Product Marketing Manager - Start-Ups at Microsoft

Africa Transformation Office (ATO) Background

• Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Africa is one of the best places on the planet to bring our mission to life. It is home to 1.3B people and 54 countries.
• The talent in Africa reflects a tremendously rich and diverse potential that can truly impact the world over the next few decades.
• Being the youngest continent in the world with a median age of just 19.5 years, Africa is contributing to +12M youth being added to the global labor force every year. By 2040, half of the world's young people will live in Africa.
• Africa's growth is propelled by being a mobile first continent which is fueling connectivity, innovation, and scalability.
• Our aspiration is to transform Africa to a Cloud-first, Digital-first continent enabling a thriving digital economy across Africa while reinventing Microsoft's digital assets and capabilities to serve the young continent's transformation needs. With that in mind was the establishment of new team; the Africa Transformation Office (ATO), which will be established and chartered with the following: 
  • Build strategic, unconventional partnerships with key governments, institutions and enterprises to enable and accelerate digital economy across the African continent.
  • Develop digital marketing engines to enable and accelerate Startups and SMBs.
  • Plan and land infrastructure enablers and game changers in the continent.
  • Enable Africa as a Foreign Direct Investment destination supported by expanding our technologies for MNCs across key industries.
  • Manage the 4Afrika initiative and further integrate it to key company programs and engines to amplify its impact.
  • Foster digital skilling and job creation to maximize the economic opportunity for the African youth and workforce.

Role Overview
Own and Land Your Propositions:

• Execute on Microsoft ATO Startup Program by:
• Promoting programmatic client investments and competitive commercial offerings
• Engage in and manage co-marketing digital campaigns with Africa ‘s ost promising Starts Up and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)
• Land Microsoft Developer cloud marketing
• Orchestrate community marketing events
• Plan and execute activity that promotes Azure services to drive revenue growth; lead key product / services moments / activities / releases
• Maintain product knowledge and evangelize the product internally and externally to press, enthusiasts, influencers, sales (for pre-sales and consumption driving) customer and partner scenarios
• Act as the voice of the field by ensuring timely updates/feedback to corporate on Azure Priority execution and performance in Area / Subsidiary.

 Go To Market Planning:

• Own the local product marketing strategy in accordance with growth and bridge models. Use corporate guidance to align Azure Priorities and Programs & Investments
• Orchestrate the creation of local Azure GTM plans and investment decisions. Lead targeting for local market-owned activities, partner with segment/channel teams to prioritize investment decisions for non-product-marketing owned activities.
• Develop competitive strategies to drive target market share gains. Respond to new market, product, strategy dynamics.

 Business Outcomes:

• Monitor and understand Azure Priority Performance; Orchestrate execution to deliver on business metrics related to the Rhythm of Connections (ROC) and course correct the GTM plans with the business owners to deliver results.
• Actively lead and engage with all stakeholders across the subsidiary for One Microsoft orchestration across sales, partner, marketing, and service
• Determine key insights and asks to accelerate adoption of Azure services, qualify inhibitors (with rcarecommendations) to escalate to subsidiary LT and corporate
• Best Practice identification and sharing across the Area / Subsidiaries and with corporate to exponentially sale successful performance.

Responsibilities
As the Product Marketing Manager, you will be a key member of the Africa Transformation Offcie Starts Up team with the below responsibilities:

• promote programmatic client investments and competitive commercial offerings
• engage in and manage co-marketing digital campaigns with Africa’s largest Start Ups and ISVs
• Land Microsoft Developer cloud marketing (VScode, GitHub, Azure)
• Orchestrate community marketing events online and onsite.
•  The Azure Product Marketing Manager (PMM) is responsible for leading the Azure Go-To-Market strategy for Azure solutions to deliver customer and partner success resulting in revenue growth and increased market shares within their aligned priorities.
• You must develop strong partnerships across marketing, Microsoft partners, and sales to lead and execute the priorities. The Azure PMM leads the field business for Azure and has overall responsibilities for enabling success by:
• Lead the Azure business in alignment with other business owners;
• Empower Customers to Migrate their infrastructure to the cloud and enable them to build skills and govern their cloud journey;
• Build and land growth plans to win and maximize the local market opportunity, based on the business priorities;
• Drive business outcomes by executing local Azure Go-To-Market plan to exceed business targets;
• Provide input on local marketing plan development by providing business objectives to our Central Marketing Organization
• Build a comprehensive event plan, including locally required events, for the fiscal year to harmonize with our Central Marketing Organization
• The PMM is required to have a strong understanding of their solution area and a good understanding of customer solutions and market ecosystem. This role represents the relevant Azure solutions, within the ATO organisation and subsidiary and is the subject matter expert as well as the market facing spokesperson. In addition, they must be able to articulate the local competitive landscape and develop local compete strategies and product differentiation by leveraging corporate and local research, partner insights and customer feedback.

Qualifications
Required / Minimum Qualifications:

• 5 years related experience
• Startup ecosystem experience
• Evangelist and subject matter expert for product
• Deep customer focus and understanding
• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent communicator
• Independent thinker
• Self-starter
• Track record of strong influencing and stakeholder management skills

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree (B.Sc. / B.A.) required, M.Sc / MBA a plus, relevant fields of study include Marketing, Business, Computer Science and/or equivalent experience.