Personal Branding Strategist for Founders of Tech Companies and Microsoft Partners

Hi,  I'm Iva Vlasimsky, and I craft complete go-to-market content systems that transform small-to-midsized Microsoft partner organizations from invisible to go-to authorities who build trust and close deals.

​I help them replace generic 'migration to the cloud' messaging with a content strategy and execution that go beyond standard partner marketing materials—and eliminate agency or multi-contractor costs. 

After 10 years inside the Microsoft ecosystem, I’ve seen too many partners who sound exactly the same. They drown in jargon, depend on referrals, and wait for Microsoft sellers to notice them. 

And Microsoft partners don’t lack expertise. They lack effective communication of their value. And that costs them missed opportunities and stalled growth.

That’s where I help.

As a fractional go-to-market content strategist, I help partners with insufficient marketing support (or having that 1-person department wearing all the hats) to:

—> Differentiate with sharp positioning and a unique narrative.
—> Get visible with high-value content, websites optimized for both humans & AI search, and LinkedIn team programs that expand your reach.
—> Build effective GTM campaigns and authority that wins trust: from prospects, peers, and Microsoft.

My 20+ years in communications (100+ award submissions, dozens of partner case studies, frameworks built on human-first + AI-supported workflows) have one purpose: turning your expertise into visibility and business results.

👉 If you’re a Microsoft partner ready to move from referrals and invisibility to authority and growth, let’s talk.

"With Iva's strategic support, I turned my Microsoft and business expertise into compelling content that boosted my visibility and positioned acadon AG in the top search results on Google and ChatGPT." — Klaus Fander, CEO @ acadon AG

Working remotely with teams across the globe (mostly EU & US).

Active in IAMCP and The WIT Network because community is where it's at.

And living in one of the world's most beautiful corners, Croatia, with 2 teens and 2 cats.

Reach out if you want to connect.

At Directions for Partners EMEA in Poznan last fall, someone asked if I worked for Microsoft. My title says GTM Content Strategist, so they assumed I was part of Microsoft's GTM team.

(I threw away the tag but found this bag still alive and slightly wrinkled)

That confusion told me something important about how partners think about go-to-market. For many, GTM means Microsoft's GTM and Partner Center resources like: 

- Campaign in a Box
- Solution Play decks
- White-labeled eBooks

So, when they hear "go-to-market," they picture Microsoft's priorities and Microsoft's launches.

And don't get me wrong; some of these resources are useful. Ready-made campaign assets, templated content, co-sell programs can be great time saver when you have a person who knows how to use them well. 

BUT they're built for Microsoft's fiscal year goals and messaging, sharing the  Microsoft corporation perspective and focus.

They don't answer the questions that matter for YOUR business more:

👉 What's YOUR differentiation from other partners selling the same Microsoft stack? 
👉 Who is YOUR specific ideal customer, beyond Microsoft's broad segments?
👉 What does YOUR leadership want to achieve this year? 
👉 Why should a prospect choose YOU over the partner down the street?

Your go-to-market needs to start with your business and your product. And this is true even if you want to co-sell with Microsoft. Even if you're an MSP not building your own solutions and providing services. 

And it's especially important if you're an ISV with your own product built on the Microsoft platform.

Microsoft resources can support your GTM, but they can't replace the strategic work of defining your positioning, your audience, and your story.

Because, seriously, why should a prospect select you? Why not hundreds of thousands of other partners who sell the exact same thing or something very similar? 

That answer doesn't come from Partner Center. It comes from your own strategic deep dive.

#MicrosoftPartners #GTMStrategy #ProductMarketing

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GTM Content Strategist | Fractional Product Marketing Manager For Microsoft Partners | Go-To-Market Narrative Explorer

I'll never get used to the fact that so many Microsoft partners and ISVs STILL think marketing is just a tactical discipline you can keep on the back burner and dial up when numbers go down.

Most of those I know are predominantly sales-led organizations where marketing comes in sporadically. When it does, that typically includes:

👉 Website presence with (maybe) a light touch of SEO (now in slight panic mode due to AI search and zero-click trends)

👉 Blogs ideated by leadership, boasting topics THEY think need to be out there. No SEO/AEO or customer interest research, no authority or real content strategy, plus AI tools doing all the writing

👉 Social media that comes down to company posts on LinkedIn, entirely run by juniors and interns, with zero leadership or SME individual presence

That's it. That's the whole marketing.

No wonder the results are disappointing. And no wonder that by the time some realize they might benefit from product marketing, they think it's all practically sales enablement.

But those sales decks won't land if you skipped three steps before creating them: the product marketing strategy.

There are five stages to the product marketing process:

1️⃣ DISCOVER: market, competition, customer needs 
2️⃣ STRATEGIZE: pricing, packaging, GTM segment definition 
3️⃣ DEFINE: positioning, messaging, use cases, narrative 
4️⃣ GET SET: creating marketing and sales content (yes, only now)
5️⃣ GROW: bottom-of-the-funnel and authority content, feedback loops

Skip the first 3 steps and you'll probably get:

✔️ Generic materials no one bothers to read or watch 
✔️ Sporadic, irrelevant leads that will never buy 
✔️ Confusing messaging that sales cannot articulate on prospect calls

You can avoid all this by understanding that marketing, and product marketing specifically, are first and foremost strategic disciplines, closely tied to your business strategy and real market needs.

Accepting that fact is step one. Hiring or outsourcing senior experts to help sort things out is the next.

#ProductMarketing #GTMContentStrategy

Recently I worked with a Microsoft partner whose feature-based positioning was actually working against them.

They had three solutions in the M365 space with strong products bringing real customer value. But they were disconnected and speaking to different personas.

Positioned separately, each product got compared feature-by-feature against point solutions, which was was pulling them into battles they couldn't win. Also, this whole process wasn't aligned with where leadership wanted to take the company.

So, we flipped the script.

Instead of asking "Which features appear different or stronger?", we asked: "What systemic problem do our customers struggle with that no existing category fully addresses?"

We took the bird's-eye view and identified the root problem at the M365 workspace level. These three solutions weren’t solving three separate problems. They were a platform responding to the same underlying failure, each addressing a specific part of a bigger, systemic challenge.

That perspective gave us a completely new market category and a ‘blue ocean’ of opportunities. 

(If you haven't already, I strongly suggest you read about the Blue Ocean and Red Ocean Strategy.)

Everything clicked after that. The leadership built on this positioning by adding some amazing strategic elements to the entire product stack. And the entire team got excited about this 'conversation reframe'.

(Which is another great side-effect of defining the category and designing the product narrative: internal alignment. More on that some other time.)

When you define the category, you set the criteria. When someone else defines it, you're always playing catch-up.

P.S. I'm kinda obsessed with this whole narrative design for product marketing (not just for brands). And I'm eagerly waiting to deepen my knowledge in positioning and category design at the upcoming OWN YOUR CATEGORY™ 4-Week Cohort by Josh Lowman.

P.P.S. It's not the ocean on the picture below, it's my beautiful, Croatian Adriatic Sea, but it gets the message across.

#ProductMarketing #Positioning #MicrosoftPartners #CategoryDesign

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