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

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 u ...Read More

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) ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 pr ...Read More

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 launch ...Read More

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 pene ...Read More