The purpose of this handbook page is to align our marketing team on a single FY22 marketing plan. This page and the FY22 plan are intended to be an ongoing work-in-progress, contributed to by the entire team throughout FY22 to foster collaboration and focus.
Everyone can contribute. See something you'd like to discuss or iterate on? Start an MR and tag @jgragnola, @lblanchard, or @darawarde to assist with merging!
Goals of FY22 Marketing Plan:
Major market themes:
Timeline: Ensure marketing alignment by end of February 2021
Audience: Marketing
Measure: How do we confirm everyone is aligned?
Internal only - search for GTM Slides - w Data
The TOPO Model is the agreed upon Finance/Sales/Marketing model that drives Marketing's goals for FY22, leveraging advisory services from TOPO (now Gartner). In order to see the TOPO model please go to your Google Drive and search for FY22_Mktg Model_TOPO_Machado - PLAN LOCKED.
On a monthly cadence, the Marketing Key Review will be used as the venue for tracking where we are year-to-date on the agreed upon plan.
All FY22 Marketing budgets are loaded into Allocadia. Please refer to the Allocadia handbook page for more details on the tool.
Based on discussions with Sales and Marketing leadership, feedback from Product & Product Management leadership and by consulting industry/analyst reports, we recommend that for FY22, our major GTM motions should be focused on CI/CD, DevOps Platform, and GitOps. The overall goal of our GTM motions and sales play initiative is to improve the predictability of attaining our FY22 New and Growth AR goals, and improve our GTM efficiency (e.g. CAC, Cost per SAO/CW). We will do this by concentrating our efforts on the most important GTM motions that align to customer’s main business goals/needs. where GitLab has a distinct competitive advantage and with accounts that have the highest LAM growth potential.
To view the GTM Motions Googlesheet, please go to your Google Drive and search for GTM Motions FY22 Marketing Plan.
The GTM Motions each include a Core Team, comprised of functional DRIs for subject-matter specific teams within marketing. If your specific group is not listed as a Core Team, don't worry! Each team and each individual in Marketing plays an integral role in making the FY22 Marketing Plan a reality and a success. Please see more information in GTM Motion Core Teams and Beyond the GTM Motion Core Teams below. All marketing team members should aim to focus ~70% of their time and plans around these GTM motions, allowing for ~30% of their time to be spent testing new messaging that's not a GTM motion.
The list below includes potential and recommended items to include in a GTM Motion, to assist with ideation at kickoff of planning. The Core Team - in collaboration across Marketing and Sales - will determine need and timeline for the items to be included, and may add additional items for which there is an oranized plan to leverage.
Potential/Recommended Pieces of a GTM Motion:
The GTM Strategy doc includes the background market information to illustrates the context and personas experiencing a problem that attracts budget and describes how our soultion meets that need. GTM strategy docs, also refered to as Use Case GTM pages, are kept in the handbook.
A GTM motion can include one or more marketing campaigns. GTM motion campaigns can be designed to work independently or in tandem with an associated sales play. A campaign brief describes the tactics and channels to drive demand.
May include:
A sales play's intended audience is sales (SALs, SAs, TAMs, SDR as applicable) to arm the sales teams as a part the outbound motion. In some cases, there will also be inbound marketing campaign component. The playbook prepares the sales person with both prescriptive actions to take as part of the outbound motion, as well as how to respond in the case of a supporting inbound marketing campaign.
The Sales Play should include (at minimum):
Sales Plays should be delivered as a handbook page, or as an interactive guide leveraging PathFactory - or both.
To see the planned Sales Plays, see column C in GTM Motions.
The list below includes potential and recommended items to include in a Sales Play. Not all Sales Plays will include the full list, and the Core Team - in collaboration across Marketing and Sales - will determine need and timeline for the items to be included, and may add additional items for which there is an oranized plan to leverage.
Potential/Recommended supporting sales enablement:
All teams play an INTEGRAL role in reaching our marketing goals, regardless if they are on the Core Team or not. Differences in team alignment (i.e. to segment/region) and approaches that will span and leverage all GTM Motions, are two reasons for teams being beyond the Core Teams.
If your team or name is not listed as part of the core team, don't worry! As part of this FY22 Marketing Plan, a keen focus is alignment and ensuring everyone across marketing is connected and collaborating. If you would like to participate on a Core Team, you may do so - connect with the Core Team of interest to learn more about getting involved! Anyone joining a Core Team will be expected to be an active contributor and participant.
How to keep all teams in the loop will be a key responsibility of the Core Teams, and planning should not happen in silos. Continual communication of plans, progress, and how to leverage the GTM Motion collateral will be a key to success in the FY22 Marketing Plan.
The teams are encouraged to contribute ideas and processes for communication here in the handbook throughout FY22.
While the majority of GTM Motion work will take place asynchronously, aligned to GitLab's efficiency value, there are certain calls which will take place via Zoom.
GTM Motion Kickoff Calls (in order of occurrence):
Interlocking the teams across marketing will help foster the most collaborative and effective results. This section outlines specific processes and concepts for the activities we drive in Marketing.
The plans should be made in a collaborative manner to address in advance potential bandwidth contraints and discuss commitment from teams.
In advance of a quarter, the Corporate Team will outline for the GTM Motions an update on upcoming events, their anticipated audience, and elements of the event. This will help the GTM teams to understand opportunities available to test messaging, promote demos and content, etc.
These corporate events are high investment, and also high return, and this will show in the results of the GTM Team.
