As a first PMM hire it's important to prioritize needs and deliverables based on the overall goals and objectives of the company. Do “discovery” similar to how you would approach a product launch – get up to speed on the business, the competitive landscape, the customer, and the product. This will help you understand the biggest opportunity areas and align your efforts with the company’s goals to maximize impact. In addition to listening & learning from your stakeholders its also important to educate your partners on the role of PMM, PMM’s superpowers, and the metrics you are accountable for. This will provide your peers with context on how to partner with you and give you a chance to share back the projects you’ll be prioritizing and gather feedback on that plan to ensure you are working on the most impactful things.

This is probably one of the toughest problems we face as marketers. A lot of times, teams will look at a combination of leading quantitative indicators (clicks, conversions, time spent, etc.) and qualitative signals (from buyer interviews, listening to sales calls, etc.), to take a best guess at what’s working and what’s not. There are lots of problems with this. It’s tough to isolate messaging as the primary driver of these results, and assign quantifiable measures that will clearly indicate improvement if you make changes. Qual feedback takes a lot of time to gather, especially if you want to validate your messaging across a number of buyer personas. A/B testing can help, but you and your GTM team need to be pretty careful not to change anything else (including upper-funnel stuff like ad copy and targeting) that might impact results, which can be paralyzing. Worst of all, while you’re doing all of this, you’re already in-market: the train has left the station and you’re losing opportunity if you’re not sure your message is connecting. Instead, my recommendation is to validate your messaging before you go to market. (I won’t do too much self-promotion here, but it just so happens we make a Message Testing solution at Momentive, and it’s one of the products we leverage the most internally.) With a message testing solution, you can get a number of messages in front of your target audience — we tend to target a broad array of business buyers — and get real data on which messages resonate across a attributes like overall appeal, uniqueness, and, importantly, desire to learn more (as well as segmentation across buyers if you like). This is the kind of thing that, a few years ago, you’d probably need to engage a research agency to run, but modern survey-based tools like ours have purpose-built methodologies built-in, and you can get a clear signal on your key messages in just a day or two. We ran one of these recently to test new headline messaging for our Momentive homepage and it paid off in spades. It validated a messaging direction with our target buyers that was different than what internal leadership was advocating for — so we had some data to bring to the table justifying our positioning (see another of my AMA responses on gaining XF alignment on positioning). If we hadn’t tested, there was a strong risk of going to market with a losing message on one of our most important properties. Instead, we were able to go live on Day 1 with a message that we already know will resonate. In fact, two of our test messages performed strongly, so we were able to run an in-market A/B test to find a winner without really risking any traffic to a poor performer. tl;dr: I recommend using a survey-based solution to test your messaging before you go to market. You’ll get quantifiable information about what works and what doesn’t, aid internal buy-in, and gain a lot of launch day confidence. You will influence other performance KPIs driven by the GTM team, but PMM’s biggest responsibility is ensuring you have messaging that resonates with target buyers.

I think PMM orgs go through phases. When I started in this role we were strictly by product, but our portfolio quickly became too complicated. We moved to more of a segment or sub-portfolio model. At the same time, the rest of the organizations' PMM teams were sub-dividing by objective. In order to match with the rest of that org we had 'ambassadors' to the objective-based teams. Given that PMM stakeholders are typically PM and Sales, I think the best approach is to best align your PMMs with the stakeholder objectives. In most organizations that's by product line or segment.

