AMA: Drift Senior Director of Product Marketing, Aurelia Solomon on Product Marketing Skills

This really depends on the business. I think both skills are incredibly valuable for Product Marketing. If you are new to PMM with a brand marketing background, you'll likely be stronger in the areas of messaging & positioning, campaigns, and TOFU/MOFU content. If you're new to PMM with strong analytical skills, you might be a great fit for pricing & packaging, win/loss analysis, competitive analysis, product strategy and launches. I've seen folks with both types of backgrounds be very s ...Read More

It's a hard discipline to enter right out of college but it's absolutely doable. I say that because it's a high visibility function that is extremely cross-functional and requires attention to detail but also the ability to think bigger and strategically. Many of these skills are learned with working experience -- how to engage with executives, how to turn research into concise talking points for sales, how to influence a large group of stakeholders etc. My advice is to talk to as many folks in ...Read More

Data driven! You can use intuition (re: what you're hearing from prospects, customers, reps, analysts etc) to create a shortlist of assumptions, but you must validate that with data. If the data doesn't support it, it doesn't mean it's not important, but you need to clearly call out the discrepancy of what you're hearing vs seeing in the data (and perhaps dig more into why this is happening -- or give it another quarter or two of data to track any changes) If you lead with just data informed, yo ...Read More

I love this question! I always look for the soft skills because smart, hardworking people will learn the hard skills. When I'm hiring, I think about what the business and team needs in its current state through the next year or so. Sometimes that means I have the flexibility to hire someone who doesn't have all the hard skills (and can learn them) but sometimes it means I need someone who knows the job inside and out and can hit the ground running without much coaching on the hard skills. I beli ...Read More

Communication and executive presence (and if in a management role, delegation). As one moves into more senior PMM roles, it becomes more about the softer skills (you already know how to do the core job!) In a senior role, your success depends a lot on how well you can communicate internally (upward to execs, to peers, to different departments and/or leaders in the business) and externally (with customers, prospects, analysts, influencers etc). Learning how to clearly articulate your position in ...Read More

Keep it short and simple. Majority of reps (and people) won't read more than a paragraph. Use bullets to keep it concise and easy to skim Always include a CTA (what do you want them to do with this) and what's in it for them to read it/take an action/use the content etc. Make sure your ask of them is VERY clear and includes any links to resources they might need (i.e. call sheet, list of accounts etc) If there is a lot of information to share, start with a 3 bullet TL;DR / exec summary (what the ...Read More

Great question! And upward feedback is so important. We are all always learning so feedback is critical. In your next one on one (or schedule time if you don't have it). Think about what your goal for the meeting is. Is it just to give the feedback? Is it for your boss to change their decision? Knowing what outcome you want before you enter the conversation will help you stay on track. In the meeting, ask to understand the why (and context) behind the decision your boss made. The above response ...Read More