Upon communication of the events, a GTM Team will commit to the event and be responsible for supporting all requested issues.
A core need from the GTM Team is to develop IN ADVANCE a cohesive experience from the first email invitation or ad, to the final email follow up and SDR outreach.
These events are a great opportunity to test new messaging, discuss new product features and functionality, and share feedback across the teams to implement to overall marketing strategy and messaging as relevant. In some cases, we will have messaging that worked well in the past that we want to leverage again, and review and revise as needed.
Responsibilities: Produt Marketing
Responsibilities: Campaigns Team
Responsibilities: Technical Marketing
Responsibilities: Digital Marketing & ABM
Responsibilities: Brand
Responsibilities: Content Marketing
Responsibilities: Marketing Operations
The 4X2 goes into detail about differences in go-to-market by sales segment (Large, Mid-Market, SMB, and PubSec). The 4x2 includes overall business flows, new business motion overview, key measurements, and team-specific roles in the segment-specific GTM strategies.
To view the GTM 4x2 Googlesheet, please go to your Google Drive and search for GTM Motion Strategy Template (4x2).
Themes will help us build a more cohesive story-telling approach, leveraging the GTM Motions and unifying our activities and messaging. Pulling together collective brainpower across the marketing teams and highlighting opportunities to leverage each team's plans and ideas will help to define our FY22 themes.
Themes are expected to be generated through the Core Team planning in kicking off the GTM Motions (all teams are welcome and encouraged to contribute to theme generation!)
For example, if we want to celebrate our alliance partners in a specific month, we can identify that as a theme and determine how all teams can contribute to the plan and deliver a cohesive and organized approach.
The Marketing Team OKRs should align to the intitiatives in Project Compass.
To view the Project Compass Googlesheet, please go to your Google Drive and search for Project Compass: Implementation - Sales & Marketing Levers.
Marketing Focus in Project Compass:
In kicking off FY22, let's work together to create a single all-marketing calendar where everyone can contribute, and we can answer key questions (using filters) related to upcoming marketing plans. The calendar also lives at the top of the Marketing Handbook Page.
In the future, the goal is to visualize these inputs in a calendar format with filters (based on columns in the doc) to allow the team to see the plans in Sisense. View the Basic Mockup in Mural!
Currently, the GoogleDoc has pre-set filter views to help you see plans by Region, Segment, etc. to be added by team members for their respective activities.
You will be able to edit this mural.
Location for inputs: In your Google Drive, search for (and bookmark) FY22 All-Marketing Calendar SSoT.
This is where all teams will input and categorize planned activities, content production, themes, and more - with filters that align to key pieces of information (GTM Motions, Alliance Partners, Sales Segments, Regions, Funnel Stage, Language, and more). This will be iterative and everyone should feel open to share their feedback and ideas - comment in the issue to sare your thoughts!
Team leaders and team members should feel empowered to add to this section, providing examples and thoughts for colleagues. Use the code below to start your section and designate a clean anchor for the section.
### Team Name
{: #commentary-team-name}
<!-- DO NOT CHANGE ANCHOR -->
As a Field Marketer, you will be leveraging the GTM Motions in your regional strategy and plans*. You may determine that a certain GTM Motion will be more heavily leveraged in your region and/or help you reach your regional goals, and you are interested in joining the Core Team for that GTM Motion. Or perhaps you have a particular passion for a specific GTM Motion and want to be an active participant and contributor to the Core Team or a specific Sales Play. Great! Connect with the Core Team to get involved.
*You do not have to use all GTM Motions and you may go outside of these GTM Motions, although, as mentioned in the GTM Motions section, ~70% of your time should be spent focusing on the GTM Motions.
While the majority of Field Marketing activities should be focused on middle of the funnel activies (i.e. grabbing the leads from our focus account list (4300/4000) that are already in our system & pulling them through to SAO), there may be times where there is a gap in the focus account MQLs and Field Marketing will need to run a top of funnel campaign with the main goal being SAOs that support the Field Marketing FY22 goals. When Field Marketers run top of the funnel campaigns, they need to be sure to collaborate with the campaign manager aligned to their segment. This should be done to ensure there is alignment and that there is no overlap in team plans. This can be done in the bi-weekly FMM/MCM meetings that take place. There is not a formal approval process that the Field Marketer needs to go through with the campaigns team. There is much power in the teams working together and we already seeing the success of this happening!
As a Campaign Manager, you have a challenge on your plate: to plan and report from the perspective of GMT Motions, AND to plan/report from the perspective of your segment/region to ensure lead flow aligned to sales targets is on track. You will be an active contributor to a Core Team by sharing insight into existing data from the GTM Motions to-date; organizing and communicating existing buyer journeys, content, and nurture emails; and strategizing/communicating top funnel activities for FY22.
You will be expected to become a subject matter expert of the GTM Motion as a Core Team member and ensure the Demand Generation team is up-to-date with what is planned for the GTM Motion (so that team members can best leverage the GTM Motions within their top-funnel campaign plans by segment/region.
The GTM Motions will each have an epic, where all teams can reference plans and the issues (i.e. action items) to accomplish the plans. We will be making use of 2 week milestones (Marketing - 2021-MM-DD) as well as GTM Motion labels for each team. The teams themselves will decide how often to have stand-ups, whether live or through slack, as well as any other synchronous calls.
The "Scrum of Scrums" kanban issue board is based on the GTM Motion labels and can be found at the gitlab.com level under GTM Motions FY22
Main Epic: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/marketing/-/epics/1785
