AMA: Atlassian Former Marketing Director (Trello), Jessica Webb on Brand Strategy

Brand is such an important part of product marketing. Developing a strong brand, voice, and tone for your product or company lends itself to everything you do from launching new features to tradeshows. Brand is all about how your company or product is perceived in the market - how it stacks up against competitors and how it informs what people believe to be true about the functionality of your product. Product marketing can be 100x more effective at an organization if brand is a focus - features/products lean on brand and vice versa - when the two work well in tandem it can really set organizations apart.

At a high level, I think it's essential for all teams involved to understand the ultimate goal of whatever product or feature they are launching - meaning what is the problem you are trying to solve and for whom? In terms of process I have found the most success from establishing formal kickoffs, consistent check-ins along the way, and retrospectives post-launch. It's all about having several touchpoints between teams and making sure people are on the same page.

PMM wears so many hats it's important to recognize what is needed at any stage of a company. When first coming into an organization as the first PMM I think the most important thing to do is establish what does and doesn't exist - and where the biggest holes that can be plugged are. This can be accomplished by interviewing the top stakeholders at your company: Sales, Product, Support to understand what is working and where the pain points are. From that, you can build a list and prioritize it accordingly. Using something like an Eisenhower Matrix exercise can be a great way to knock out things that have to happen - maybe you also pick a few "easy wins" to support the team right away. That being said, I think when starting at a company as an initial PMM you have to square away certain areas before beginning others - the #1 thing you have to do first is to talk to users, active, churned, big, small - this will inform a lot of your next steps - I think next comes positioning, which entails competitive analyses as well, then some level of sales enablement, which is a part of a larger GTM initiative.

As stated above, PMM wears so many hats it's important to recognize what is needed at any stage of a company. When first coming into an organization as the first PMM I think the most important thing to do is establish what does and doesn't exist. I think this is the right order of things that should happen first but if you come into an organization and feel that some of these things are already in a good place you can skip to the next step. That being said, when you are new to a company you have a fresh and unbiased perspective that only lasts for a few months - use those fresh eyes to your advantage! Write down all of your thoughts and learnings so you can look back at them later. 1. Interview internal stakeholders 2. Interview end-users 3. Competitive analysis 4. Align on and/or tweak the positioning 5. Sales enablement 6. Design GTM plans

There are tons of ways to do this but they all center around defining the personality of your brand/product, this means understanding how you are perceived by others and reflecting that back (or making an effort to change it!) in your tone and voice across owned assets. We actually recently did a HUGE refresh of Trello's brand (after being around for 10 years!) this past February. It was a big, multi-year undertaking led by Trello's head of Brand Marketing. One exercise the team used was called “build a box.” Each participant chose a box or image that would represent Trello if it had store-shelf packaging like a mass consumer product. They would then include a tagline and three features or brand pillars that would go on the box. “We kept it to an hour session, with time for sparring,” Leah said. “It was quick, but we realized we were all quite aligned on the top messages for Trello and it gave us a well of ideas to pull from when building out the final page.” Read about the entire experience and outcome in this fantastic write-up interview with Leah.

I think there is a ton of value in having these teams work closely but separated into specific pods. As you noted, there are different skillsets here and they can be even more effective when given the space to own their domain expertise. That being said I think when PMM and Brand get too far from each other the end results suffer. I often think of PMM & Brand like a zipper in that they are stronger together and work in tandem. It's essential that brand messaging aligns with the product experience and that launches are appropriately timed and presented in the market. For all of these reasons, I am a fan of having these teams ladder up to the same marketing leader but for they also to be split into separate smaller teams/pods for ownership and skill alignment. 

Hone in on the skills you have that align with what PMMs are asked to be good at - I'm SURE you already have a lot of them from your experience, which seems very relevant! The ones that come to mind for me are being great at prioritization, project management, data gathering/fact-finding, working cross-functionality, strong writing skills, and a willingness to get the job done and get your hands dirty - PMMs are often tasked with taking projects to the finish line and it behooves skilled PMMs to be resilient and malleable about their day-to-day work.

I see the PMMs job as connecting the product teams to end-users and to the market. PMMs have a pulse on what is going on competitively, what is trending, and brand perception the market. PMMs also talk to a lot of customers for customer stories, blog posts etc. so they have a good perspective on what successful users look like. I see the PMs job as interpreting user feedback and rallying the team to strategically build features that enhance the user experience and also align with the goals of the company. PMs also typically keep their teams working in sprints which emphasizes frequent shipping and lots of opportunities for learning and adjustments to be made along the way. PMs work majority internal-facing, PMMs have quite a mix and also collaborate with a ton of different cross-functional teams, I tend to see them as the connector/translator between all the teams!