Translating Panzura’s “What” to “Why” Through Product Hierarchy, Positioning and Messaging

Panzura, a hybrid cloud data management platform, gives enterprise companies better security, visibility and control over their data. Panzura helps companies know where their data is, how it’s growing, who is accessing it, how secure it is and how it’s being used.

As one of the fastest growing scaleups in the world, Panzura needed a stronger product marketing foundation to equip their sales team for long-term success. 

Problem

Panzura came to us to answer four main questions:

• What is our top-level positioning? In other words, why would someone purchase our products?
• What are the high-level categories for our products, especially since we have so many product features?
• How do we describe each product in a clear and consistent way so that our internal teams think and talk about the products the same way?
• How do we articulate the benefit of each product, rather than product features?

Together, we answered these questions through collaborative workshops and working sessions to create foundational and scalable positioning.

The Innovatemap team that partnered with Panzura included:

• Tina Hafer (Executive Partner, Product Marketing & Business Ops)
• Leanna Adeola (Principal, Product Marketing & Brand)
• Lauren Shomaker (Product Marketer)

Solution

To give Panzura the strong foundation they needed, we clarified positioning at the company-level and product-level. We also developed clear and compelling product feature messaging. 

Company Positioning 

We created the foundation for Panzura’s positioning and messaging to tell the world who they are and what they do. 

“Panzura is a scaleup with in-house product talent that understands product marketing and their product well,” Leanna said. “But their full-time job is not to do that. We carved out time to help them think through the words to describe Panzura’s products and their value.” 

We acted as a close strategic partner and built the foundation so their team could polish and activate. As an objective partner we helped identify the inconsistencies in their existing messaging — which Panzura struggled to see on their own because they were too close to it. 

“Since so many of our conversations were around feature messaging, it gave Panzura’s team the opportunity to align on their product roadmap,” Leanna said. 

To activate, Panzura translated foundational words into headline and body copy on their site, messaging in social assets and sales enablement materials.

Product Hierarchy

After we aligned on Panzura’s high-level company positioning, we delved deeper into their offerings. 

With 25 years in the business, Panzura is an established company. “They have a lot of products, and those products do a lot of different things,” Leanna explained. “We helped them organize all their products into distinct product families.”

Established product families clarify Panzura’s existing offerings for their customers, and they equip Panzura to add new products with effective messaging as they scale. 

Product Positioning

Once we established the product hierarchy, we developed compelling positioning and messaging for Panzura’s products that will scale with the company. 

“We had conversations about how Panzura’s products will change over time and how the messaging should change alongside them,” Leanna explained. “Sure, the product does one thing now, but what will it do in three months? How do we talk about it then?”

Additionally, we helped them translate the jargon of their features into words that matter to their audience. This was especially important since Panzura’s product is complex, and the average person doesn’t understand how it works. 

“Instead of asking ‘what does this do?’ we asked ‘why does that matter to your audience and what value does it add for them?’” Leanna said. 

Rather than only identifying what the product does, we clarified why the product matters to Panzura’s audience. Product marketing must lead with stories, not features. Now, Panzura’s messaging connects the dots for their buyers, ensuring they understand the value of the product — not just what it does. 

Takeaways

Panzura was a great partner because they deeply understood the value of what we do. We helped accelerate growth as their strategic partner, building foundational elements of Panzura’s product marketing strategy that will scale with them.

Their team knew exactly what outcomes they needed to achieve and were strategically aligned on their business goals. Together, we created the tools needed to reach their goals. 

We were able to work fast because they trusted our expertise in product, were exceptionally transparent about their goals and metrics, and included us with their key stakeholders. From day one, the Panzura team was clear about the problem they needed us to solve, and they trusted us to solve it the right way.

With three-year revenue growth of 485%, Panzura joined the 2022 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies in the US.

Find out how we can accelerate your growth and equip your sales team for success. 

See our work with Panzura