer, now you're going to know that information because now you've connected them with that SME, you've listened into yet another conversation, and now you're just a little bit more educated.
Gayle Kalvert (14:02):
Well, and like you said, David, today, I mean, just in the last two years, the amount of information available to us online and even through generative AI is unbelievable. It makes it so much easier to get smart on things. The way I think about it, David, is like you said, to get smart enough that you can ask smart questions. Not to go in and pretend you're an expert, but I, like you, David, in my career from the very beginning, pushed myself to get access to rooms so that I could learn like QBRs with salespeople or getting in front of leadership at the organizations I worked for when I was one, two years in. I wasn't scared because I wasn't trying to go in those rooms to pretend to be really smart and powerful. I just said, "Can I please have a seat at the table so I can listen and learn?" And if you ask smart questions, that in itself is very impressive.
(15:01):
I continue to be astounded. How rare it is that we hear smart questions, so don't undervalue that.
David Bruce (15:09):
Yeah, I think a lot of that is fear. People are afraid of looking like the fool. And if you limit the things that you're exposed to, you're going to limit your learning. If you want to maximize your learning, you're going to have to be willing to take that chance. And if you look silly, then it helps you figure out what you need to work on.
Gayle Kalvert (15:31):
So David, you've given a lot of great insights to us and our listeners around how to succeed as a product marketer. What's your pitch to the marketing community to be a product marketer? Why product marketing or who is it for?
David Bruce (15:46):
Product marketing is one of the most cool things you can actually do. It's just an incredible place to be where you can learn so much about how business works, about how technology, in my case, works. It might be something else for some other type of marketer on some other product. There's no better way to continue learning throughout your life than to pick a spot like product marketing because it touches everything and it translates. Product marketing connects all the pieces.
Gayle Kalvert (16:19):
We see that time and time again with all of our clients. Product marketing is the glue. I agree completely between the technical and the go to market, really, really important role. Okay, David, we didn't prep you for these, but you're going to be okay. These are fun questions we ask every guest on an in- progress podcast. Are you coffee or tea?
David Bruce (16:40):
Oh, coffee.
Gayle Kalvert (16:41):
Okay. What kind of coffee? Is it a special kind or?
David Bruce (16:45):
It always has to be something organic, something unique, something that's grown in a way that's not tearing ground apart and tearing forests out. I recently switched to decaf. Caffeine wasn't really something that I felt I needed to stay on top of. And I found that there's something called a Swiss water process for decaffeinating coffee, which takes a lot of the acid out of it as well as the caffeine and is a lot healthier form of decaf than the kind where you've decaffeinated it with some set of chemicals.
Gayle Kalvert (17:17):
Fascinating. You think the coffee question is going to be simple, but everyone has amazing answers. Okay, David, I'm so excited for this one. What is your hype song?
David Bruce (17:28):
If you need help, getting focused and taking a breath and calming down. I'm a big fan of Kansas. Dust in the Wind is a great song. If you're looking for some energy, I like Red Right Hand that I found by watching the TV series Peaky Blinders and was just fascinated with that song every time it came on. The one that I continually go back to time after time after time comes from Eastern Kentucky. I'm a huge fan of bluegrass and country music, and there's a song called You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive. And that's got a little something for everybody in it. All right. It can take you up, bring you down. The best version of that, in my opinion, is Dave Alvin.
Gayle Kalvert (18:10):
Okay. Kristin, we have songs to check out.
Kristin Allaben (18:14):
Seriously,
Gayle Kalvert (18:15):
Yes. I love these questions because I love music, David. And you never know. People have such eclectic tastes. It's really fun. So you have to check out our playlist. All right. Well, thank you so much, David. This has been really, really helpful. And we hope that those of you listening will give us your comments, your questions so we can come back to David and do a follow-up on all things product marketing sometime soon. Thank you so much.
David Bruce (18:41):
Thanks.
Gayle Kalvert (18:42):
If this episode was helpful, please follow Marketing in Progress and tap like. It helps other marketing leaders find the show. And if you know someone who's navigating similar challenges, feel free to share this episode with them. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.