AMA: Instacart Senior Director, Product Marketing, Jasmine Taylor on Consumer Product Marketing

Product Marketing’s superpower is being the “Voice of the Product to Customers and the Voice of Customers to Product.” When establishing PMM as a new function, the best place to start is listening. First 30 days: Listen and truly get to know your Customers and the Product.  On the Customer side, what this looks like practically is spending as much time in the early days reviewing Help/Support tickets, reading through research reports, sitting in on focus groups/interviews -- anything you can to ...Read More

One thing I wish I learned earlier is the most powerful product marketing you can do is always centered on a shared human truth. When I look back on my very early PMM GTM work, I focused primarily on communicating about the product and the benefit derived from the features themselves. But the product features, however innovative, were only half the story. Connecting the Product to the Customer Need is where the true magic lies. Find the truth we all share (an experience, an emotion) and connect ...Read More

First - anyone inviting you to interview will see from your resume whether you’ve done product marketing. If you haven’t and you still get invited to interview, then there’s no need to worry about being new to PMM. Instead keep in mind there are likely a few key areas your interviewer will want to assess. Take your past work and reframe it to demonstrate your ability to grow into your role, while proving you’re showing up Day 1 with skills to contribute: Identifying Insights: Share a way in whic ...Read More

Only a few weeks into my current role, I’m living this one in real-time! For myself, I’ve created the following approach: Listen → Set Expectations → Execute → Close the Loop. For prioritizing needs/deliverables, I spend as much time as possible listening and understanding what is most pressing for the business immediately (and then mid and longer term). The key here is to determine where the business needs product marketing the most. When you’re the first PMM, it can be incredibly natural for e ...Read More

PMMs are (and need to be) masters at many things but if I had to pick the most important: (Soft) Cross-functional Collaboration: PMM is a highly cross-functional role. On any given project, you’ll work with Product, Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing Channel Experts, Operations, Legal… and the list goes on. A product campaign can’t get done without many partnerships. So you have to be great at working across different teams and getting them to share in your goals.   (Hard) Data Driven: Pro ...Read More

If someone is new to PMM, there are two skills I look for: Strategic thinking: Can you demonstrate an ability to take an intentional, rational thought process when solving problems? Can you get creative about solving a problem while also never losing sight of the end goal? Can you solve a problem as it develops / as you receive new information?  Ability to prioritize and execute: Can you cut through noise and narrow in on what’s most critically important? Once you have a plan, can you make that ...Read More

B2B and B2C Product Marketers have much in common in the way of skills, both must assume the role of Voice of Customer and Voice of Product. Both must be strategic thinkers with an exceptional ability to execute. Insights gathering, GTM strategy and execution, and cross-functional collaboration are core needed skills for PMMs in both industries. In fact, many Consumer PMMs I’ve hired over the years were once B2B PMMs.   That said, B2B product marketers who wish to transition to B2C should spend ...Read More

“Passion” is a tricky word. It can lead you to believe that you somehow have to be a power user of a product to be a great PM, PMM, etc. for it. Some of the most successful tech products have enterprise customers, so that can’t be true. When deciding on whether or not to take a job, I use a framework that I once read about on a LinkedIn blog post:  Product: Is it a product that has a strong growth trajectory? Do customers (whether I am one or not) love it? What about the product sets it apart fr ...Read More

Brand plays a critical role in Product Marketing and vice versa. In broad strokes, campaigns are either Product or Brand-led, and if one is leading, to be effective the other must be supporting. If we’re launching a new app, our focus is sharing the value proposition and highlighting key features, but the campaign is delivered in our Brand’s voice and within the umbrella of our broader Brand promise. If we’re launching a campaign to drive greater awareness of our Brand within a category, we’ll p ...Read More