Monica Cravotta of WP Engine: Product Marketers Know The Art Of Storytelling
Become a master story-teller shared Monica Cravotta, senior director of product marketing at WP Engine, for my interview series Austin Voice Of Product. This is the second issue focused on product marketing, a role product managers interact with extensively. Our interview has been edited for clarity.
Austin VOP #54
What was your path to product marketing?
It was almost happenstance. I had stepped away from tech marketing altogether for 5 years after my daughters were born and was pursuing some other passions. My husband and I built and ran a recording studio, I made an album of children’s music with some singer-songwriter friends and then worked for at Whole Foods Market to help friend, Rip Esselstyn, build the Engine 2 Diet brand and start a food line.
Prior to stepping away from tech, my early career in marketing was in public relations and communications while living in Boulder, Colorado — traveling a lot to Silicon Valley and Dallas. I initially worked for startup and mid-sized technology companies including i2 Technologies (now JDA) and later as a freelance consultant. While at i2, I befriended a guy named Jay Mitchell who was one of their product marketers there back in the day. After we both left i2 and each developed our own consulting businesses, we stayed connected and I worked on some projects with him for his firm, Mereo. It was Jay who encouraged me to get into Product Marketing which I like to call “PMK”.
He was consulting for Bazaarvoice and wanted to help them with a need for a temporary backfill for a product marketer preparing for maternity leave, now my friend Maria Stansberry. He convinced me that with my writing and storytelling chops, I could “totally do product marketing.” Jay helped me through the rather brutal transition from comms strategy to orchestrating a product marketing launch in 12 weeks — BV’s first major product launch since founding their initial ratings & reviews platform. The professional leap was not small by any definition, especially not at that point in my career. I had never given a professional presentation in front of a large audience. I had never even used PowerPoint believe it or not. All my work in PR and Comms strategy had been in Word.
I was asked to demo the new Intelligence product in front of 200+ BVers — the entire customer-facing organization and most of the executives — a few weeks after I started.
To say that I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. Thankfully there was a customer use case example that made me laugh and helped me through the task of building a demo story. The customer was Cabella’s and they had a category of men’s clothing in their catalog that they called, “Men’s Bottoms.” I ran with making fun of this and apparently others appreciated it — many old BV friends tell me they still remember the demo.
I succeeded in winning over sales which, as we all know, is a big part of the PMK game. And ultimately after making my way through overseeing the launch, I was asked to stay on full-time.
This felt like a miraculous win for me.
I share this story — to hopefully give others who may be holding themselves back from ANYTHING professionally, with a feeling of “Well dang, if she can do that, maybe I can try something I think is too big of a leap.”
I have now had the privilege of building product marketing teams at three companies — working with some of Austin’s best.
Having benefited from so many teachers along the way, like Jay Mitchell, Maria Stansberry, Jim Rudden @ Spredfast and others — I’m very passionate about giving back and mentoring others new to this difficult, yet very rewarding role. Whether it’s helping someone that works for me to slow-roll in from an intern or junior to PMM or meeting with others in the Austin community to support them in their journeys — I hope to help others find their way.
What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?
We have an incredible tech community in Austin with a lot of generous people happy to have coffee and share advice, templates, messaging, plans — anything that can help you. Know that the mentor is likely over-scheduled and taxed for time — come prepared with questions and think about what value you can offer in exchange.
I encourage all product marketers to work on honing their craft as master storytellers. This is all about breaking down the complicated or technical or even mundane — and making it easy to digest and compelling.
Also, I firmly believe that if you ignore the need for cross-functional collaboration and consensus building because you feel you don’t have time, you will fail. You can be meticulous with your market validation of the product and how to price it; you can be data-driven and creative with your integrated marketing planning, and you can be super sharp with on-point messaging and sales assets — but at the end of the day if you suck at keeping others informed and bought in that need to be — you will really struggle. I think this is true for both Product Managers and Product Marketers.
You have to learn the game of informing before you inform — have your side meetings before the big meeting. You have to invest time in gaining incremental buy-in all along the way so that you and your product can succeed.
Last, I would say for the combined Product Management and Product Marketing function — whether you exist in the same organization or not, you need to act and operate like one team.
I’d recommend investing the time to define ways PM and PMK partners can work together throughout the product lifecycle — from early initial product definition and market evaluation through beta testing and market launch. As teams grow and new people are added, it’s important for PM and PMK leaders to re-establish, re-define, re-communicate the partnership and those collaborative swim lanes.
What have you read/watched/done that has inspired you lately?
I was recently turned on to the writings of Dr. Peter Koestenbaum, a preeminent business philosopher who has mentored business leaders worldwide. A mentor of mine shared a Fast Company interview with Dr. Koestenbaum from 2000 on the subject of courage, what he calls “the heart of leadership success” that I find timeless and extremely inspiring. In this interview, he also shares lessons from the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard on the value of anxiety that is very interesting and worth reading.
