Interview with Collette Johnson, Product Marketing Specialist at Redgate Software

1. Collette Johnson, Product Marketing Specialist at Redgate Software, serves as the key player in the organization's marketing success. She is known for always delivering the highest standards of work for the benefit of the companies she works for. MEDIA 7: Congratulations on being listed as one of the 'Top 100 Product Marketing Influencers 2020'! What inspired you to get into marketing? COLLETTE JOHNSON: For me, it was just about the customer. Very early in my career, I realized that giving organizations the opportunity to embrace new technology to drive their success excited me, and that was what inspired me to pursue a career in marketing. I'm really passionate about understanding how to engage people, learning what messages and narratives help them make decisions, and how I enable sales to succeed through the material we produce. I thoroughly enjoy the learning you get in marketing and how everything you do is different when you test and repeat the best result for customers. M7: What are the factors that made you join Redgate Software? Please take us through your journey. CJ: The biggest factor for me in joining Redgate software was the value they put on marketing and how instrumental it is in the organization's success. I joined the organization in an exciting growth phase, which in product marketing brings lots of exciting challenges in terms of strategic vision, adjusting messaging, understanding the importance of new people and the complex interactions between key stakeholders and understanding the changing needs. with our customers. So far, I have been working on our data protection and confidentiality offerings and feel that the impact we have made on our clients with repositioning has been transforming into individuals in their roles and the wider organization. This year I will be working with our monitoring team and it brings with it a whole new challenge that I am really looking forward to embracing. The most important thing about Redgate is that every day is different and we talk to our customers on a daily basis, which is extremely empowering in marketing, and I think it provides excellent and powerful product marketing. M7: What is your approach to market research, both customer and competitor focused? CJ: Great market research is the key, and something I think is what makes excellent marketers. For me in both customer and competitor, it is to ensure a mix of formal and informal insights from across the market, it can be customers, important opinion leaders, analysts. It also ensures that you stay engaged in these areas often - every week I put an afternoon aside to update on competitor research (I also have active searches when competitors are mentioned in PR etc. To ensure I have the least intelligence to when I may need to respond to strengthen our offer). In addition, I talk to our customers every week to ensure that we have continuously updated insights. Recently, I have implemented a digital mural for sale, marketing and product for input insight, which

2. they get, which we review weekly and decide, which qualifies for further study - it is an excellent tool for subtle changes in the market or to see patterns, so we can act quickly to get benefits for the company. M7: What marketing strategies do you hope to implement in 2021, and why? CJ: What I look forward to most is looking at the complex decision-making processes in the company and understanding how to succeed these organizations. I enjoy understanding what organizations need, but making sure that the voices of key stakeholders are heard and reflected in the marketing I produce to ensure the greatest possible success with the product portfolio I work on. This then needs to be translated across the entire organization to ensure understanding and for us to ensure success with these groups and that is something I really enjoy and the initial feedback on these ideas is the key to ensuring long term strategic success. M7: You also have various responsibilities such as being a mentor, educating yourself in the business sector and participating in podcasts such as. Product Marketing Life. How do you balance work and other similar obligations? CJ: For me, these commitments are the key to helping people embrace product marketing careers and understand what the job entails, and I feel like it's important as an influencer in this space not just to educate people who move to this space, but also to share ideas. with organizations to create growth and awareness of the importance of product marketing. In addition to my commitments around education and awareness, I enjoy taking time off the screen. I think it is important to ensure balance and that it does not run dry. I have disabled my devices so I can not access them after a certain time at night so they do not alert me and return me to a work area in my head. If it's an emergency, people know how to stay away from emails and get away, etc. I like to do creative activities that guarantee a digital break; this is also where I get my best ideas and thoughts from. Most of the time you find me in my sewing room, sewing sticks, outside with nature to run to escape, or in the kitchen relaxing and creating something very tasty (mostly with a lot of cheese). M7: What is the marketing mantra you swear by? CJ: Why does the customer worry? It's extremely important to me - all I do in my role is give the client power, so every day I look at the work I do and wonder how it helped them, why would they be interested in that work, i do how they will benefit. It's so easy in the middle of project work to forget why you're doing it and that you're the customer's voice and to remember that I think you are lifting the bar and the result of the work you are producing. M7: Your advice for young women considering a career in marketing?

3. CJ: Never give up. Marketing is a very competitive space and it can be difficult to get into. The first thing I would recommend is that you find a mentor who helps you explore the different areas of marketing and supports you in gaining experience and understanding; Organizations like the Product Marketing Alliance have a mentoring program that I participate in, and it's a good step to help start your career. The second tip is to do your research - look at the different roles and types of organizations and understand what excites you. I really enjoy strategy and positioning in line with very technical issues and therefore B2B technology was a good choice for me, understanding the different types of roles, customers and market segments is really important. ABOUT REDGATE SOFTWARE Redgate manufactures ingeniously simple software used by more than 800,000 IT professionals worldwide and is the leading provider of Microsoft SQL Server tools. Redgate's philosophy is to design reliable and very useful tools that gracefully solve the problems that database developers and administrators face every day and help them adopt compatible DevOps database. In addition to streamlining database development and preventing the database from becoming a bottleneck, this helps organizations implement data protection by design and by default. As a result, more than 100,000 companies use Redgate tools, including 91% of Fortune 100.