AMA: Glassdoor Vice President, Marketing, Eric Petitt on Influencing the C-Suite

To drive alignment, make something that execs can respond to. Recently, I created an example “future state” pitch deck to articulate a future narrative for Glassdoor. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped drive discussion and alignment on overall company positioning and direction. But in general, make something for folks to respond to. I think it is so important for product marketing teams to establish credibility and expectations that PMM owns specific artifacts that ultimately help the company make ...Read More

It is interesting you say that, because my colleague Sophia and I were talking about it and have felt like there’s been a bit of a renaissance in PMM hiring right now. Organizations seem to get the value of PMM more than ever. Maybe tech companies are getting some marketing religion - they can’t just out-engineer each other. That said, this year has been challenging and many companies have been through a lot of turmoil. In general, be really strategic about where you go and who you work with. I’ ...Read More

Your founders will have a stronger org when they eventually trust product marketing with more control over messaging. If you can, start with research. Talk to prospects and customers and show how they respond to different approaches. And test and learn. If you have an existing audience base, you can try different approaches to a/b testing messaging through various marketing channels (i.e., digital advertising, email, website, etc.). Identifying quick ways to validate and challenge hypotheses on ...Read More

I’m not certain the stakeholders and leverage have changed much in my experience with different company sizes, although resources clearly do. As you grow from startup to tween/teen and mature, the stakeholders diversify with the added resources that come from business growth. Sophia and I have generally watched pmm move from an individual contributor -- plugged in to a growth team, leading basic sales enablement, and driving core positioning through product -- to an enabler, helping other teams ...Read More

Product marketing is so often misunderstood, and a lot of CMO’s didn’t grow up with it so they don’t particularly understand it. Still other CMO’s struggle with the PMM orgs that seem to spend more time on things they can’t see or aren’t held accountable for inside their own marketing org. And, like you said, while pmm plays a cross-org glue role, it can leave it stretched way too thin as a result. I think having a charter for your team is a really important place to start. It should last you a ...Read More

(This answer from my fearless colleague Sophia Fox) As a junior pmm, recommend being strategic about the types of projects you work on, and in what capacity. Cannot emphasize enough taking the initiative to seek out and work with your manager and cross-functional partners to identify where pmm can uniquely add value to any key business initiative. Find mentors too. That’s their job, and it is part of yours as well. If you don’t find execs mentors who you feel comfortable with, I’d really ask you ...Read More

If I was an exec at your company, I’d want to understand what is awful about this pitch (share research, client feedback?), what evidence you can provide that it is hurting my business (do an a/b pilot?), and what you think good looks like (comparative/competitive examples?). If you brought that to me, I’d hope I would listen. Then, if I was you I’d try to listen really carefully to what this executive is worried about. Bad timing, overwhelmed sales team, something else? Maybe you can then addre ...Read More

It starts with making sure the c-suite knows where you fit in to business outcomes. What are your OKR’s for the quarter, for the year? Is there a straight line between your priorities and the key opportunities for the company? Have you shared them?The second is making sure you are being heard. The company needs you to be heard - the unique perspective product marketing brings is so critical to company growth, especially today. So be bold. Have you cultivated sponsors outside of your direct repor ...Read More

First, this is so hard! I have been through a few turns of this and candidly I’d say not every company is ready. There are companies that are just not ready to have a strategic pmm org. Maybe their product org is still maturing, or not on secure footing for some reason. It is especially hard to have a strong product marketing team without well led and secure, collaborative product orgs. Second thing I’d suggest is to build trust, get closer to the customer. Product orgs always need more time wit ...Read More