An effective 30-60-90 will help you make progress across 3 pillars: * What is your point of view on the company's current market standing? Where are there future opportunities? * How do you define and establish the PMM function? * How do you create scalable, repeatable processes for GTM success? The first 30 days are all about discovery. It's about deeply understanding the business, marketing fundamentals, and product. 1. What are my company's business priorities? Why? What are some of the KPIs that our company cares about? 2. What market does my company play in? Who else competes in that space? 3. Who are our customers? What are their jobs to be done? Not only should you be reading up on market reports, you should take the time to set up interviews (with both existing customers as well as churned). 4. What does our product do? How does it work? Why does it matter for our customers (i.e. what value does it deliver)? 5. What is our current GTM motion? What has worked well to date? What hasn't worked as well? Take the time to meet with your cross-functional stakeholders in sales, sales enablement, product, and the extended marketing team to understand their challenges and priorities. By the end of the first 60 days, you can use all of that investigative work to codify your roles & responsibilities, cross-functional processes, and methods for communicating with stakeholders. You can draft up a roadmap for key initiatives (launches, campaigns, collateral refreshes, etc.) to address gaps in your GTM, and get started on some of the urgent and important ones. At the end of the first quarter, you should have a comfortable grasp on what you need to do to take your product to market, who you should work with, and how to execute on your key initiatives. You'll also have some learnings from the initiatives you've embarked on in month 2 (for example, let's say you wanted to start the company's first-ever product release blog -- what did you learn from that, how would you do it better for the future?). The exact initiatives that you choose to undertake will totally depend on the priorities of the business and stakeholder input. While I've given some general advice above, the most important thing is to be adaptable! Check in at the end of the month (with yourself and your stakeholders) -- ask if anything should be adjusted, and re/de-prioritized based on what you've learned.

I need to unpack this in therapy but for some not-yet-fully-explored reason, I hate messaging houses and marchitecture like that. Perhaps it feels like it's forcing structure. Perhaps it feels too permanent and untouchable (because it's housed??). Not sure. But I do concede that they can be useful and are helpful for many, many people. So, for me, if I'm trying to get internal buy-in on messaging, I try to keep it as simple, concise, and as contextual as possible. * Target audience, * value prop, * 3 benefit or RTB pillars, * and corresponding proof points (like a product or feature). Then, I take that and set it in context to provide positioning guidance and build a larger, more interesting narrative. * What's happening out there in the market and why are we talking about this? What's the challenge our audience is facing in this market? * Then insert our claim we just worked on. * Include validation (customer quotes, product metrics, analyst reports, etc.). * And articulate your CTA - inspire your audience and give them a call to arms.

Successful product marketing, even outside of launches, requires close collaboration with the product management team. I encourage the PM team to consider product marketing as part of their team. Attending their staff meetings, business/planning meetings, and regular sync-ups are a must to understand and execute on the business. Choosing which features and products to focus on is a joint effort between the two groups. PMMs work with the PMs to understand what problem these new capabilities will solve or the opportunity this brings to customers. We also work with them to understand feature revenue potential, target market, etc. At the same time, PMMs are looking at our bigger story to the market and how these capabilities support that. All this helps us decide what to focus on…. We have two standard messaging templates (one long, one short) that include who we are targeting, the problem we are addressing, customer benefits, and key proof points. The longer version will include competitive information, the narrative, etc.