The piece on courage that I love is here:
You can find the whole FastCompany article, Do You Have the Will to Lead here.
I’m a semi-regular reader of HBR. I find value in most articles I read. Most recently I enjoyed their collection, 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself. Great suggestions for how to think about leadership holistically for every part of your life and stay authentic to your values and people who matter most to you.
I’m always looking at ways to find balance between these things and experimenting with new life habits to try and make it all work.
I have a side project where I have been developing a personal playbook of sorts — my 7 Ms for stepping into your power — whatever it is that you’re wanting to achieve. I have spoken on this at a couple conferences and local meetings. My initial intent in sharing this was to support other women who may be wrestling with the same things — but I have found this has been resonating not just with women, but men as well.
Could you share more — this sounds super interesting.
The first “M” is Me First — personal wellness should come first.
The second is Mindfulness — a daily practice can change the structure of your brain, and have a powerful impact on stress management and focus.
The third is Morning Pages — which I learned from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and recommend as a way to process challenges and generate solutions.
The fourth is Mantra — being conscious about the language we say internally and out loud about ourselves.
The fifth is Movement — using the body to trick the mind to be more confident or positive.
The sixth is Maximizing — finding tools to maximize your time in this always-on world.
The seventh is Moxie — letting go of the need for praise, approval or sympathy to stand firm in who you are.
What is exciting about the product you are working on now?
I am very inspired by what WP Engine has been doing to help companies of all sizes build and power enterprise-grade digital experiences on WordPress to win online. We democratized a digital experience platform for SMBs and we are accelerating digital experiences for enterprises, enabling faster time to market for some of the world’s leading brands.
They have so much they have to move fast on: a merger announcement, a flash campaign, a microsite, testing a new brand. All this can be done much faster with open-source WordPress, and enterprise-grade with WP Engine.
But whether you’re an SMB or Enterprise, the need for performance is paramount. In fact, speed it so important to the modern enterprise that it’s become a leading indicator of their success. Speed to launch, speed to respond, speed to deliver, etc. With our WordPress platform, we’ve effectively productized performance and speed for digital experiences.
Recently, we acquired StudioPress and their Genesis framework, the most popular theme framework for WordPress. The community of Genesis devotees is huge and global. It is inspiring to see the beauty of a giant open source community come together. The future is open source. Why would we rely on too slow, too expensive proprietary software and systems if we don’t have to?
What is your biggest product challenge currently?
As I mentioned, we have a very broad customer base. Our opportunity is to further accelerate the tremendous growth we’re driving as a company with a prioritized emphasis on channels, target geographies, segments and personas where we’re seeing the most success. The great thing is, we’ve got a leader in CEO Heather Brunner who is very talented at bringing focus to a company. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy this summer and fall to analyze the business and market deeply and are setting up cross-functional teams to align their plans and efforts with the same laser focus on specific target buyers, the best areas of the world to target them and through channels we know work best.
How might we build a stronger product and tech community in Austin?
We have a really interesting opportunity to coach the entrepreneurial spirit to a more diverse group. Could those of us who have experienced startup success give back more to non-profits and support STEM and diversity? Can we do it earlier with kids in school instead of waiting until they are in college or just starting in the workplace? How do we pull in more diversity into tech through our collective efforts?
WP Engine is leading the way in Austin with diversity being one of our top priorities. There’s a great article in the latest issue of Texas Monthly featuring Heather and her thoughts on diversity, how it fuels loyalty and performance at WP Engine and ways in which she’s pushing the discussion broadly with other companies in Austin and beyond.
At WP Engine we have a number of Diversity & Inclusion employee resource groups, including one that I started for women called, Sheroes. In this divisive political environment, we focus on the positive, on bringing women and men together to discuss challenges unique to women at work, and provide resources, support, workshops, etc to help women rise. We have sessions on topics like life balance, confidence, debate and public speaking.
Many companies around Austin are forming women’s groups which is super inspiring. The ATX Diversity & Inclusion non-profit started by women at Sparefoot and Indeed helps groups to connect and learn from one another — I think the community building here is fantastic.
Last question, what is your favorite product?
My Vitamix. It is the greatest thing ever! It is a great way for our family to get our daily greens in a low-effort smoothie every morning. And I love my Apple Watch. It allows me to keep track of things in a more sneaky way — without looking at my phone. The phone is now the rude tool. It also is a great health gadget — tracking my steps — and the health apps are awesome for exercise.
Thank you, Monica!
Austin VOP is an interview series with product leaders to build a stronger product and tech community in Austin. Please like, share and tweet this article if you enjoyed it.
Don’t miss the next interview — sign up for a bi-weekly email update here.
