About Kyramar

HI. I’m Christopher Belthoff

I founded Kyramar in 2017 as a private consulting organization.

I began my career as an Aerospace Engineer, working on a variety of systems (both hardware and software) that ended up in cool places such as the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and the Hubble telescope. I shifted into the software world as a Product Line Manager for Parametric Technology Corporation (now just called PTC).

Over the past 2+ decades, I’ve worked in a variety of enterprise B2B Software organizations, ranging in size from 30 to 3000+ employees. My roles have varied, in ‘title’, from Product Management to Product Marketing to Technical Marketing to Strategic Marketing….

but, across all these, I saw that a fundamental necessity to ensuring success is to effectively drive the DISCIPLINE of Product Marketing.

Philosophy:

BE USEFUL

ADD VALUE

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

How I define PRODUCT MARKETING

Product Marketing:

  • Owns the creation and dissemination (to ALL audiences, internal and external) of effective positioning and messaging, in whatever form is needed.

  • Ensures the organization behaves in an outside-in manner across all functions, driven by the market and clients, vs. driven by functionality and internal structure & processes.

Notice that, nowhere in the definition of this discipline known as Product Marketing, do I use the word “product”. Why do I point this out? See #3 below.

My TOP 5 GOLDEN RULES for ‘superlative ’Product Marketing:

  1. Effective ‘Product Marketing’ is NOT about the product – it’s about the MARKET.

  2. Product Marketing must interact continually with Marketing, Product Management, Executives, Sales and Services… in fact it needs to be THE MOST CROSS-FUNCTIONAL DISCIPLINE in the company.

  3. Despite its pervasiveness, ‘product’ is a dangerous word and can cause much confusion and consternation, if YOU LET IT – great Product Marketers understand that it’s really all about the ‘OFFERING’ in the broadest sense - WHAT CLIENTS NEED and what delivers VALUE.

  4. If the DISCIPLINE of Product Marketing is not clearly owned and driven by a specific person or team, it will still ‘get done’ (the vacuum will be filled by whoever steps in) – but in a very crappy way, and the organization will most likely fail to meet key objectives.

  5. When you have finished creating all your market research summaries, brochures, sales presentations, website content, white papers, campaign messaging, videos, and other related assets… the job is only 10% DONE. Product Marketing is not about PUBLISHING – it’s about RESULTS.