AMA: Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Ben Rawnsley-Johnson on Building a Product Marketing Team

In earlier stage companies, small teams of generalists tend to drive great results with their expansive understanding that comes from being in the weeds of product alignment, customer insight, research, and campaign execution and sales enablement. As the company grows, and progresses into multi-product, that starts to break down as teams get bigger and the work becomes more specialized. 1. Initial Phase (Small Team): * Structure: Generalists who handle multiple functions, such as market research, content creation, and sales enablement. * Focus: Building foundational marketing strategies, establishing brand messaging, and supporting product launches. 2. Growth Phase (Medium Team): * Structure: Specialists for key functions like market analysis, product positioning, and campaign management. * Focus: Developing detailed market segmentation, optimizing go-to-market strategies, and enhancing sales support. 3. Mature Phase (Large Team): * Structure: Organize by product lines or customer segments with dedicated product marketing managers for each line or segment. * Focus: Deep expertise in each product line, tailored marketing strategies, and robust cross-functional collaboration.

PMM don't own outcomes the way some other teams like sales (meetings, deals) and engineering (shipped code) - but we do own the pursuit of the metrics that matter, and the alignment of teams that contribute to metrics that span teams - CAC, CLTV etc. Any marketer knows that our value is reflected in the growth and health of the business, even if we don't own that processes end-to-end. Like it or not, we have to measure our success in those terms, but also share some drivers of that outcome. 1. Revenue Growth: Directly correlating marketing efforts with sales increases. 2. Market Penetration: Measuring the increase in market share and brand recognition. 3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Lowering the cost of acquiring new customers through effective marketing strategies. 4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Enhancing the long-term value of customers through targeted retention strategies. 5. Campaign ROI: Assessing the return on investment for marketing campaigns to ensure they are cost-effective and drive results. TOFU, entrances, conversion etc.

This one changes a lot depending on the stage of growth the company is in. In terms of the where the biggest leverage comes from, at earlier stages, these lines will blur, and supporting player/coach contributors tends to drive scalable outcomes. At scale, having clear hand-offs and defined roles and responsibilities, and reporting structures that identify accountable teams will help drive outcomes. I tend to think of responsibilities, and structure teams in 3 areas (with lots of healthy overlap): * GTM Strategy, market research (competitive and market), product alignment * Positioning and messaging, content, campaigns * Field enablement, customer signal, win/loss etc.