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

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 then growing these team members into strong PMM's. I'm a big believer in 'culture fit' as well and to not be swayed purely by experience or an impressive resume/LinkedIn profile. Through screens/interviews spend time on whether this person would add to the culture of the team! Once you have the right people as your foundation it's much easier to distribute responsibilities based on the key objectives of the business!

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' etc. It turned out that the prior organisation had been overly ambitious on building out an 'enterprise grade' product marketing org but was way ahead of the needs of the business. We ended up downsizing and moving a few of the heads over to the broader marketing organisation and into sales enablement both of who were severely under staffed and had huge expectations from the business. We then 're' documented the roles and responsibilities of the remaining PMM's inline with the key business objectives as it pertained to solutions. Once that was completed we did a socialisation exercise across the entire business with this 'revamped' PMM team and it ended up being immediately more impactful (and thus successful)!

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 product enablement that PMM drives should help sales close more deals, and possibly bigger deals etc etc. Also if we do better competitive differentiation workshops, then we should have more competitive wins etc. 2) I try to have some more distinct and slightly 'softer' measures as well such as content product (5 case studies per quarter, engage with 10x customers per quarter etc etc.) These are quite quantitative and can be used as secondary metrics to help showcase productivity etc.

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. 1. 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 issues down the track such as poor output, poor culture, attrition etc. When you're hiring outside of your location, ensure the hires are well vetted and supported by cross functional leaders in that location. They are the key stakeholders and should be allies from the start! 2. Build teams around a central culture or set of 'team fundamentals'. This will help remote teams feel better connected to central teams and vice versa. This will also organically help teams operate on similar levels thus achieving the ultimate 'one team' dynamic that so many businesses strive for. 3. As teams are starting to build out, ensure remote teams (especially) feel like one team by ensuring meetings are suitable for all. If thats not possible globally, make the extra effort to alternate one region one week and another region the next and record and share meetings so everyone feels like they've attended. Same with offsites and any workshops etc..make sure you accomodate everyone to create the 'one team' culture and dynamic!

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. I've always like to insert myself (or team) into cross functional planning meetings, especially yearly planning meetings! These groups might be marketing, sales, strategy groups, sales engineering, product and so on. The more you can be part of the early planning meetings the more likely it is that you'll have alignment on 'a plan' and from there it's a case of setting up a cadence of 'check ins' to ensure you're on track! I don't think agility should be hampered by the need to check in with teams on alignment and to ensure you are course correcting as needed. Again, ensure you're starting from the right place of alignment and then make sure you're doing quick check ins on progress and you should be able to move at a pace!

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 from that alignment comes a regular interlock and with that strong comms etc. By and large this will take care of all updates, timeline adjustments and so on.

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/products would likely be successful in their regions (and why.) Consult with these teams as much as possible by way of your launch strategy. Sometimes the insights you get from these consultations are invaluable in HOW these products get rolled out. For instance it might just be a fairly small pricing & packaging or bundling tweak that needs to be made to make it more tangible in a particular country or region. Or something similarly minor. On the flip side if there is absolutely no product:market fit or one which might be a ways off (I've often seen this with different levels of market maturity and that dictating which products would work or not) the regional teams have a duty to raise those concerns and articulate why they won't be prioritising this roll out. I can't think of a time where I've seen pushback from product leadership or other leaders of of a business where they were being given clear indications that a product won't succeed and thus save their marketing spend, R&D, and future revenue aspirations by focusing on other markets! Just make sure you put forward a strong and clear business case on why this product isn't a good fit and thus less of a priority and show the trade offs if you were to have to focus on it and I would be surprised if they pushed back.

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 back to me in any conceivable way. They're too reliant on their experience and their resume to do some research on the company they're interviewing with and I think that's a huge flaw. The other one that I'm particularly picky with is passion. I want to see genuine excitement for the role. Why are they SO excited to join this company and go after this opportunity? Are they genuinely passionate about the opportunity? Its really easy to see the ones that aren't even if they're trying to be. I often find younger PMM's are way more genuinely excited about an opportunity but seasoned PMM's might have lost that spark.

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 open up opportunities to ideally add more PMM's but also to show what is possible with more resources! Be sure to get some 'wins on the board' to help build the foundations first. These wins might come in the way of tactical things (product decks, 1-pagers, webinars etc) but these will help lay the building blocks to more 'strategic' items later down the track.

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. Make sure you have clarity on the type of team you want, the people that will be successful in that kind of team, and then do not compromise when putting together and growing that team! The other challenge I've seen is losing 'touch' with team members as you quickly grow to a scale where 1:1 and hands on management might become a challenge. I oversaw a team of 70+ marketers at one stage and my previous teams had been 3-7 or so. My instincts were to try and spend equal time with all team members and give them my time whenever they needed it but that worked well with a small team that was relatively flat..it doesn't scale. I quickly learned to lean more on my management team and to leverage things like skip level meetings to have time with the broader team (as needed.)