AMA: Eventbrite Global Head of Marketplace Marketing, Yify Zhang on Develping Your Product Marketing Career

I was hired into my current management role, but in terms of how I moved from an IC to a management role earlier in my career: The company I was working for was building a zero to one product marketing team. I was tapped for the role as I delivered strong strategy-driven work (e.g., new opportunity assessments/business case, competitive intel program, growth strategy) and had solid sponsorship on these projects from senior leadership who shared my work (and my name) proactively with the rest of the company. Read my answer to the areas of competencies for moving from IC to management. Beyond these competencies, you'll need to develop and nurture solid relationships with other senior leaders (usually at least 2 levels above the level you're moving into). This will help your wins get the air time it needs to make senior leadership aware of your consistent impact.

The competencies that moves one from individual contributor to manager are not unique to Product Marketing. What is unique is how these are applied, within the PMM scope in your role / organization. Generally these are: * Strategic thinking: the ability to break down complex and ambiguous problems into questions / topics that can help guide the work of a team, and your XFN partners. The higher you move, the larger your scope becomes. The ability to move between levels of detail to ask the right questions will help you move from a doer to a leader / guide. * Clear and tailored communication: quality communication is usually the product of quality thinking (see above). Aside from this, 1) keeping your thoughts structured and concise will help others understand your thinking; 2) tailoring your communication to your specific audience so that it is customized in terms of level of detail, tone of voice, and context, will help you get the buy-in you ned. Aside from these, it's important to focus on your unique areas of strengths and build on them so that as you advance in your career, these become part of your brand (what you're known to be brilliant at). These are just a few example areas. * Strategic Vision: being able to identify paths for a company to achieve significant growth using industry trends, customer / competitive research, and data. It is important for these to not be so far fetched but also far enough where the gap from present day that can result in significant growth (in revenue, customers). Communicating these in the right formats (e.g., executive ready decks/docs or the right meeting / chat forums), and to "sponsors" who can help you get the right air time to showcase your work. * EQ & Influence: identify motivations / detractors of every individual regardless of their tenure or background. Meeting their needs to get them on your side and create influence. This will help you both with getting sponsors as well as motivate a team.

I've found Product Marketing Alliance courses to be very helpful. Otherwise, advancing in PMM is really more about on the job experiences than courses/certification. Courses can help you build foundational skills, but advancing into leadership positions is more about demonstrating Strategic Thinking / Vision and Communicating across levels of tenure / detail. For more on those competencies, read my answer to the question about advancing from IC to management.

Being a great writer is not a critical skill for being a great PMM. I would focus your attention on getting good at "positioning", identifying what truly matters to customers (pain point, benefits), and knowing how to identify great copywriting that conveys this. You can partner with copywriters, or even get this through contracting sites like Fiverr / Upwork (if no copywriting resource exists and your organization is low on resources). There are other competencies as a PMM (see below). I would focus your attention on these other areas, and make sure your positioning is strong enough for copywriters you're partnered with to turn into external copy. I would also make sure you have strong research and framework of testing in place to get feedback / insights on how messaging is resonating with customers. * Strategic Thinking - the ability to break down complex problems into achievable questions / topics. The ability to identify opportunities that result in significant growth for the company, and well-structured communication (written and verbal) to convey this in executive forums. * Data & Analytics - the ability to analyze complex and nuanced data to identify customer and product trends that help the company make the right decisions. * Positioning & Messaging - the ability to identify customer's true motivations through research / data and create compelling messaging. Messaging is where some level of innate talent comes in, and not everyone has this (or needs to have this in order to advance in their PMM career).

There are four areas of competencies as a PMM / PMM leader. It is usually good to focus on one of these as your unique "strength" and keep the rest going so that you are functional. As you advance into a management position, you can hire those strong in areas where you're weak. * Strategic Thinking - the ability to break down complex problems into achievable questions / topics. The ability to identify opportunities that result in significant growth for the company, and well-structured communication (written and verbal) to convey this in executive forums. * Data & Analytics - the ability to analyze complex and nuanced data to identify customer and product trends that help the company make the right decisions. * Positioning & Messaging - the ability to identify customer's true motivations through research / data and create compelling messaging. Messaging is where some level of innate talent comes in, and not everyone has this (or needs to have this in order to advance in their PMM career). * People Leadership - the ability to motivate and guide a team, tailoring communication / management style based on the individual. Strong problem-solving skills and creating strong influence in an organization to remove roadblocks for the team.

I think every product marketer can benefit from working at least one job in a role outside of Product Marketing. This helps you gain perspective on how marketing channels / attribution truly work, what matters when it comes to creating growth loops that brings new customers, and makes you a better partner to these teams. Also, the age of a generalist / non technical VP of Marketing is behind us, especially in Tech. Marketing executives are expected to have deep expertise in either Growth (e.g., Product, SEO, SEM/social, blog) or Brand (e.g., brand campaigns, community, social). The combination of one of these areas with Product Marketing sets for a strong foundation into marketing exec roles. With that said, preparing yourself for a CMO/VP of Marketing type of career vs. a Head of / VP of PMM type is a very personal choice. I personally think it's generally good to be open to trying new things, so CMO/VP of Marketing could be something you set yourself up to try, and head of / VP of PMM is always there should you wish to "specialize" further.