AMA: Gong Former Director, Product Marketing, Victoria Chernova on Product Marketing vs Product Management

This question hits home for me. In a previous role, I explored the opportunity to move to the PM org, so I did a bunch of research. First, at a high level, I love the book "Designing Your Life." If you're into self-reflection and personal growth books, this one's for you. It'll help you zero in on the type of work that gives you energy vs drains your energy. Then, I would do some candid interviews with PMs to understand what a day in the life is like, because sometimes from the PMM perspective w ...Read More

One area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is with market and competitive insights. By bringing insights from the market, competitive landscape, buyers, and/or analysts, PMM can ensure that product has considered all inputs when they narrow down on their target user, pain points, and finally solutioning. Here is a deck we've used internally to help build collaboration between PM & PMM. If you're still struggling with being brought in too late, my advice is to focus on 1-2 ...Read More

This is always a gray area :) At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product writing team, except for naming "Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we established a list of criteria that qualifies features or products as "Tier 1;" such as, the feature/product changes core product pillar messaging, or requires customer change management, or changes how we sell or demo the product. These are really dependent on your business. For in-app cues (like announcement banners/modals, etc), we've estab ...Read More

In terms of roadmap, one area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is through market and competitive insights. By bringing insights from the market, competitive landscape, buyers, and/or analysts, PMM can ensure that product has considered all inputs when they build their roadmap.  Here is a deck we've used internally to help build collaboration between PM & PMM. If you're still struggling with being brought in too late, my advice is to focus on 1-2 deliverables that could r ...Read More

Ideally, PMM comes in during the product roadmap process. One area where I've seen PMM historically drive value is through market and competitive insights. Especially at Gong, given our product, Product Managers have access to customer insights but oftentimes don't have visibility into opportunities outside of the customer base.  When it comes to the product lifecycle, PMM should proactively come in very early on. For the same reasons as above, PMM brings a complementary perspective to the decis ...Read More

There are different levels of information PMM needs from their PM partners throughout the development process. Depending on how your product documentation works, this information could entirely live in a product/feature brief or be split up between the brief and the product spec.  At a high level, here's a deck we've used internally to build collaboration between PM and PMM. To be honest, we don't always get the answers to these questions in document format (or early enough), so sometimes this i ...Read More

This really depends on your business model, the org structure, and company norms, but I can share the mission we developed for the PMM team here at Gong.  PMM deeply understands our customers, products, and market in order to deliver the right product, to the right audience, with the right message. This is the #1 objective, and the way you accomplish this is through a variety of intiatives. Our top ones are: Develop GTM strategy Inform product strategy Prioritize customer segments Serve as subje ...Read More

This depends on the company's norms and how different teams have been set up. I've seen user research lead this entirely, and I've also seen a dedicated "Voice of the Customer" program manager who wrangled all internal listening channels.  One area where I've seen PMM historically drive a ton of value is with market and competitive insights. Especially at Gong, given our product, Product Managers have access to customer insights but oftentimes don't have visibility into opportunities outside of ...Read More

Both are super valuable, and gaining experience in both will make you a well-rounded PMM. Great for when you lead a team in the future :) That being said, it also depends on what you enjoy. Having done both, PLG PMM work feels more B2C to me, where most of my time was spent working with campaigns, brand, and copy teams (other than product of course!). So if you enjoy working on customer journeys, creative briefs, and marketing assets, then that's a great fit for you. Whereas with SLG motions, yo ...Read More