Ryan Van Wagoner

AMA: Forethought Head of Product Marketing, Ryan Van Wagoner on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

September 16 @ 10:00AM PT
View AMA Answers
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
Everything! But really...I was pretty clueless. I wish I knew how product marketing works with sales, customer success, product, and core marketing to be successful. I wi...
...Read More
509 Views
3 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
The truth is, almost every product marketer I know switched to a career in product marketing from a different field (I came from Sales!). This is very rarely a career tha...
...Read More
568 Views
2 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
I'd have to go with this classic: "Describe your process for launching a new product." Why? A product launch is the quintessential act of product marketing. It places the...
...Read More
7086 Views
3 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
Over the course of my career, I've seen incredible product marketers enter the field in all sorts of ways: - Pursuing an MBA and getting an internship at a large tech com...
...Read More
424 Views
2 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
Great question! Product marketing has been getting a lot of attention recently as a top career choice for anyone interested in marketing or strategy, but the truth is eve...
...Read More
7915 Views
3 requests
How do you perform extensive competitive product research?
I've been tasked with it but I'm missing the mark. This research is for the CEO and Product/Engineering teams who want to know how our tech stacks up in the market. Do you have any tips?
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
My first recommendation would be to make sure you understand exactly what exactly your stakeholders are wanting to know (and why). Are they looking at making product deci...
...Read More
629 Views
2 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
What the interviewer really wants to know by asking this question is how you would handle a product launch, and you don't need direct experience to ace this question. You...
...Read More
503 Views
1 request
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
Generally as you become more senior in your product marketing career (or any career), your role will become more strategic and cross-functional. As you begin to show that...
...Read More
1145 Views
2 requests
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
Be sure you understand and articulate *why* you're building out the team. We all want to grow the marketing team, but growing for the sake of growing can often cause more...
...Read More
650 Views
1 request
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
This is a fantastic question and often where PMMs either excel or fail. Product marketing is the glue between product, sales, customer success, and core marketing, and un...
...Read More
919 Views
1 request
Ryan Van Wagoner
Forethought Senior Director, Head of Marketing4y
At Forethought, product marketing works very closely with the product teams to bring products to market. I hold regular check-ins with product marketing and the Head of P...
...Read More
9918 Views
1 request