Richard King

Product Marketing Alliance

Product Marketing Alliance is a collective of passionate product marketing innovators committed to driving demand, adoption and the overall success of their products.

Founder & CEO

The Alliance

The Alliance is the go-to professional development platform for high-growth organisations and individuals worldwide.

CMO Alliance

The CMO Alliance is a global gathering of marketing leaders.

Founder

LinkedIn

Instructor profile: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/richard-king 

Courses: 

Product Marketing Foundations 
Product Marketing: Competitive Intelligence

LinkedIn Learning Instructor

Acara

Moving event marketing forward: A powerful event marketing platform  enabling you to drive business performance through in-person events.

VP, Product & Co-founder

Tito

Investor

Ignition

GTM Alliance

CEO & Founder

Sales Enablement Collective

The Sales Enablement Collective is a global gathering of revenue leaders, all striving towards one, shared goal: consistent and predictable revenue growth.

Product-Led Alliance

Fuel your growth with a product-led approach.
We’re the world’s fastest-growing community for product pros, growth gurus, founders, and thought leaders. You’re in the right place to master your PLG strategy.

VP Product Marketing

I’m a builder at heart, with five startups and three exits under my belt. 

My passion lies at the intersection of product, marketing, sales, and data - so you’ll often hear me talking about product marketing.

My entrepreneurial journey has taught me the value of resilience, innovation, and questioning the crowd rather than following it. Most importantly, it’s shown me the power of community.

👉 Why I share on LinkedIn:

I believe in collective learning: I want to provide tried and tested insights to help you navigate your career, whether you're a founder, marketer, or looking to learn something new. 

👉 What I talk about: 

1️⃣ Building bootstrapped companies
Why go-to-market efficiencies are a non-negotiable 

2️⃣ How to spot and nurture talent
Strategies for building high-performing and efficient teams

3️⃣ Product marketing - why won’t I shut up about it?
How effective product marketing drives business success.

4️⃣ Operational excellence + a great culture. It is possible.
The nuts and bolts of business operations and fostering a winning culture.

5️⃣ What does leadership really mean?
The changing expectations of what it means to be a “boss.”

Go ahead and hit the follow button, and I’ll see you around!

This is why product marketing matters

😂

"Nah man don't buy AirPods"

"You need the Sony WH-1000XM5-WHCH 720N-WF1000XM5-CH520"


Sony product naming meeting:

Engineering: "We're launching 4 new headphone models. WH-1000XM5, WHCH 720N, WF1000XM5, and CH520"

Product Marketing: "That's not a name, that's a license plate"

Engineering: "We should bring in OpenAI. They're good at naming"

Product Marketing: "The people who named their models GPT-3.5-turbo-16k-0613 and text-davinci-003?"

Engineering: "See, they get it"

Product Marketing: "You both need help"


Meanwhile at Apple:

Engineering: "We're launching new headphones"

Product Marketing: "Call them AirPods"

Engineering: "What about the premium version?"

Product Marketing: "AirPods Pro"

Engineering: "And the over ear ones?"

Product Marketing: "AirPods Max"

Engineering: "That's it?"

Product Marketing: "That's it"


** scene **

Happy Weds, hope you enjoyed this skit haha

Talking truth on leadership, growth & product marketing | 5x founder | 3x exits |

Give Maria Nimfuehr  an oscar for this

😂



The stages of every product launch.

10/10 visualization hahah.

 
 
Maria's POV:

"You're a founder. You successfully raised from VC. Do you think you nailed your value proposition and positioning?

There is one serious mistake that tech companies make. In their minds, how they pitch their product to investors and how they sell it to customers are the same. 

But they are not. Why?

When pitching to investors, founders are expected to sell the vision ✨ Convince a group of skeptics that they are the ones who will grow to $100M ARR very quick. 

All works towards this goal: they are selling the 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟 vision of the product, showing how big is the market and how customers lie awake in the night dreaming of buying their solution. Founders are selling the future, what they will become when they grow up 👦

In reality?

The product is often in the early stage and it can't do all that you promised to investors. When users try it, they quickly find out that your 'data powerhouse rocketship' is just a buggy, scrappy MVP. And they leave.

Your positioning, messaging and value prop for users should be focused on 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗧. What your product can do today that solves my problem? Why should I choose you over alternatives NOW? If it's valuable to me, I will buy it."

---


👋 P.S. Make sure you give Maria a follow!

Still laughing at this, well played hahah

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BMW turned their competitors into free advertising.

