AMA: GitHub Senior Director of Product Management, Julian Dunn on Product Management Vs Product Marketing
July 13 @ 10:00AM PST
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GitHub Senior Director of Product Management, Julian Dunn on Product Management Vs Product Marketing
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
I always start with roles & responsibilities. What is it that PM will be chiefly responsible for versus PMM? Starting with Pragmatic Institute's framework and agreeing to who will lead each activity is a good way to kick this off. Overall, I do tend to think of PMM as PM's single route to market.......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
This is a great question. I've transitioned from PM to PMM and back again, so I can give you my perspective on both. The biggest challenges for anyone moving into PM, whether that be from PMM or other roles, are the following: * deeply understanding the domain; * leading by influence; and ......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
As early as possible! I pull in product marketing as soon I have a good understanding of the problem statement and its benefits to customers. Typically the artifact we'll share at this point is a draft of a PR/FAQ. If you're not familiar with this term, it's a practice taken from Amazon, where th......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
This is a popular question and one that I've struggled with a lot in my years doing both PM and PMM. Most answers I've seen tend to weasel out of a strong point of view ("it depends!") but I am going to go out on a limb and firmly state that I believe product marketing should report into marketin......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
I think "share" is the right term to use here. I've heard marketing teams claim that only they represent the voice of the customer, which is obviously not true. There are many groups in a company that interact with customers and listen to their voices. It's a PM's eternal challenge to figure out ......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
I used to be very much on the side of "PMM should own pricing" but I will now caveat this with a couple considerations. First off, though, I think at a smaller company, say a startup where you're the only PMM, PMM should still own pricing. That's because there's both a strategic ("how should w......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
It depends on what your background is. If you have a background in traditional marketing, it's going to be easier to get into product marketing by learning both the domain and the product in-depth. The advantage of coming from marketing is that you already know what a demand generation organizati......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
In general, PM KPIs tend to be further down-funnel and PMM KPIs are further up-funnel. PM's KPIs are about utilization / adoption of products or features, including repeat usage ("stickiness" or "MAUs/DAUs"). PMM's KPIs are about clarity & effectiveness of messaging and positioning, which you can......Read More
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Julian Dunn
GitHub Senior Director of Product Management • July 13
As a PMM, I was always conducting my own wide-ranging research about competitors and market dynamics (competitive and market intelligence) and providing this to PM. This included reading a lot of analyst reports, both about our category and adjacent categories, meeting with industry analysts to c......Read More
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