AMA: Google Product Marketing Lead, Varun Krovvidi on Developing your Product Marketing Career

As with any role, growing into "next level" requires two things: 1/ An understanding of what is the value provided to the organization by an individual at the next level 2/ Identifying and developing the right skillsets to provide that value. For example: Next level from a Senior PMM in a startup to mid-size company will require you to influence GTM direction (with deep market understanding), collaborate cross functionally (to drive results across teams), and improve full-funnel expertise (from top-of-funnel awareness to product adoption and retention strategies). Whereas the same next level from a senior PMM in a large organization might be required to manage more products in their portfolio or start to manage people. If we were to generalize, there are couple of skills that are common across these situations in general. For example, if you want to propel your career into a Director of Product Marketing role you need to become: 1/ Strategic thinker: Cultivate the ability to see the big picture. Start to understand deeply your market trends, competition, and company's overall goals. Translate this understanding into building narratives that align with broader company strategy – not just individual product needs. 2/ Data-driven decision maker: The closer you can tie GTM and marketing strategies directly to business and revenue metrics, the better. Back up your vision with the cold, hard numbers. And lastly, learn to tell stories about your strategies with data across leadership in different functions. 3/ Collaborative Leader: You will only maximize your impact and influence by working with other functions. For every strategy you develop, start to question how you can 10x the impact by working with other teams. Practice communicating with empathy, bring them into your process early, and share goals with them to build trust. 4/ Team multiplier: The most important tenet is to shift away from pure task execution and towards adding value. Learn to delegate strategically and if possible start to mentor talent early. Lastly, start to build a clear goal for your career. The next step is only a stepping stone. Is your path leading you to a VP of Product Marketing role, CMO, shifting into Product Management, or starting your own firm. Work backwards from there to build the right skills and path.

Traditionally, both product marketing and product management roles vary widely depending on the organization's size, product offerings, and strategies. Going to the fundamentals, I like the definition of a product marketer as a "storyteller who can champion a product's value and a strategist who can act on a company's biggest need". Based on this definition, there are 3 skills you can develop to position yourself as a product marketer even though you do not hold the title: 1/ Storytelling: Develop the art of crafting a compelling narrative for your product. Start to identify product value propositions you like and try to understand "why" you liked them. This will force you put yourself in the shoes of a user, explain value prop in simple language, and build compelling messaging/positioning. 2/ Strategist: Start understand the product distribution channel. Break it down into stages like - awareness, consideration, adoption, and retention - to understand where you not are doing well. Then try to drill down into the user journey to understand what is missing. 3/ Collaborator: Find opportunities where you can influence cross functional teams across sales, partners, marketing, and product on different projects. Develop the knack of identifying shared goals and proactively partner with teams on projects.

Today's marketing is being disrupted at an exponential pace. We are constantly being overloaded with content and the traditional marketing channels are quickly getting saturated -- all leading to users quickly losing trust in traditional marketing methods. The one skill that is invaluable for each marketer is adaptability, primarily because of 1/ Constant market shifts: With the infusion of AI into our day to day, business models and products are changing rapidly. So are user preferences. Keeping up with the latest on "where to find your users" and "how to influence them" is key. 2/ Data is no longer king on its own: As marketers, we are starting to have more data to consume but with very few meaningful insights. Adapting to new perspectives of looking at the data will make it easy for you to draw patterns and make decisions on how to adapt your campaigns 3/ Campaign volatility: No matter how well-planned, campaigns encounter roadblocks. Maybe a platform changed its algorithm, or a competitor made a surprise move. Adaptability means not panicking, but pivoting to new tactics, re-targeting efforts, or finding a creative 'hack' to stay on track.

In this day and age, where lines are getting blurry between different roles, I feel it is essential to have an online portfolio of your work. Here are a couple of reasons why: 1/ Building trust & credibility: A portfolio provides tangible proof of your past successes. Your potential employer or client can see firsthand the results you've driven, the campaigns you've led, and most importantly the thought process behind your strategic decisions. 2/ Content creation & market feedback: Creating a portfolio (if you do not have one) forces you to become your own content creator. This helps you understand what messaging resonates with audiences, how to capture attention, and how best to present your work. Feedback on your portfolio helps you grow as a marketer. 3/ Self-reflection & career progression: The act of assembling a portfolio offers a structured opportunity for reflection. You'll identify your strengths, passions, and areas for improvement. This clarity sets a solid foundation for your future career choices and development.

Although it varies across different organizations, Product Marketing primarily interfaces with: * Product Management -- Core collaboration around defining the product roadmap, value proposition, pricing, and feature launches. Also to close the feedback loop from the customers * Sales - Aligning with them on the core marketing narratives and enabling the teams with relevant product information * Marketing - Improve brand perception, generate demand, and drive leads with compelling campaigns * Growth - Drive free trials and adoption of the product. Partner on increasing usage and retention. * Customer success - Understanding usage patterns, pain points, feedback loops, and upsell opportunities Over time, we are starting to notice that the time between any two release cycles is starting to reduce in every organizations. This is primarily driven by increasing customer demands, improving delivery times with AI, and continuous disruption from niche players. Primarily due to this reason, we are starting to notice a tighter integration from product development to distribution. Recent shifts from organizations like AirBnB (reframing product management function to product marketing) signals the same. Primarily driven by this change, we might start to see Product Marketing as a function spill over a lot more into targeted specializations like growth, content creation, and product management