AMA: Gusto Head of Product Marketing, Employers, Leah Brite on Establishing Product Marketing

You know you are ready when you’ve got at least one FT PM and your biz needs someone to stand up / drive any/all of the following: 1. Market Strategy & Customer Insights. Analyzing market data, honing competitive intelligence, and drawing on prospect & customer insights to define PMF (product market fit) and inform product roadmap decisions, including, industry and market trends analysis, competitive research, target segmentation, and prospect and customer insights 2. Positioning, messaging, packaging, pricing. Developing a customer-facing strategy to uniquely differentiate your offer in the marketplace, including persona development, shopper journey and lifecycle insights, packaging and pricing strategy, value props, messaging and positioning, and Social proof like testimonials, claims, and case studies. 3. Go-to-Market Strategy. Providing GTM strategy including creating the GTM strategy, channel strategy, funnel strategy, and creating sales training and enablement 4. Learning and Amplification. Systematize feedback from customers and front-line teams (or to start to collect it for the first time!) to improve and refine go-to-market strategy, including customer insights and data analysis, thoughts on for new products or feature enhancements, and recommendations for new marketing strategies or GTM campaigns.

Top three things to avoid when establishing or scaling PMM: 1. Working in a silo. PMM is a highly cross functional role, so make sure you are in continual communication with xfn partners and that you are in lock step on priorities and plans. Err on the side of overcommunicating and providing as much transparency and visibility as possible to establish trust. 2. Too much ambiguity for roles and responsibilities. A bit of gray area is totally fine – and it is also good to be nimble and evolve the PMM role as you go along. That said, because PMM is done differently at every organization, it is important to take time to do an intake with xfn partners, understand their needs, and craft the PMM role to deliver against top company priorities and pain points that PMM can help solve. Once you’ve defined this, take this on a 1:1 roadshow to gather feedback, get buy in, and get to work! 3. Saying yes to everything. Align with your boss on a prioritization framework and resulting prios. Then, as new requests come in, provide a way to let xfn partners know where their request falls in terms of prios and what is above and below the cutline – and why! I’ve found that transparency is key, as is the rationalization around the prioritization framework. While you don't want to say yes to everything, many times it is more about “not quite yet” vs no entirely. 

First 30 days: * Onboard and get all the context! Learn about your customers (firmographic info, top segments, their pain points, where they spend time, how they enter the buying process, who influences their decision, ICP, JTBD, etc. Consume all the research that has been done if anything exists), your company (org chart, how decisions get made, unwritten rules, values, how to get things done, etc.), market (trends, competitors, sizing), your product (how it works, top competitive solutions, gaps, performance info, etc). * Meet with stakeholders. Learn about them as people, discuss how you’ll work together, what their priorities are, where they think you should be spending your time, etc) First 90 days: Start to make an impact! * Align with your manger on top priorities and deliver against key projects * Build the foundations, such as: * Anything listed above that your company doesn’t yet have (e.g. ICP, market research, etc) * Positioning and messaging * Define launch processes * Personas * Buyer journeys * Sales enablement materials * Talk to customers! There is no better way to serve customers than to understand them deeply. This also becomes fertile ground to mine for case studies and testimonials. * Establish other core processes and operating mechanisms that will help you scale and get things done efficiently, while also being in lock-step with xfn partners. * Understand why you win and why you lose across awareness and consideration. Come up with an action plan that maps to the customer funnel and key friction points. 

The PMM org structure is highly variable based on the company – and also shifts and changes through a company’s lifecycle to best meet company needs. There are four primary structures 1. Product lines (i.e. Software, service, etc) 2. Customer segments (i.e., small business, mid-market, enterprise, accountant), 3. Functional (i.e. insights, product strategy, GTM, monetization, sales enablement) - Not my favorite as I think PMMs do their best work when they are deep on the customer problem and product solution and then bring full-stack PMM skills to the table. 4. Lifecycle (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention) Here are some things to consider as you determine the right structure of the PMM team for your org: 1. Start with the right ratio. The avg is ~2.5 PMs to 1 PMM. The ratio tends to be lower for product-led and for earlier stage products that need more from an insights, rapid testing and iteration standpoint. 2. Align to how the business is organized and how stakeholder teams are organized 3. Map PMM head count to the top biz priorities that PMM can have the biggest impact on. 4. Consider hybrid approaches where, for example, you have PMMs mapped to product lines, but also have each person specialize and be the lead in a customer segment, functional area, etc. This allows for more opportunities for stretch projects and career dev. 

Internal comms are so key given the highly xfn role of PMM. I’ve also found them crucial given that some of the outcomes PMMs drive are less tangible than some functions like Demand Gen. The best channels to communicate updates depend on size of company, tier of update, and goal of the comms. For a moderately scaled org and tier 2 update, here is an example by stage of product dev. * Kickoff. Host a kick off call for everyone that will be involved in the GTM (e.g. channel partners, product, sales leads, etc). Communicate goals, get everyone excited and aligned upfront. * Development. * Slack/Email newsletters. Regular updates to share info and keep the core team engaged and on track. * Quarterly updates. Utilize annual and quarterly planning cadences to socialize team prios and status updates for projects in flight. * Launch (or right before). * Slack/email. Big post when the feature launches to a channel with a broad audience. Detail the target audience, problem to solve, solution, GTM plan, links to assets, etc. * Sales + CS training. Get them prepped and ready to serve and sell! * All hands. Paint the picture for how this product/feature and GTM ladder up to company prios. Showcase and early adopter to make the impact real for the team. Retro. Host a retro to extract and capitalize on key learnings.