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?

Sterling Bank

Product Marketing Officer

Simpu (Techstars ‘22)

I specialized in crafting compelling top-of-the-funnel and product-led content that drives engagement and conversions. My role involved:
- Developing insightful and persuasive content to capture the attention of potential customers and drive interest in our products.
- Writing and editing a tech-focused newsletter that keeps our audience informed and engaged with the latest industry trends and company updates.
- Crafting targeted copy for new product tiers to effectively communicate value propositions and enhance user experience.

Product Marketing

Hepplo

At Hepplo, I played a pivotal role in driving the market entry of our innovative platform that connects households with top-notch professional handyman services. In this role, I:

- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to craft and execute comprehensive go-to-market plans, to ensure a successful product launch and strong market presence.
- Conducted thorough research to pinpoint target audiences, analyze market trends, and identify growth opportunities, guiding strategic decisions for product positioning.
- Designed clear and impactful messaging to effectively communicate the unique value proposition of our handyman services, resonating with and engaging our target audience.
- Gathered deep insights into customer needs, pain points, and preferences through detailed market research, helping shape product features and enhancements.

My role was instrumental in refining the product offering and enhancing its market fit, driven by a commitment to leveraging data for strategic advantage.

Marketing Associate

Upwork

Sales Copywriting & SEO Content Writing
• Writing clear, compelling copy for mediums such as  ads, blog posts
• Interpreting copywriting briefs to understand project requirements
• Collaborating with clients on large- and small-scale marketing projects (email campaigns and landing pages)
• Writing clear marketing copy to promote clients' products/services
• Preparing well-structured drafts using content management systems
• Conducting simple keyword research and using SEO guidelines to increase web traffic

Freelance Writer

Pieces.app

Content Partner Program
• Disseminated technical information in easy-to-understand language for a non-technical audience
• Communicated complex ideas in a concise manner

Technical Writer

HNG Internship

HNGi9 Finalist
• Analysed user personas, competitive environment, and market opportunities
• Conducted market research to determine user pain points and define the needs and desires of customers
• Communicated with team members, product managers, and engineering team
• Created marketing strategy for successful implementation

Sales And Marketing Intern

Inclide

I worked as an intern blog writer under supervision.  My blog posts were related to current trends in the digital marketing space. This gave me a huge insight into how to conduct proper research. I also learned the basics of search engine optimization.

Content Writer

Opera News 

• Contributed articles weekly to the politics & policy, entertainment, health & fitness sections.
• Reached over 10k+ clicks and engagement with articles.
• Implemented keywords in articles, using adequate research.
• Article was ranked as one of the top10 excellent articles of the week.

Contributing Writer

Product Marketing | Driving Tech Product Growth and Success Through 100% Data-Informed Marketing

Glad you stopped by! 

What do I do?
I'm passionate about fueling tech product growth through strategic product marketing, content marketing, and SEO strategies. 

How do I do it?
- Understanding of the tech industry and a knack for crafting compelling narratives that resonate with target audiences
- Developing comprehensive content strategies that engage, educate, and inspire your customers throughout their buyer's journey
- Conducting market research and analyzing your customer insights
- Keyword research, website optimization, and link-building strategies

To achieve what?
- Drive brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and boost your product adoption
- Engage, educate, and inspire your customers throughout their buyer's journey.
- Ensure your products receive maximum online visibility and attract relevant organic traffic

Let's connect! Send a direct message here on LinkedIn or drop me an email 👉 teteelola@gmail.com

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