AMA: Square Head of Product Marketing, Carrie Zhang on Product Marketing

This very much depends on the company and individual team lead vision so I will just chime in with what it is like at Square.   In general, PMMs at Square cover a wide range of responsibilities regardless of level. These responsibilities include: Develop product or feature launch/ GTM strategy and plans, including positioning and messaging Quarterback marketing and sales partners (e.g., paid marketing, SEO, content marketing, lead generation) to execute GTM and growth plans Lead customer researc ...Read More

I see 3 product marketing career paths ways: Continue down the product marketing career path. At some point, you will be capped at a VP or Director of product marketing role Get broader channel marketing experience (the most important one being paid marketing) and become a CMO somewhere. Choose this path if Marketing is your ultimate passion Learn more about product management and other business fundamentals and become a General Manager/ CEO leading a line of business. Choose this path if you lo ...Read More

I have a different perspective. Most of the turnovers I have seen are voluntary - people moving on to different companies, different roles. So to me it's not necessarily a bad thing. Personally I get bored doing the same thing for more than 2 years. So if my role does not present new learning opportunities, I will probably move on.   On the other hand, in general marketing can be an easy culprit when business is not doing well and budget needs to get slashed. It's just the reality of the profess ...Read More

Great question. I always tell my team that as product marketers we are the bridge between product development and the broader marketing & sales teams. We focus relationship building and collaboration in 3 areas: Product (development) team. At Square PMMs are embedded within the product teams so this is technically our home. Where we add value is bringing in the customers' voice when it comes to product strategy and roadmap. My team does a lot of work visiting customers, conducting qual/ quan ...Read More

Yes, PMM role varies a lot by industry and company. So you have to ask yourself what you want to do and what ultimately interest you. When you choose what companies, PMM groups to join, you need to evaluate whether that helps you get to where you want to be. For example, I am not into enterprise B2B. Product marketing in that space requires a lot more sales enablement work that I'm not passionate about. I've personally found the following background helpful to excel at product marketing: Hands-o ...Read More

Covered this a bit in another question. PMM can bring a very strong customer perspective when it comes to product development. To have a seat at the table though, you have to do the work. This is what we do to bring customers perspective to our product teams: Visit, shadow, do work at our customers. No research can compare to the insights you get by actually being in the shoes of our customers - in our case, small businesses Talk to customer facing teams (Sales, Account Management, Support) and  ...Read More

At the end of the day, the common interest between a PM and a PMM is to build and grow a product or business. That means a few areas of common grounds: Product strategy - are we building the right product for the right target customers? Growth strategy - what are the in-product and marketing levers we can pull to increase subscribers and ARPU? Pricing strategy - how do we monetize our product? These questions require collaboration and aligment between PM and PMM. Who takes the lead very much dep ...Read More