From Bare Strategy

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Product Marketing · February 26, 2026 · 8 min read

How to run a positioning workshop: the PMM's step-by-step playbook

Most positioning workshops end in a truce. Everyone trades away the claim they cared about, nobody's wrong, and the company comes out undifferentiated. That happens when nobody brings evidence, so opinion becomes the only currency in the room and the loudest holder sets the rate. The fix is the two weeks before the session. Stakeholder interviews in verbatim language, a competitor map built from competitors' own words, and win/loss read honestly. Then the room's job gets small. Admit the evidence, keep the claims that survive being checked, draft the statement live, and pressure test it before anyone leaves.

Sales Enablement · February 19, 2026 · 7 min read

How to build competitive battlecards that sales teams actually use

Most competitive battlecards are written to make us look good, which is why nobody opens them. A rep has about fifteen seconds and needs words to say out loud, not a feature matrix. The line that earns the open is the loss line, one honest sentence naming where this competitor beats us. Build the card around the live conversation. Interview reps first, fit it on one screen, put the traps on it, and put the card where the deal already is.

Product Marketing · February 12, 2026 · 8 min read

Analyst relations for PMMs: how to brief Gartner, Forrester, and IDC (and actually shift the placement)

Analysts already know what we sell. The forty-slide briefing is the lane we keep switching into, and it never moves. What they don't have is our read on the market and what customers did after the contract signed. What we don't have is theirs. The half of the call where information travels back toward us is the return half, and most vendors never schedule it. Protect the last fifteen minutes, spend inquiry hours as research instead of emergency support, and write down every piece of skepticism an analyst voices in passing. That skepticism is a chip in the windshield. It becomes next quarter's enterprise objection.

Product Marketing · February 5, 2026 · 6 min read

How to build a B2B messaging house: the framework PMMs actually use

Four descriptions of one product, all published this week. The copy is fine and nothing sits underneath it. A messaging house holds six parts. One value proposition, three pillars, proof under each, an unlike line, segment variations, and objection responses. Most teams finish the document and stop there. The house only counts when someone who didn't write it says a line out loud without looking it up.

Product Marketing · January 29, 2026 · 8 min read

Category creation: how PMMs build markets nobody else owns

A category names the condition a market is already stuck in, clearly enough that the people stuck in it can act. Call it the gate announcement. The work is a plain name for the problem, a claim with an enemy behind it, other people repeating the words, and the patience to say the same thing for two to five years while the numbers stay flat. Most companies quit around month eighteen. The ones that don't end up owning the terms everyone else has to argue with.

Product Marketing · January 22, 2026 · 7 min read

Product-led growth and the PMM: how your role changes when the product is the channel

In a product-led motion the product is the channel, so the messaging has to work with nobody standing next to the buyer. That exposes the last-page problem. IKEA hides the picture of the finished thing until the end, and most self-serve products do the same to their users. The PMM job is moving that picture to page one on three surfaces. The story before signup, the words inside onboarding and empty states, and the upgrade moment that has to close in two sentences and a button.

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