AMA: Adobe Head of Product Marketing (APAC), Jeremy Wood on Building a Product Marketing Team

This is a great and highly relatable question as I've been a product marketer both at HQ (central) as well as in the region and this has happened frequently! As a 'central' product marketing team rolling out a product or solution in to the regions I think the first thing thats really important is to value the expertise of the regional PMM's. One of the core responsibilities of these teams is their regional market knowledge and expertise! They know the market best and also know what solutions/pro ...Read More

Great question and to be honest in 25+ years in product marketing, I'm not sure I've fully cracked the 'measurement' topic in general! That being said what I attempt to do is two things. 1) Try to 'attach' ourselves to the key business KPI's i.e Revenue, Won Deals, ACV, Time to Close etc. PMM contributes in some way to all of those so it's important to ensure your plans and your activities/.initiatives correspond with those core business objectives somehow. A good example of this might be the pr ...Read More

Probably an obvious answer but for me it's always started with the talent..people people people. Poor hires have always plauged folks and its very hard to translate that into high performing teams. Spend the time defining exactly what you need and the right fit of PMM that will be able to deliver on your expectations. Sometimes you're forced to make compromises (levels, salary, backgrounds, locations etc) but try to maintain a core set of skills and capabilities that will be the foundation of th ...Read More

I have always ensured that the alignment and the size/scale (or at least the requested heads etc) were very tightly aligned to the needs of the business. I once inherited a Product Marketing team that was disproportionally large compared to the product range and complexity as well as in comparison to other cross functional teams we worked with. It created a lot of friction as well as inefficiencies as we had duplication in roles and responsibilities with no clear distinction on 'who does what' e ...Read More

I touched on this briefly as a response to another (scaling a product marketing team) question but a lot of what I've seen from a hiring perspective is a lack of research into the company and some of the core aspects of the business they're trying to get hired into. Obviously it has to be public facing information and they shouldn't be expected to know all the moving parts of the business but I've interviewed seasoned PMM's who really couldn't 'pitch' some of our core (and best known) products b ...Read More

I think the key here is understanding what alignment actually is (in any given situation.) Often I've seen different orgs have their own set up of KPI's or business metrics that may/may not align to other orgs or even the company as a whole! So one org might be doing really well relative to THEIR set of business goals but overall it's in contrast to the rest of the business...which obviously isn't great. Most of the reason for this happening is poor communication and (early) alignment activities ...Read More

I think just leaning in to the business and key stakeholders and ensuring you have clarity on their priorities is a really key part of getting started. What is the business trying to accomplish and where do you see gaps from a PMM standpoint? You need to find the right balance of what they might expect from product marketing with where you think strategies are needed that would benefit the business in the most impactful way. Over time this can help build trust/confidence from other leaders and o ...Read More

I'm not sure I've ever used a 'system' but I would say that alignment with product is key! This isn't just around roadmaps and product timelines it's for everything from product development all the way through launch and beyond. Product Marketing is an invaluable resource for product to have 'at the table' to ensure everything from product:market fit, positioning, messaging, and so much more. So many 'mistakes' can be caught early if PMM is part of early conversations (earlier the better!) So fr ...Read More

Love this question! I'll keep this focused on building out product marketing teams globally (vs full businesses or even broader marketing orgs) but I think there's a few things that not only stand out but are also consistent across different businesses I've worked at. Similar to one of the other questions I answered, spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy on hiring the very best you can. This might be obvious but all too often poor hires (or poor 'fits') result in a multitude of issu ...Read More

I think one of the key issues with growing and scaling a team is losing track of what makes a great team. This starts with creating a culture of empowerment, safety, openness, kindness, and of course collaboration! Once you have some of your 'culture fundamentals' figured out you can use these to ensure any new hires align well to those fundamentals. Poor hires (or poor 'fits') end up breaking the ability to scale up and get the most out of your team as there will be issues that slow you down. M ...Read More