I believe it's important to start out with how product marketing is the same across a self-serve/product-led motion and a sales-led motion. In my opinion, the core pillars of the product marketing responsibilities remain: * Target audience and buyer definition * Positioning and messaging * Pricing and packaging * Product narrative and storytelling * Product and feature launches * and so on... With either motion, you have to be an expert in your product, customer, and market. Where the function starts to differ is how you design your GTM strategy. What is the main mechanism for bringing your product and story to market and then accelerating a customer through their adoption journey? Is it via a sales team, marketing-led, product-led, or a combination of all three? In my experience, most companies use a combination of product, marketing, and sales-led approaches for different parts of the customer life-cycle, different types of audiences or maturity of company/product. Here are a few ways the product marketing function may differ with each type of motion: * The team(s) you enable with the customer, product, and market knowledge. In a sales-led motion, you are enabling a sales or demand gen team with the buyer knowledge, messaging, sales collateral, etc. so they can successfully describe the value to a customer and guide them to purchase. In a self-serve motion, you're partnering with your growth, content, or support team to design, what I like to call, an "automated sales journey" where an end-user can move through the same milestones without needing human touch. * Metrics you may be responsible for. If you work on a product with a sales-led GTM motion, you may focus on # of leads, revenue, close-rates, or effectiveness of the sales-enablement assets you create. You may look at traffic, brand awareness, or acquisition metrics in a marketing-led motion. Product-led (or self-serve) will focus on the entire funnel of product adoption metrics from acquisition, activation, retention, and referral. The focus is on how efficiently you move a user or customer through these stages. * Your target audience: Typically, in a self-serve or PLG motion, your target audience may look more like a consumer in the B2C world. They have the freedom to search for, select, and purchase software without needing a ton of oversight or permission. Your goal is to make this process as frictionless as possible and enable the user to spread the product organically, using "bottoms-up" motion. If the product you're selling is intended for larger teams, is more complex, or has a long sales cycle, you're likely going to have a "tops-down" motion and be focusing on an executive, C-level buyer, or multiple buyers. I typically recommend teams focus on product-led growth first. Make your product as intuitive and frictionless as possible, encourage viral sharing mechanisms, and product hooks that keep users returning. Add marketing-led or sales-led motions to supplement or accelerate your growth as you mature.

As with any role, growing into "next level" requires two things: 1/ An understanding of what is the value provided to the organization by an individual at the next level 2/ Identifying and developing the right skillsets to provide that value. For example: Next level from a Senior PMM in a startup to mid-size company will require you to influence GTM direction (with deep market understanding), collaborate cross functionally (to drive results across teams), and improve full-funnel expertise (from top-of-funnel awareness to product adoption and retention strategies). Whereas the same next level from a senior PMM in a large organization might be required to manage more products in their portfolio or start to manage people. If we were to generalize, there are couple of skills that are common across these situations in general. For example, if you want to propel your career into a Director of Product Marketing role you need to become: 1/ Strategic thinker: Cultivate the ability to see the big picture. Start to understand deeply your market trends, competition, and company's overall goals. Translate this understanding into building narratives that align with broader company strategy – not just individual product needs. 2/ Data-driven decision maker: The closer you can tie GTM and marketing strategies directly to business and revenue metrics, the better. Back up your vision with the cold, hard numbers. And lastly, learn to tell stories about your strategies with data across leadership in different functions. 3/ Collaborative Leader: You will only maximize your impact and influence by working with other functions. For every strategy you develop, start to question how you can 10x the impact by working with other teams. Practice communicating with empathy, bring them into your process early, and share goals with them to build trust. 4/ Team multiplier: The most important tenet is to shift away from pure task execution and towards adding value. Learn to delegate strategically and if possible start to mentor talent early. Lastly, start to build a clear goal for your career. The next step is only a stepping stone. Is your path leading you to a VP of Product Marketing role, CMO, shifting into Product Management, or starting your own firm. Work backwards from there to build the right skills and path.

Top questions depend a bit on the role since I always try to make sure each question is evaluating a specific competency tied to that job. (More on this below). That being said - here are a few questions I find useful a lot of time when hiring PMMs. * What can product marketing contribute to an organization? of What's the role of product marketing? Tells me about how they view product marketing's role and value and their general understanding of the role. I'm listening to see if them talk about GTM strategy, roadmap, and storytelling. This is particularly helpful for candidates that might be newer to the PMM role. * If I asked you to put together Messaging and Positioning for a new product today, what would your process look like? Messaging and positioning is a core PMM function. I can generally learn more about their level of experience, how structured or unstructured they are, and how data and research-oriented they tend to be based on their answer. * What kind of teams and managers enable you to do your best work and can you share an example? I want to make sure that the candidate we choose is going to thrive, so understanding what type of teams and managers enable them to be successful is important to me. * I tend to look for candidates that have a learning mindset and can self-reflect. To evaluate this, I might actually ask them to reflect on how the interview went or a how the presentation went towards the end of the interview time block. This way I can see if they are aware of certain gaps and how they "show their cards", which is a company value. In my opinion, the most useful and "top" questions are the ones that not only tell you more about the candidate but also whether or not they have the skills required for the particular role you are hiring. In order to do this, you need to have a clear idea of what the most important competencies are and where there is room for the candidate to learn on the job. I recommend putting together a matrix on what is required or nice to have for the role. Then define what "good" looks like so you are consistent, and identify a question that will help you evaluate that element. It sounds like extra work, but it's pretty quick, will probably save you time later, and will help enable a more consistent candidate experience.

