Get answers from product marketing leaders
Nisha Goklaney
HubSpot Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, American Express, Sage • November 9
There are a host of good training options out there: 1. Sharebird - a great place to start. Here you can get real industry expertise and resources from folks in the field 2. Podcasts - Women in Product Marketing by Mary Sheehan (Sharebird Podcast), Product Marketing Insider are a couple of my favorites. 3. Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It" by April Dunford. 4. Another best practice I like to follow is actually spending time on other brand sites (example B2B sites like- Gong, Airtable, Monday.com, Snowflake, Zendesk, Drift, Quickbooks.com etc.) to understand how they position their products, how they showcase their value prop, jobs to be done etc. 5. PMM Alliance - They have a comprehensive set of courses, content and how to guides that I have found extremely useful 6. Also, Linkedin is a great resource. There are some incredible marketers and product marketers that focus on covering messaging, positioning, super worthwhile to follow.
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Jon Rooney
Unity Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • August 23
For new senior PMM hires (like Sr. Director/Director team leads), I think of 30-60-90 plans to follow a basic flow: assess (30 days), design (60 days), run (90 days). During the "assess" phase, a senior PMM has to listen, observe and learn as much as possible: meet the team and figure out the current state of how basic stuff (sales decks, product launches, campaign content/strategy, analyst relations) gets done. Learn the product cold, not just the demos but how to actually use it. Watch how teams (whether PMMs or PMs or Sales Engineers) demo the product - how consistent are those? How do customers react? How does our demo pitch compare to competitors? Same thing with sales pitches - how many homegrown/Frankenstein pitch decks are floating around? What seems to land and what doesn't? How are reps - particularly in a fast growing environments when new reps are joining all the time - getting enabled on the product? How are they grabbing assets when they need them? Go through the same onboarding as a new sales rep. And, once you have a little bit of grounding, do ridealongs with reps - even if it's just Zoom calls. Attend a QBR or two if you can. Watch demos/keynotes/etc from competitors to help you understand the landscape - how differentiated is everyone? Could you infer your company's positioning from the space left over from how competitors position or is the landscape pretty murky. Finally, understand the current marketing machine and how it works. How does content end up on the website and how/why does it change? What's the demand gen hand-off with sales and how is marketing being measured? Why do we invest indo certain events, how do they get executed and what do we hope to get out of them? Who defines campain themes? Who reviews and has to approve copy/content/press releases/analyst presentations? How are launches planned and executed? For the "design" phase, map out how PMM works with sales, product and the rest of marketing and lay out what should stay the same and what needs to change. Engage with all relevant stakeholders on what you think needs to change and why (particularly, how these changes will make their lives easier and help them meet their goals). This is the hardest part, no doubt, but if everything was operating perfectly they probably wouldn't have needed to bring you on in the first place. Ladder up these changes to the top level GTM goals (revenue growth, product usage/activation, net customer retention) and explain how these changes will help meet those goals. Then map it all out with everyone, making sure it's all as simple and straightforward as possible so that everyone will be ready ready to implement these changes. Finally, during the "run" phase, put it all in practice with a growth mindset of measure and iterate. Go in with the assumption that you didn't get everything right so be ready to tweak things - whether it's as simple as adding another reviewer for web copy updates or as major as who should be an analyst spokesperson for a major launch. Cover your own responsibilites but also stay close to team doing new things in new ways so you can both support them and get firsthand feedback on what's working and what's not. Synthesize that feedback, adjust and run again. Of course, in the midst of all of this in your first 90 days you'll have tasks and firedrills flying at you from all over the place - it's critical that you juggle both and don't lose sight of methodical assess-design-run work or else you'll end up as a reactive "short-order cook" rather than as a strategic partner to the other functions. This is an awful place for PMM to land and it doesn't really help the business or your team. Don't let that happen.
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Rekha Srivatsan
Salesforce Vice President Product Marketing • April 19
I love when candidates go above and beyond! I always do when I interview for my next role. A 30-60-90 is extremely helpful for the hiring manager to know how you prioritize and candidly, will also help you decide if the role is the right one for you. I'd almost always have a deck with my 30-60-90, SWOT of the product, the target persona analysis for any role you are applying for.
