AMA: Eventbrite Global Head of Product Marketing, Jameelah Calhoun on Establishing Product Marketing

Organization structures for the PMM team vary depending on your companies’ stage, customer base, and product suite. There are 4 basic approaches for designing PMM teams: 1) functional (i.e. sales enablement, monetization, GTM, product strategy), 2) product lines (i.e. subscriptions, retail), 3) customer segments (i.e. enterprise, small business, consumer), or 4) Lifecycle (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention.) When determining a new PMM team org structure, I think about these 3 questions: 1) What drives distinction in the sales/conversion cycle? For some companies that will be customer-based, such as selling to enterprise clients versus small business or business versus consumer for marketplaces. For others, the product drives the most distinction, such as a consumer subscription service versus consumer a la carte/retail. For other companies with smaller product suites and a less complex client base, it may be best to align against areas of the funnel (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention). Lastly, depending on the functional areas that PMM teams are responsible for it may make sense to organize against these areas to recruit for specific skill sets. 2) What domain knowledge will be most important to develop and maintain within the team? Which team members will benefit most from collaboration? This again is often tied to the answer in question one. Sometimes deep expertise on one customer segment will be critical relative to deep expertise on one specific product or vice versa. 3) How are your stakeholder teams organized? Aligning closely with product management teams will smooth the team’s ability to become trusted and consistent partners with that team. As PMM organizations become larger and more complex, I have often combined two of the organizational approaches for maximum impact. For example, organizing my PMM teams by product lines, but having dedicated functional PMM roles underneath each product line team.

Interviewees often forget to convey their knowledge about their customers. Many candidates focus exclusively on the outputs and not on the inputs. It would be best if you talked about your results and product outcomes but also articulated the why. Who was the customer? What were their unmet needs? 

At the core, these situations are about finding the product-market fit for the product marketing function in your organization. You are trying to establish a conversion thesis that will make them a future advocate for PMM instead of a detractor. So take a similar tact as you would do for customer-facing work. 1) Start by listening. Have 1:1s and understand what they see as having gone wrong in the past. Ask what areas they would like to have support for. 2) Look for data or anecdotes on launches or products that have underperformed expectations in the past. These mini-retrospectives can provide context on what aspects of the current launch and commercialization processes have the most areas of opportunity that may not be obvious to your stakeholders in other functions. 3) Focus on quick wins, especially in non-controversial and/or under-resourced areas of scope. Showing value is important to repair the relationship. 4) Identify supporters and influencers within the function you want to gain buy-in from. Identify a collaborative initiative that you can partner with them on as a pilot for the future working model of PMM. Again, this is aimed at gaining proof in the pudding about how PMM will drive value. 5) Focus on the research and insights and share liberally. Teams are generally hungry for new ways to think about their products and customers. Competitive intelligence is generally a less controversial area that can help you begin to establish relationships and productive meeting cadences with resistant teams. 

The first 90 days are crucial to any job, but especially for new product marketing leaders. This is the time to establish your credibility, build relationships, and layout team roles that will set your function up for success for the months to come. Here’s how I break down my priorities by month: First 30 days – Assess the current state and product roadmap Look at my response below regarding the 3 prior deliverables that I review when joining a new company. But, in general, here the goal is to understand what the immediate internal pain points are. Start with looking at what audience research exists, reviewing existing customer messaging and landing pages, and understanding the acquisition funnel. You should also use this time to become intimately familiar with the product roadmap. From here, you should be able to identify some quick wins as well as some areas for strategic, step-change impact. Lastly, use your newness to inquire about current roles and responsibilities of product marketing and stakeholders’ thoughts on how that could evolve. This provides important intel for influencing RACIs down the line and identifying which people or functions may be aligned with your vision. 30-60 Days – Begin Establishing Processes and Adding Value From your first 30 days, you should already have a sense of where some acute pain points from an external positioning and internal operations perspective. This period is now focused on showing value by getting in some quick wins. This could entail a quick messaging refresh, establishing a GTM tiering framework for different product releases, and/or some sales enablement collateral. This will be critical for gaining credibility and winning partnerships with other teams. 60-90 Days By this time, you should be ready to roll out your team charter and RACI. Results come first from the quick wins, but you don’t want to wait too long to get your working model and flows aligned. This is the time to start to communicate your larger vision for product marketing. This step should likely come in 30-60 days if you are at a larger organization. But at a startup focusing on delivery in less controversial areas wholly owned by PMM first will set the right tone. Additionally, here’s where I would kick off a larger strategic initiative or big bet for your team, such as a revamp of the customer segmentation or a new market entry strategy.

Simple is always better when bringing stakeholders on the journey for a product launch. I typically structure my presentations around the What? When? Who? Why? How? and Where? in that order. This framework is straightforward but covers the most critical questions that matter for the launch. Additionally, this approach can apply to a 1-pager and a 30 slide deck. What? - What is launching? What is the monetization strategy/price points? When? - What is the release timeline? What are the phases of the GTM? Who? - Who is the target audience? Who are the priority segments? Why? - Why will they love it? What is the conversion thesis? How? - How will this be positioned? What are the messaging pillars? Where? - What channels will be essential to reach the target audience? What are the entry points to the acquisition funnel?

As I mentioned in the question regarding your first 90 days, the first 30 days are all about establishing a baseline and assessing the current product marketing status. The first 3 things that I look for when onboarding are: 1) Audience strategy and research. Here I want to understand what’s known about the customer and their jobs-to-be-done. Specifically, personas and segmentation as well as any research related to acquisition and why customers purchase the product. This may also include any prior win/loss interviews and doing your own quick interviews with sales. 2) Current messaging. Look at as much of the customer-facing messaging as possible. This includes highly trafficked landing pages, sales collateral, recent campaigns, and messaging hierarchy templates. 3) Funnel and Lifecycle Performance Data. Here I am looking to understand what the major drop-off points are and the shape of the customer lifecycle. This helps identify areas for potential quick wins and gives you an early perspective on the typical sales or conversion cycle.

See my answers on gaining buy-in from resistant functions and 30/60/90 day priorities. The most important thing to do, especially in an environment with a less experienced management team, is to educate everyone internally about what product marketing is, what your impact will look like, and how it should be measured. In less structured environments, it can be helpful to manage through metrics. That is, pick a differentiated metric that is not necessarily owned by another function as market penetration within a particular customer persona/segment, transaction density by geography, etc, and report regularly on that. This lends more weight to the processes and strategies you want to put in place. Additionally, I would establish cross-functional meeting cadences dedicated to demonstrating your processes to the rest of the org. They can quarterly competitive intelligence shareouts or monthly GTM roadmap reviews or both.