Transitioning to Vertical Go-to-Market

MobileIron makes software for business users of mobile phones. They handle corporate issued phones, BYOD, and rugged devices (non-consumer devices at places like Target.) They do 3 things: 1. Managing the device location and apps used for business 2. Security to prevent viruses and attacks like phishing 3. Identity to use create a central login for all apps, similar to what Okta does for computers. 

MobileIron looks at the world in two buckets: 1. knowledge workers who spend their time in office environments, and 2. Frontline Workers (FLW,) which includes everyone else like nurses, truck drivers, and retail workers. MobileIron had historically sold to the knowledge worker segment, but that business had become saturated, and growth was slowing. They viewed Frontline Workers as the future of the company’s growth. I was brought in to manage product marketing for Frontline Workers.

I began by analyzing MobileIron’s efforts to date in the FLW segment. They were not particularly successful, and several competitors had dominant market share. The reasons were obvious. MobileIron had a one size fits all Go-To-Market strategy for Frontline Workers. They were targeting Nurses and Truck drivers with exactly the same methodology, despite the fact that the use cases, buyer personas, and channels could not be more different.

I made the decision that to be successful in the FLW segment, MobileIron needed to go market vertically. This is challenging for small and medium businesses because there is often not the funding or resources to staff vertically dedicated sales and marketing. I began by doing an audit to determine which verticals had the most opportunity and best fit. This starts by looking at where the company had been successful historically without even trying (which is directional of product/market fit.) I looked the channel relationships because channel partners are essential to a vertical play and did competitive research to see where MobileIron could compete with feature functionality. I combined this with market TAM (total available market) and share to identify the best opportunity.

Three verticals bubbled up from this process: Healthcare, Retail, and Transportation. I created a yearlong GTM plan with the strategy of using Q1 and Q2 to launch into the first vertical and create a programmatic process, and then attack subsequent verticals in Q3 and Q4 repeating the process created. Due to a mix of product, channel, and sales traction, Healthcare was the most compelling vertical to begin with. 

I built messaging, collateral, sales training, and scheduled demand generation events like webinars. I reached out to MobileIron’s partners like Verizon and ATT, who had dedicated Healthcare sales marketing staff, to leverage their existing relationships at potential customers. I organized joint marketing events and webinars where we shared leads. I launched the healthcare vertical campaign in March of 2020.

Due to luck (good or bad depending upon viewpoint) the same month I launched the Healthcare campaign was the month that COVID hit the United States. Healthcare quickly became the only viable market, and positioning around Healthcare first responders was a strong message. For similar reasons, the plan to attack Retail and Transportation in the latter half of the year became unappealing. COVID had decimated both Retail and Transportation.

I created dashboards to track the program success in real time, which documented top of funnel MQLS, pipeline, campaign results, and new ARR generated by the program. Over the course of 2020, Healthcare went from being the 8th biggest revenue generator by vertical, to the 2nd largest. I would like to attribute all of this success to me work, but to be fair I think it was a mix of both my efforts and COVID market conditions.

 Lessons Learned

• Do your homework. Take the time to research which vertical makes the best business sense.
• Don’t try to boil the ocean. Pick one vertical to start with.
• Leverage internal resources. There are usually co-workers with expertise in the target vertical who can help.
• Once you work out the process of going vertical in the first segment, rinse and repeat with subsequent verticals.
• Don’t expect extra resources or funding. Be ready to beg, borrow, and steal.
• Expect to make fast changes when market conditions fluctuate.
• Data is king. Track results in a dashboard.