This is a big question so bear with the long answer! If you are on the research team, product team, or product marketing team, it is your job to synthesize your research. And, it’s even better if you can consolidate it with, or tie it to, another team’s complementary work (this can be a cross-functional and collaborative effort). I’ll answer your question two parts, since you’ll need to do both of these things: Formatting: Tactically speaking, my personal style is to make a visual deck on the topic of the research findings. Since the research I usually do is tied to an outcome (e.g., developing new corporate messaging and positioning, determining our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), updating our pricing and packaging strategy, naming products), the deck includes: * Overview and goals * Project plan, methodology, key deliverables (list), rollout plan * The research insights * A single slide executive summary * A slide for each finding, along with visuals of the data (graphs, charts, word clouds, etc.) * Key deliverables (the actual deliverables) * Recommendations and next steps The work that lies ahead of you is to identify the patterns and insights across all the channels through which you mentioned you’re collecting information (Salesforce, Slack, surveys, spreadsheets) and then to distill the insights holistically, citing the supporting sources (I’d personally do this in a slide). Then, I’d recommend packaging up your work into a tangible deliverable—like a quarterly “Voice of the Customer Report” and sharing it internally. Which brings me to my next point… Sharing internally: I’ve stressed the importance of overcommunication in all of my previous AMAs. One of my favorite expressions is “repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer.” Communicate your work always and often. Don’t assume people know what you’re working on, or that they’ll simply accept it without having had a chance to share their feedback. * Before you release your quarterly report * Bring your stakeholders along for the journey, especially for your first quarterly report. Research cannot be done in a silo, and it’s difficult to properly adopt at a company level if not everybody feels like they can trust the insights/methodology/sources/data. If you’re releasing a report about customer feedback, make sure that your customer-facing teams are 100% aligned with your approach. * Set regular check-ins and milestones with key stakeholders so they know what to expect from you, and what you’ll need their help (or buy-in) on. Make sure to communicate what you’re planning to deliver, along with what level of input you’d like from them at the various stages. * After you release your quarterly report * Share it in central places: * Announce it in your key company channels (you mentioned you use Slack - it might even be appropriate to share it in #general). * Make the link easy to find—leverage whatever tech tools you have to do this (e.g., create a go/link, a Guru card, an intranet page, pin it to relevant Slack channels). * Print it out and put it in employee lounge areas. This may feel excessive, but how your company listens and incorporates customer feedback should really be required reading for almost all teams so why not make a hard copy that’s easy to pick up. * Reference it often: * Roadshow it across teams in the company, starting with those who should be referencing it on a regular basis. * Get your leadership team to amplify it—everywhere (town halls, all hands, internal emails, etc.) * At a much smaller company, information sharing is easier because everyone knows what everyone else is working on. If you can all fit in one room or on one video call, you can probably just do some of these things. If you’re at a mid-sized or larger company, you’ll need to put in the effort to share (overcommunicate) your work. Finally, you mentioned needing to do this on an ongoing basis. Each deck/synthesis project is a huge amount of work. The deck can be a living document, but what will likely be significantly more actionable for you and your stakeholders is to commit to a cadence to update it. You could release it internally as a monthly or quarterly “report,” which would give you a timeline to ensure it’s updated with the freshest insights, and give others a reliable sense of when to expect them.