MJ Smith is the Vice President of Marketing at CoLab Software, a startup focused on helping mechanical engineers collaborate and make decisions faster. Before CoLab, MJ led sales and marketing at Refine Labs, where she worked with more than 50 B2B software startups. She also spent 6 years working at Halma plc, a group of mid-sized manufacturing businesses focused on medical, environmental, and safety technology. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Long Story Short:

• Why product marketing is the first priority for an organization’s first marketing leader
• Focusing on positioning and messaging before scaling through demand gen
• The importance of buyer research, especially when you aren’t in your own ICP
• The 3 types of insights MJ looks for in doing customer research
• The importance of understanding the critical pain points specific to the buyer role
• Leveraging quantitative research and product analytics for content
• How demystifying finance made MJ a better marketing leader and executive
• Why having a podcast as a marketing strategy might be overrated