AMA: Google Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Madeline Ng on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

My first question would be to determine if this person would thrive as a people manager. Often in product marketing, the trajectory up is through individual contributor to people manager, but it's not necessarily the best path for everyone.   Good reasons to want to be a people manager:  You like helping people grow in their career, and you've shown that through mentoring others (even when it wasn't your job) You have shown that you are a "giver" and not a "taker" in the larger organization You ...Read More

This is a hard question because I've found that even the nature of product marketing and the title "PMM" means different things at different companies. Generally, however, I'd look at the framework for seniority against the following dimensions:  Product coverage: Early in your career you may manage a few products, with "few" defined relative to your company's portfolio. As seniority grows, you'll stop owning products but start owning categories of products. The idea here is that at a more senio ...Read More

The most important KPIs to track are the ones that align closely to the business. Are you in a new product area? The KPI might be the number of customers you close and the number of references you can provide publicly or to your sales team. Are you in a competitive consumer product, but an incumbent? The KPI might be monthly active users and retention.  Start with the business goal and then back into the product marketing goal that you have control over. For example, if there is a revenue goal f ...Read More

"It depends" is the most infuriating answer but this is an "it depends" moment. This is all dependent on where you are in your career, what you want in your career, and also what your propensity is.  In terms of pure marketability, the broad strokes I'd make (and your mileage may vary) is:  Generalist >> you will have the most flexibility in the companies you work at but you may not rise as rapidly or command the most senior roles upfront. But you'll never be pigeonholed. This is really us ...Read More

The great thing about being in product marketing is that it's a discipline that, by nature, is quite broad in strategic thinking and interacts with the key go-to-market functions in a business. This gives you a huge advantage if you can craft your story to be a VP of marketing!  Broadly speaking, I think this reflects any kind of process for making a job change.  Understand the VP Marketing role: Are you looking to go to a smaller company and be their first hire? or perhaps the first leadership ...Read More

You're actually in a good position if you are moving from a B2B account management role into a B2B product marketing role because you have knowledge of the audience you're serving and a deep understanding of the product. This is a chance to turn a bug into a feature. This whole pivot is actually a chance to practice your product marketing skills, except you are your product. Focus on what the interview question is getting at - what is the core need of the audience? - and then speak to how you ar ...Read More

Here are a few changes that came top-of-mind and probably aren't unique to my company:  Focus: We have become hyper-focused on our priorities as everyone is working under very different conditions and we want to preserve our collective well-being. We're in the mindset of fewer, better, things. Overcommunication: Without the normal walk-by conversations in the physical office, we've found it more and more important to overcommunicate with each other and with our stakeholders. This is where I've f ...Read More