Life in Adtech: Helping Marketers Succeed Through Education

In our blog series “Life in Adtech” we’re showcasing the different ways in which StackAdapters are driving innovation in adtech, and creating a progressive tech culture. From using modeling and data to create advanced algorithms to building stylish and robust user interfaces, everyone at StackAdapt is contributing to evolving the StackAdapt platform and providing the best product and service to our clients.

This month features Alexandra Jakubowski, a Product Marketing Specialist at StackAdapt. In this post we will get a comprehensive look into how she structures her role within the company, how she stays ahead during product launches, and the programmatic trends she believes are important to look at when positioning a product to the market.

What was your journey like becoming a Product Marketing Specialist at StackAdapt?

Before joining StackAdapt, I worked as a solo marketer for an innovation consulting firm that specialized in building digital platforms in fintech, digital health, and urban mobility. At the time, my interest in product marketing had started to grow, and I got involved with co-running Product Marketing Toronto, a group with the mission to engage and support fellow peers in commercializing exceptional products. We hosted tactical roundtable sessions, which helped me and others grow through discussion and collaboration. In 2019, I made the leap into adtech with StackAdapt, joining the Product Marketing Team which spearheads our go-to-market initiatives, bringing new platform capabilities to our customers. 

As a Product Marketing Specialist, what is the main focus of your role?

I work to ensure that our customers, partners and internal teams have the resources they need to succeed. Much of the time I am curating content, such as presentations, comparison sheets, and 1-pagers, that add value to our customers and help support our sales team at each stage of the customer journey. In addition to this, I manage the resource centre for our sales team, to ensure they can get onboarded quickly. Also, I love working with my talented team members across our Product, Inventory and Data Partnerships teams to collaborate on go-to-market initiatives for new feature and partnership announcements, all with the goal of driving successful platform adoption.

How does your role impact the success of StackAdapt users?

The Product Marketing team works to guide StackAdapt users with resources that will enable them to succeed in their advertising strategies. For me, I focus on educating users on new features so that they can best understand the platform. For our self-serve users, I work closely with our Product team to craft in-platform walkthroughs and in-app messaging so that our users can have a fluid experience, whether they’re returning to the platform to work on a campaign, or using our features for the first time. At the end of the day, everything that I do as a product marketer is executed with the user’s success in mind; whether it is making complicated concepts easier to understand, and new features seem even more friendly at their first encounter.

What tools do you use to amplify your success?

Like many StackAdapters, I’m always reading countless articles, whitepapers and eBooks on sites like AdExchanger, AdProfs, Digiday, eMarketer and many others. After all, the AdTech industry is fast-paced, and if you don’t stay ahead with the rapid changes, you can miss out on a lot!

On the product marketing side, I love learning what the top PMMs are doing from events and content produced by the Product Marketing Alliance—a global community of 20,000+ product marketing managers.

At StackAdapt, we also have wonderful martech partners, such as Pendo and Highspot, and I enjoy attending their conferences to get access to expert sessions on topics such as A/B testing marketing content and fast-tracking customer onboarding. All of these resources help me expand my knowledge, helping me to be more successful in my role.

What trends in programmatic are you interested in? What trends in product marketing are you interested in? 

As online identity and targeting tactics are projected to change in the coming years, I’m excited by the recent contextual advertising advancements. While contextual advertising has been around since the beginning of programmatic, developments in machine learning algorithms have improved the scale, effectiveness and performance of this targeting method, making this an exciting area to watch.

While not a new marketing trend, I am interested in product positioning and how we can transform the perception of a product by altering its context. As consumers, we’re familiar with the sometimes overwhelming experience of wading through a sea of competitive choices. When companies can communicate a strong positioning for their products/features, their best-fit customers intuitively understand their value, helping them stand out in a crowded marketplace.

What is the most rewarding part of being a Product Marketer at StackAdapt?

Coming up on a year in the role at StackAdapt, one of my favourite aspects of being a member of the team, is that I get to collaborate with many departments and individuals in the company on our go-to-market strategy. Everyone here is so talented and has such unique skill sets, that it is almost impossible to not learn something new every day. As StackAdapt continues to make waves in adtech, I’m really excited for what the future holds for both us and the industry at large.

Interested in joining StackAdapt? Check out our careers.