The full campaign playbook for you:



To celebrate their 100th anniversary, BMW set up a free toll lane on Moscow's M11 highway. The barrier used visual recognition to spot BMW logos and let them breeze through without paying.

Over 300,000 BMW drivers got free rides all summer.

Then Audi and Mercedes drivers got jealous.

They wanted the free pass too.



So what did BMW do?

They published printable BMW logo stickers on their social pages. Custom sized to cover competitor badges. Mercedes owners could slap a BMW roundel over their star and glide right through.

Read that again.

BMW got Audi and Mercedes drivers to voluntarily cover their own logos with BMW branding. And drive around Moscow as free mobile billboards.

So so good 😂


The results:

4 million cars saw the exclusive BMW lane. 15 million media impressions. 70+ articles in 2 days with zero paid media. And brand awareness among competitor owners went from 30% to 33%.

The kicker?

Mercedes responded months later by offering free airport parking to premium car owners but it wasn't nearly as effective.

BMW set the playbook and competitors followed.



My 0.02 for you PMMs:

We're entering a new era where product velocity is accelerating faster than ever. AI is compressing build cycles. Launches are happening weekly. The brands that win won't be the ones with the best product announcements.

They'll be the ones with the most creative distribution.

BMW didn't run a billboard campaign about being 100 years old. They created an experience that made competitors WANT to participate. And turned that participation into owned media.

This is the kind of thinking PMMs need to bring to competitive strategy. Not battlecards. Not feature comparisons. But stunts that flip the script entirely.


Find your M11 highway moment.

Make it impossible for competitors to ignore.

Then invite them to join ✌️



P.S. What's your take on this?

Hey PMMs, stop. Read this.

🔥 analysis by Jason Feifer:


Celsius struggled for years — because of a CRITICAL MISTAKE that many brands make:

It was selling the wrong benefit.

In this case, Celsius spent years screaming “BURN CALORIES!”

Problems:

❌ CONFUSION (how does a drink burn calories?)
❌ EMBARRASSMENT (would you carry that around?)
❌ SACRIFICE (the can says little about flavor)

In short, Celsius only reached people who want to sacrifice and diet — instead of people who want to enjoy themselves and feel healthy.

Now look closely at its new can, and the fixes it made:

✅ ENJOYMENT (flavor takes the spotlight)
✅ PRIDE (premium design, new “Live Fit” tagline)
✅ HEALTH (claims are small and refined)

Think of it like a conversation. Celsius used to open the conversation with a bold health claim — which turned most people off.

Now Celsius opens the conversation with enjoyment and lifestyle — and THEN, once people are intrigued, its health claims make them feel good.

In 2023, Celsius netted $1.3 billion in revenue.

Don’t ask, “What makes me unique?” Instead, ask “Am I meeting people where they are?” That distinction is EVERYTHING.


--

👋 P.S. Make sure you give Jason a follow!

Great POV by my friend Aatir Abdul Rauf:

"Will we see pure SaaS products opening retail stores in the future?"


I had this debate with a friend the other day that started as a joke.

Our first reaction was that it's not in any GTM playbook because it's a money burner. 

At the same time, we agreed that physical spaces do something digital can't.

In a world of vibe-coded apps, presence is a differentiator. You interact with a human, create outcomes in real-time, and trust hardens. 

We talked about Apple. Yes, they sell hardware, so it makes a lot more logistical/financial sense for them. But their retail experience accelerated their journey towards becoming a lifestyle brand. 

Could a SaaS store create that same feeling?

After all, SaaS brands already invest in non-digital advertising.

→ ClickUp plastered ads on buses.
→ Artisan ran billboards across SF. 
→ Ramp pulled off that giant marketing stunt in the middle of NYC. 

And at big conferences, you see these brands spending through the nose for elaborate exhibitor booths.

Those moments create something. 

Brand recognition jumps. 
People remember the experience. 
The product stops feeling "fungible".

A retail store can deliver that year-round, but obviously NOT if the math doesn't work out. 

We realized this works only for larger SaaS brands.

→ You need massive scale. Probably relevant for products with $500M+ revenue minimum. Think Canva, Hubspot, Slack.

→ Location discipline is everything. A 2,500 sq ft store in NYC's Flatiron runs about $1.5M per year, all in. If you pick vanity locations, the math collapses.

→ The store must produce measurable conversion lift or direct revenue to justify the burn.

For that to happen, it can't just be brand theater.

The store has to be an education and services studio first, a showroom second.

Example:

→ Canva would run paid design workshops and operate an on-site print lab for business cards and event materials. That's potentially $900k in annual services revenue.

