Situation:
More than 100 million developers and technologists come to Stack Overflow’s public platform every month making it one of the 50 most-visited websites in the world. Stack Overflow’s Employer Branding solution enables companies to engage and market their employer brand to 100+ million self-motivated, proactive and passionate developers and technologists.
Problem:
Stack Overflow’s Employer Branding (formerly Talent) offering was evolving away from a job board to become more of a destination for companies to highlight their employer brands to their target candidates, technologistis and developers. They needed help and additional resources to better understand the talent acquisition audience and to craft messaging and sales materials that would resonate with that group.
Solution:
Fluvio embedded a team of 3 consultants that built the go-to-market foundation (personas, positioning and messaging) and delivered sales enablement (decks, one pagers), resulting in greater alignment across the org on their Employer Branding value proposition, a pipeline of content to educate the market with, and new strategies and tactics for sustainable growth.
Client Interview
We sat down and interviewed Stack Overflow’s VP of Product Marketing, Joy Cicman Liuzzo to get her thoughts on our work together.
Joy Cicman Liuzzo
VP of Product Marketing at Stack Overflow
WHAT PROBLEMS WERE YOU ENCOUNTERING THAT LED YOU TO BELIEVE A PRODUCT MARKETING CONSULTANT COULD HELP?
Our Employer Branding (formerly Talent) offering was evolving away from a job board to become more of a destination for companies to highlight their employer brands to their target candidates, technologistis and developers. We needed help and additional resources in understanding the talent acquisition audience and crafting messaging and sales materials that would resonate with that group.
HOW IMPORTANT WAS INDUSTRY EXPERTISE WHEN FINDING PRODUCT MARKETING SUPPORT?
Expertise in our industry was a ‘nice to have’ but definitely not a must. We knew that a resourceful marketer would be able to find and access research and dive into our existing materials to suss out important insights, draw conclusions around our customers’ pain points and identify the most important features and value propositions of what makes Stack Overflow’s offering unique.
WHAT WAS THE FLUVIO TEAM’S APPROACH TO ONBOARDING, AND WHAT EFFORTS DID THEY TAKE TO LEARN AND IMMERSE THEMSELVES IN YOUR PRODUCT AND INDUSTRY?
Fluvio took two weeks to focus on onboarding. During this time, they read up on research, studied documents and assets that our team provided, interviewed internal cross-functional stakeholders from our Sales, Product, Marketing, Research and leadership teams, and even interviewed a few of our customers to get a thorough understanding of the industry, internal and customer perspectives. This thorough process allowed them to identify areas of opportunity and quickly get started on actionable work that would benefit our business.
HOW WAS THE FLUVIO TEAM ABLE TO BE EFFECTIVE AND SUCCESSFUL, DESPITE NOT HAVING DIRECT EXPERIENCE IN YOUR COMPANY’S INDUSTRY?
With the level of detail consumed in their onboarding process, coupled with their collective experience in product marketing, the Fluvio team was able to truly immerse themselves in our company, become well versed on our industry and ultimately became an extension of our existing product marketing team. They showed up with confidence, and you would never have known they were new to our market.
WHAT WAS THE FLUVIO TEAM ULTIMATELY ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM?
The Fluvio team has built foundational aspects (personas, positioning and messaging), sales enablement (decks, one pagers), website copy, and developed and is executing on strategies for content and demand generation activities.
WHAT DOES FLUVIO OFFER THAT IS UNIQUE COMPARED TO OTHER CONSULTING FIRMS YOU MAY HAVE WORKED WITH IN THE PAST?
Structure - they come in with processes, frameworks, and approaches that make it easy to accomplish goals. Communication - they are highly effective communicators. This spans keeping stakeholders informed to explaining strategies and tactics to asking for what they need to be successful.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BENEFITS YOU’VE EXPERIENCED SINCE YOU KICKED OFF THE PARTNERSHIP?
Alignment across the org on our Employer Branding value proposition, a pipeline of content to help with educating the market, and new strategies and tactics for demand generation activities.