AMA: Atlassian VP, Head of Product Marketing, Jira, Claire Drumond on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

I attribute my career progress to two things: curiosity & persistence. Curiosity: I started my career as a journalist, and I find great satisfaction in trying to understand the why behind most things. In a professional setting, this has led to me learning about all aspects of the business I'm apart of, from marketing to data science to product development. This has helped me tremendously as a product marketer because our craft sits in the middle of so many different business functions. The best product marketers have their pulse on everything and you can't excel at that without a deep curiosity to learn and understand. Persistence: Product marketing is an exciting and at times trying profession. Launches get delayed, analysts and press aren't always kind, outtages happen, competitors launch attack campaigns, and the list goes on. I find the constant change exciting and an opportunity to learn, but you only reap the benefits of learning from persistence and staying with it. Too often I see people get burnt out by the change rather than embrace it. I'm not saying be miserable, but I am recommending that you use the hard times as a way to make yourself a better more seasoned product marketer.

Product marketers need to be great storytellers for their products, but also for themselves. Internal communications, cross-functional collaboration, and executive comms are crucial to growing your career as a PMM. This is because product marketing is not only a functional career, it's a strategic career. You have to be able to influence your product teams, your business teams, and your supporting marketing teams. You are often the face of the product and need to be able to speak publicly or with customers. All of that said, written communication is important, but I think public communication skills are arguable more important. Verbal communication skills is where I would focus if you want to become a manager or PMM leader.

LinkedIn. I recommend you spend time building a strong profile, use the features to showcase links to your work and take the time to write your bio & description for all of your work experience. While I review resumes during interview processes, I always look people up on Linkedin for more detail. Another great place to invest is on your Google Search Results themselves. There's a lot you can do to clean those up and make sure that anything you've published comes up when people search your name (or things you don't want to come up are hidden). There's a lot of power in simply making sure your search results are what you want potential hiring managers to see.

I really believe doing is the best way to advance your PMM career over certifications. That said, courses can give you a good baseline for frameworks and vocabulary, especially if you are changing careers or just getting started. I've taken these course and have found them useful for getting alignment in a newly formed product marketing team, for example. However, I really believe there's nothing more powerful than simply time in seat paired with a great network or mentor. My advice instead of taking a course would be to take on a project or program that is uncomfortable or feels out of your wheelhouse to really push yourself to grow. This also show initiative and a curiosity to learn.

Great writers are not born great writers. Writing is a skill like any other hobby, sport, or craft -- you have to practice all the time. If this is a growth area for you, I would suggest enrolling in a storytelling workshop like Duarte to make sure you have the right frameworks and tools to construct compelling stories. Then I would practice by writing blog posts, fake press releases, internal strategy documents, etc. using your framework of choice. Continue to ask yourself if you can make it simpler and more clear. One framework I love using to help construct a business case or strategy is the SCIPAB framework from Mandel Communications: The six steps of SCIPAB * Situation: Describe the current state of the situation * Complication: Identify any issues, challenges, or opportunities that are complicating the situation * Implication: Explain the consequences of not addressing the complications * Position: State your opinion on what needs to be done * Action: Define what you want your audience to do * Benefit: Explain how taking action will help the audience I've find this framework extremely helpful for getting your thoughts together. The more you use it the more natural it will become and the less you need the actual framework. Write everything in your head down first and then the real magic happens in the revisions!