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I agree with this statement. Sometimes when I look at PMM resumes that say something like “Increased sales pipeline by 30%” or “Increased product adoption by 15%”, I’m often skeptical because how much credit can a PMM really take? Did you write all the content? Did you do all the work on campaigns, ads, paid performance, SEO, SEM, digital, video, webinars, and webpages? PMMs operate through influence, not authority. We’re the strategic center of marketing—defining the strategy, personas, messaging, and execution. That being said, let’s at least start with the stuff we can take credit for: * Personas - How well are the personas defined and how well does the marketing and sales org understand these personas? What research has been conducted? Which documents can we point to? * Messaging - Good messaging is highly subjective but the key here is ensuring all messaging has been vetted by sales, customers, and internal experts. Is the messaging easily consumed by other stakeholders like content marketers? * Sales enablement - If you’re B2B, PMMs are directly responsible for enabling the field on the market, competition, product positioning, messaging, pitches, and demos. Of course, this is all influenced pipeline but is the foundation there? If it’s not, you’ve got work to do. * Campaign strategy - PMMs should be shaping and directing the themes of campaigns throughout the year and educating the marketing org on why a certain kind of campaign is needed. Campaign runners are responsible for driving those campaigns in market. * Product launches - PMMs are often the quarterback for launches. How many launches can be accomplished per year? How organized are these launches? Are they reaching their target audience? Was the launch able to drive the expected amount of product adoption? * Analyst briefings & thought leadership - Just keeping analysts informed and up-to-date is critically important for the business. Spearheading a Gartner MQ is a ton of work. Did you develop thought leadership themes with the comms team? * Events - Supporting user conferences, tradeshows, and keynotes. How many field events did you support? There's a lot I missed. Some of the above can be measured quantitatively but most are qualitative. If you take a step back, I would say a PMM can tie themselves to the holistic movement of core KPIs quarter-over-quarter. If you’re doing your job right, you should be able to claim influence on sign-ups, activation, pipeline, and close rates QoQ.
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Jodi Innerfield
Salesforce Senior Director, Product Marketing Launch Strategy & Emerging Products • January 12
First--well done for having a post-mortem! It's really easy to just get caught up in the next thing that comes along, but post-mortems are super important! This is your time to reflect on the launch planning, the launch itself, and whatever happens next. Launch Planning Reflection - Get feedback from stakeholders involved in the planning. Did everyone have what they need to do their jobs? Was there adequate time to get everything done? Were the right people involved from the beginning or at the right time? This information should inform changes in your bill of materials or launch planning steps for the next launch. Launch Results - Since you want a post-mortem to happen relatively soon after the launch, you probably don't have too many KPIs to measure. But you can reflect on how launch day went--did everything go as planned? What happened that was unexpected you could better plan for next time? Were your launch-day KPIs hit? Next Steps - Post-mortems may help you identify what needs to happen next. For example, are you getting a specific question from sales or customers that you weren't prepared for? Maybe update your resources and FAQs to address questions that you didn't anticipate. What post-launch activities come next that are either on track or need to be adapted based on launch day? Sending out an anonymous survey ahead of the post-mortem ensures everyone gets their thoughts heard. Ask two questions: 1. What went well? 2. What should we do differently? Then, group answers by theme and by stage listed above. Use the actual post-mortem meeting to share the results and have people elaborate
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Erica Conti
Asana Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, PepsiCo, Nielsen, Wakefern Food Corp. • August 8
A product launch I worked on in 2022 didn't go as expected due to rapidly changing market conditions. We initially developed aspirational messaging, but realized it wouldn't resonate in this new environment where "doing more with less" was very top of mind for our target audience. We quickly needed to pivot our messaging across channels without delaying the launch. This experience taught me two lessons that still influence my product launches today: 1. Stay acutely aware of market dynamics: * Continuously monitor market trends * Keep a pulse on competitive activities * Regularly reassess your target customers' mindsets 2. Maintain flexibility and agility: * Be prepared to pivot if necessary * Have contingency plans in place * Prioritize launch timing over perfection For me, this experience reinforced the importance of balancing long-term planning with short-term responsiveness. It's crucial to have a solid launch strategy, but equally important to remain nimble and ready to adjust when the market shifts unexpectedly.
