Collette Johnson, Product Marketing Specialist at Redgate Software, plays a key player in the organization's marketing success. He is known for always providing the highest standards of work for the benefit of the business where he works.

MEDIA 7: Congratulations on being listed as one of the '100 Best Product Marketing Influencers of 2020'! What inspired you to enter the world of marketing?
COLLETTE JOHNSON: For me, it's all about the customer. Early in my career, I realized that allowing organizations to embrace new technologies to drive their success excited me, and this is what inspired me to pursue a career in marketing. I'm excited to understand how to engage people, learn what messages and narratives help them make decisions, and how to enable successful sales through the materials we produce. I really enjoyed the learning you get in marketing and how everything you do is different when you test and iterate for the best results for customers.

M7: What were the factors that led you to join Redgate Software? Please take us through your journey.
CJ: The biggest factor for me joining Redgate software was the value they placed on marketing and how important it was to organizational success. I joined an organization in an exciting growth phase, which in product marketing brings many interesting challenges in terms of strategic vision, aligning messages, understanding the importance of new people and complex interactions between key stakeholders, and understanding our changing needs. customer.
M7: What is your approach to market research, both customer and competitor focused?
CJ: Great market research is key and something I believe makes very good marketers. For me, both customer and competitor, it ensures a mix of formal and informal insights from across the market, perhaps from customers, key opinion leaders, analysts. It also ensures you continue to be engaged in these areas - every week I set aside an afternoon to update competitor research (I also have active searches set up when competitors are mentioned in PR, etc. to make sure I have the least intelligence as to when I might need to react to strengthen our offering).

Also, for this, I talk to our customers on a weekly basis to ensure that we have the latest continuous insights. Recently, I've been implementing Digital Murals for sales, marketing, and products to include insights as they gain them, which we review weekly and decide which ones need further investigation - they are excellent tools for subtle changes in the market or to see patterns so we can act quickly for business advantage.
M7: What marketing strategy would you like to implement in 2021 and why?
CJ: What I look forward to the most is seeing the complex decision-making process in the company and understanding how it can bring success to this organization. I enjoy understanding what the organization needs but ensuring that the voices of key stakeholders are heard and reflected in the marketing I produce to ensure as much success is achieved with the product portfolio I work on. This, then needs to be translated across the organization to ensure understanding and so that we can ensure success with these groups and this is something I really enjoy and early feedback on these insights is key to ensuring long term strategic success.

M7: You also have several commitments such as mentoring, educating in the business sector and taking part in podcasts like Product Marketing Life. How do you maintain a balance between work and other similar commitments?
CJ: For me, that commitment is key to helping people embrace careers in product marketing and to understand what the job entails and I think it's important as an influencer in this space to not only educate the people moving into this space but also to share insights with organizations to drive growth and awareness of the importance of product marketing.

Beyond my commitments around education and awareness, I enjoy taking time off screens - I think it's important to ensure balance and you don't burn out. I've set the switch on my device so I can't access it after a certain time at night, so the device doesn't alert me and pulls me back into the workspace in my head. If it's an emergency, people know how to keep me away from e-mails and slack etc.

I love to do creative activities that ensure a digital break - that's where I get the best ideas and thoughts. You'll mostly find me in my tailor-lined sewing room, outside with nature for escapes, or in the relaxing kitchen creating something really tasty (mostly with lots of cheese).
M7: What marketing mantra do you swear by?
CJ: Why customer care? This is very important to me - everything I do in my role is to enable customers, so that every day I look at the work I do and ask myself how it helps them, why do they care about the work I do, how will they be benefit. It's easy in the middle of project work to forget why you are doing it and that you are the voice of the customer and to remember that I believe in raising the standards and results of the work you produce.

M7: Any suggestions for young women considering a career in marketing?
CJ: Never give up. Marketing is a very competitive space and difficult to enter. The first thing I recommend getting a mentor to help you explore the different areas of marketing and support you in gaining experience and understanding - organizations like the Product Marketing Alliance have a mentor program that I take part in and are great steps to help kickstart your career.

Another piece of advice is to do your research - look into the different roles and types of organizations and understand what excites you - I really enjoy aligning strategies and positioning with very technical issues and therefore B2B technology suits me very well, so understand different types of roles, customers and market segments are very important.

ABOUT REDGATE SOFTWARE

Redgate makes software very simple and is used by more than 800,000 IT professionals worldwide and is a leading vendor of Microsoft SQL Server tools. Redgate's philosophy is to design extremely useful and reliable tools that elegantly solve the problems that developers and DBAs face on a daily basis and help them adopt a suitable database DevOps. In addition to simplifying database development and preventing databases from becoming a bottleneck, it helps organizations introduce data protection by design and default. As a result, more than 100,000 companies use Redgate's tools, including 91% on the Fortune 100 list.
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REDUCE SOFTWARE
Redgate Software was founded in 1999 and, in the 20 years since then, has grown from offering multiple tools to providing a complete suite of database development solutions that allow businesses to enter databases in DevOps. Many solutions like Compare SQL and SQL Prompt are considered as ...
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