→ Slack and HubSpot would turn the space into a solutions center. Workflow clinics. CRM migration sessions. RevOps audits. The goal would be to land 1 enterprise customer per month or 8 to 10 mid-market deals at $100k to $200k each. 

In other words, the store adds to the pipeline, not just awareness.

But what would happen at these stores?

Some ideas we riffed:
→ Canva could host stations where you design and print stuff live.
→ Slack runs workflow labs where entire teams optimize their Slack setup in real time.
→ One-on-one CRM sessions where staff sets up a HubSpot instance for a small business owner. 
→ Certification programs with expert coaching and exam days
→ Paid workshops that turn casual users into power users
→ Events that build community and turn customers into evangelists

I don't know. Maybe we're making no sense.

But curious about this
Would a retail store change your perception of a product? 
Or is there genuinely no utility here?
--

P.S. What's your take?

Sage

GTM for HR & Payroll

At Sage, we transform the way people think and work, enabling their organizations to thrive. Every day, all around the world, over 11,000 colleagues and local networks of accountants and partners support and enable business builder success.

Senior Product Marketing Manager

isolved

- Lead go to market strategy and product launches for Direct and Network partner channel across entire HCM Platform
- Collaborate with Product and Sales Enablement creating smooth product launches and ample sales training. 
- Strategic storyteller for Talent Acquisition and Employee Engagement
- Event and user conference speaker

- Developed and launched company-wide competitive intelligence and enablement program
- Worked closely with Network channel marketing further developing partner marketing initiatives
- Crafted strategic positioning and messaging in Network partner channel
- Executed go to market strategy and product launches for Network partner channel across entire HCM platform
- Speaker at Connect user conference

Product Marketing Manager

SellersFunding

• Managed an international team of marketing field-specific experts
• Collaborated with international sales, development, product and business development teams to increase product awareness
• Managed partner marketing relationships and strategies to cross-promote products
• Hands-on with investor relations

Director of Marketing

• Developed core process for go-to-market strategies and product launches for new features and products
• Crafted main value propositions and messaging for each new feature and products
• Implemented product tours and in-app onboarding to increase product adoption and cross-selling of 6 main products
• Researched and developed brand personas by product, per seller type
• PPC conversion-focused strategy to optimize for leads and sign-ups

Breezy HR

• Worked closely with Product, Sales and Dev teams to develop go-to-market strategies for new features and integrations
• Increased customer communications three-fold to increase retention and understand churn
• Improved the onboarding process and introduced customer lifecycle communications to improve conversion and retention rates

Maximizing ROI through lead generation paid advertising and organic campaigns.
• Revamped entire PPC strategy to optimize for leads and sign-ups for SaaS recruiting software on Capterra, Adwords and Bing
• Achieved a 65% increase in leads and sign-ups within the first month
• Implemented SEO strategy to reduce technical errors, improve performance and increase organic trial sign-ups

PPC/SEO

The Doyle Group.

Strategize and Implement Conversion focused Ecommerce Pay-Per-Click Advertising campaigns.
• Implemented true conversion and revenue tracking for PPC across 12 brands
• Created and organized Analytics channels to track sales to their correct source across all sales channels
• Strategized and implemented conversion-optimized direct response campaigns for 10 brands
• A/B testing to further increase conversions rates across all sales channels for 12 brands
• In first month, Adwords: increased revenue 85% and decreased cost per acquisition by 21 %; Bing: increased revenue by 97% and decreased cost per acquisition by 40%

CRO/PPC Ecommerce Manager

Fresh View Concepts

• Partnered with top advertising agencies to create PPC and SEO campaigns that convert clicks into leads and sales.
• Specialized in SEO, PPC, WordPress Design and Development, Social Media Management, Graphic Design, Email Marketing and Marketing Research

Founder - Head Of Digital 

intoGo

• Strategy implementation of full marketing plan including campaigns for ASO, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Email and Graphics
• Gained top 5 National rankings in the App Store and Google Play for events, things to do and activities
• Mobile App Install ad campaigns for Adwords and Facebook garnered 43% and 48% conversion rates respectively
• Developed go-to-market strategies for new app features and new markets

Chief Marketing Officer

With over 15 years of marketing experience, I have a deep interest and expertise in bringing products and solutions to market and into the hands of interested buyers using efficient GTM strategy and compelling storytelling. 

I'm known for crafting solution-focused messaging and content with empathic backing, collaborating with product and sales teams to create smooth product launches and ample sales training, and developing and launching company-wide competitive intelligence and enablement programs. I'm also passionate about learning new skills and technologies, such as AI and no-code development, that help me create better products and experiences for customers.

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