AMA: Atlassian Senior Director of Product Marketing, Sapphire Reels on Product Marketing KPI's

My background is primarily sales-led enterprise. That being said, a few things come to mind. In my opinion, it’s largely a mindset shift. In PLG, a PMM expands their remit to activation, in-product education, etc. But the core PMM skills are still what will drive your success. A few examples: Focus on the “aha” moments: Get crystal clear on what value looks like to users in the first 30 minutes. You have a limited amount of time to ensure the acquisition message meets the in-product experience. ...Read More

To not be so repetitive as other answers, going to keep this one short but lots of good context on this throughout the AMA 🙂.  I will reiterate that you can’t blindly focus on revenue increases because you’ll miss the signals and impact before revenue was created. The most direct influences: Pipeline: Know how marketing influences pipeline and if there’s enough pipeline coverage. Pipeline coverage indicates if a sales team has enough potential deals to meet their targets. PMM can help by making ...Read More

This is a great topic, because you’re right—correlation ≠ causation. You need to have strong partnerships with the functions across the business that directly influence and are held responsible for driving adoption. Because PMM can help influence behaviors that lead to adoption. Often, this means partnering with: Product teams who own usage, user flows, and in-product behaviors Growth teams who own onboarding and in-product experiments Customer Success teams who own adoption, value realization, ...Read More

Knowing which KPIs to measure your PMM team on depends on your company’s or product’s business model. My team works on an offering that is enterprise B2B sales-led with a focus on net new business, so our northstar is tying our efforts to revenue. We are goaled on pipeline influence.  But if we focus only on pipeline, we miss the leading and lagging  indicators that may hint at future success in or challenges with pipeline. Some of the other numbers we look at include funnel conversion rates, wi ...Read More

Loooonng answer incoming but this is one I get excited about. Building a culture internally where PMM is looped in when results are shared happens when other teams realize they need PMM to understand, explain, and improve results. Getting there can be super frustrating at times and it doesn’t happen overnight. Often, you have to earn your way into the results conversation—even if you already have a seat at the table.  A few things that have worked consistently for me are: showing why you need ac ...Read More

I am primarily focused on enterprise—but when I worked at a start-up as the first Product Marketing Associate, here's what I did: relentlessly prioritized, focused, and acted fast. Understand leadership's goals, identify the biggest bottleneck, pick one KPI, and collaborate to drive success. Start with leadership goals: Know what your leadership cares the most about. In an SMB, it’s likely new revenue or retention.  Identify the biggest bottleneck or growth lever: Leadership’s goal is to drive g ...Read More

Ohhh - enabling sales and working with enablement - often a spicy topic in my experience. I have spent a lot of time on this. It requires clarifying roles between PMM/enablement, discovery/inspection, sales leader buy-in, and iteration over time.  Clarifying roles between PMM/enablement: In my experience, most of the friction comes from confusion/unclear roles & responsibilities between PMM and enablement. Really, they are two sides of the same coin. I’ve seen enablement be most efficient an ...Read More

There are definitely product and industry agnostic KPIs PMMs should track. But as I shared in another answer, sales- vs product-led (along with b2b or b2c and enterprise vs SMB) will have a huge impact. Overall, every PMM should be aware of revenue, pipeline, conversion rates, and adoption/usage signals.  Revenue: PMM’s don’t own revenue but you need to understand as your decisions should be grounded in driving more revenue for the business. Know where revenue comes from (which segments, product ...Read More

Without belaboring the same point as other answers, I would start simple/focused and mature your approach over time. Baseline key metrics, track execution/engagement metrics, and then connect PMM to business impact metrics.  Baseline metrics: Document the current reality across key metrics like revenue, win rate, pipeline by segment, etc (discussed at length in other responses). You need to drive a shared understanding of how the business is performing before PMM gets involved. Execution/Engagem ...Read More

Proving PMM impact in an enterprise set-up requires showing how PMM impacts the path to revenue. Pipeline is the most common measure for enterprise PMMs. But it’s important to note that marketing doesn’t actually create pipeline—sales has to do that by turning a lead into an opportunity. But marketing can influence pipeline.  I discussed some of this in my answer to the question on the top KPIs, but here’s another way to think about it: show pre-pipeline, pipeline, and—if you support adoption, e ...Read More

If you want to build a case for PMM as a revenue-generating function rather than a cost center, I recommend proving it through pilots. Pick a revenue-adjacent problem or opportunity, run a clearly scoped PMM pilot, measure the before to after, and evangelize the story.  Pick a revenue-adjacent problem or opportunity: Know where revenue is stalled and try to fix it…or what’s helping grow revenue and try to scale it. It could be low win rates in a strategically important segment, poor adoption of ...Read More