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Matt Hodges
Equals Head of Product Marketing • October 31
We’ve developed a few of our own frameworks over the years based on jobs-to-be-done. It’s an approach that runs counterintuitive to classic, persona-based marketing, and does so purposefully. Focusing on customer attributes really means focusing on what you want to sell, rather than what your customers actually need. Those customers come from a variety of backgrounds, industries, and verticals, but their one commonality is their motivation, the Job-to-be-Done. I had to fundamentally change my approach when I joined Intercom. For me, the easiest way to grok the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology was by watching Clay Christensen’s famous milkshake video and understanding what “job” people buy milkshakes for. You can read more about Jobs-to-be-Done on the Inside Intercom blog here: Focus on the Job, Not the Customer: https://blog.intercom.com/when-personas-fail-you/ And, here’s a recording of a talk and podcast I’ve given in the past about how we apply JTBD to our go-to-market strategy. How to market the Job-to-be-Done: https://blog.intercom.com/marketing-the-job-to-be-done How Jobs-to-be-Done Informs Intercom Marketing: https://blog.intercom.com/podcast-intercoms-go-to-market-strategy/ As we continue to grow, our products mature, and we learn more about the problems we’re trying to solve and for whom, we’re constantly adapting our frameworks. As an example, we’ve recently created an internal document called the “Solution Guide” for each of the solutions we take to market. The guide answers the following questions: Foundations * What problem are people looking to find a solution for? * What will a solution to this problem improve for them? * Who is looking for it? * What are the keywords they are using to search for it? Solution Positioning & Messaging * What do we call the solution we provide for this problem? * Why would someone be interested in Intercom’s solution? * Which Intercom products are required to solve this problem? * How does Intercom solve this problem? * Which must-have features for this problem does Intercom have? * Why would someone want to use Intercom to solve this problem? * Who is successfully using Intercom to solve this problem? In addition, as we think about how to best position ourselves against alternative solutions (products) to the problems we solve, we make use of the 4 Forces model. You can learn more about that and our approach to comparative marketing here: The right way to challenge your competitors - Inside Intercom: https://blog.intercom.com/comparative-marketing/ Of course, there are many other, more established frameworks available to you. One thing I have heard good things about is Pragmatic Marketing (https://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/). My advice would find a framework that feels good and adapt it to your business because everyone is different. :)
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Patty Medberry
Infor Senior Director, Product Marketing | Formerly Microsoft • July 27
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.
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Carrie Zhang
Square Product Lead • November 16
I see 3 product marketing career paths ways: 1. Continue down the product marketing career path. At some point, you will be capped at a VP or Director of product marketing role 2. Get broader channel marketing experience (the most important one being paid marketing) and become a CMO somewhere. Choose this path if Marketing is your ultimate passion 3. Learn more about product management and other business fundamentals and become a General Manager/ CEO leading a line of business. Choose this path if you love being a P&L owner, and all the glory and stress that comes with it Which path you choose very much depends on what you are interested in and what you are good at.
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Victoria Chernova
OpenAI Product Marketing • December 7
The first step is creating a tiering system so you can prioritize features & products being released. Variables could be based on customer impact (good and bad—think change management), business priorities, revenue potential, brand/awareness potential, etc. For Tier 1 & 2 products, we’ve built out a workback schedule in Asana with dates. Typically this process starts 3-4 months before the agreed upon launch date. I would think through your workback schedule for a few key deliverables owned by PMM, and then each deliverable by channel. Key PMM deliverables are: 1. GTM strategy; 2. Customer journey & bill of materials (or assets); 3. Positioning You need these to do anything else. Use your GTM strategy deck for roadshows with cross-functional partners to drive alignment. Use your draft customer journey in brainstorm sessions with channel and content owners to build out your bill of materials and get their buy-in. And your positioning serves as the blueprint for all the materials created for your launch.
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