AMA: Iterable Director of Product Marketing, Jeffrey Vocell on SMB Product Marketing

This is so important, and not focused on enough so I'm glad you asked! A few thoughts around this: Get your CEO and CMO involved early. Ideally you can get early drafts to them, and also get them bought into the importance of the process and value of this effort which will make every aspect of this a lot smoother. Have a consistent review process. Depending on your size and stage of company, it's unlikely that your executive team needs to see or review every piece of messaging. If you're working ...Read More

Team structure is always a hot topic in product marketing, and there's a lot of different ways of doing it. The product marketing team at Iterable recently re-organized into 5 groups: Release Marketing, Solutions Marketing, Pricing & Packaging, Platform Marketing, and Market Intelligence. Each group has a specific charter and KPIs that align up to company initiatives and OKRs as well. Briefly, the mission of each team is: Release Marketing: Tell Iterable's innovation story, and effectively c ...Read More

There's a lot of potential variability here depending on company, exact role, industry, and more. That said, here are a few ideas of what you can show: Cross-functional Initiative: If you've directly led a cross-functional initiatve that drovesome key business results, showcase them! For example, a sales deck that you created that drove win rates in that vertical. Talk through how you worked with Sales to create the deck and enabled the team doing so. Launch campagin: This is similar to above, b ...Read More

Great question. Looks like you've captured a lot of the big rocks that normally go into the budget, but a few additional things to consider: People Budget: Depending on the planned growth of your team for this year, and near-term priorities, knowing your people budget can ensure you can bring in consultants (as necessary) to bridge any gaps and help support short-term strategic initiatives.  Tools: Beyond Sales Enablement/Content Management, you may want to consider Competitive Intelligence as a ...Read More

In most B2B settings, Product Marketing, or a distinct Enablement team (if your organization has one), spends a lot of time driving revenue and user growth through enabling Sales and CS. Whereas, in self-serve or consumer-facing teams, this time spend enabling should be redirected to users directly and communicating with them through all the channels you're utilizing -- email, in-app, SMS, etc.  In self-serve, you're directly selling to your customers, and also educating them on the value of you ...Read More

Great question. I think there's a number of different things in these motions - but fundamentally SMB is more of a "one to many" motion, whereas enterprise is a more ABM-centric motion. Given the team structure question here, this means that Solutions Marketing in SMB/Mid-Market thinks about and works with our Demadn Gen team in marketing around campaigns and positioning, content, and offerings, that can appeal broadly to a specific trend, iniative, or vertical. Whereas with Enterprise it applie ...Read More

Yes! It's absolutely possible. A few ways you can think of the transition: Look at some PMM job descriptions and think about transferrable skills. If you've worked as a Project Manager, then it's likely you've led cross-functional initiatives, so lean into that. Highlight an internal communication and enablement you've done as a part of project leadership, and how you measured success. Share any writing you've done to communicate results of a project. Since you're in Marketing Opersations, you h ...Read More

I wrote a post a while back about getting a job in Product Marketing that is still relevant and helpful. Overall though, think about your transferrable skills. Whether that's project leadership, storytelling, market intelligence and how it can apply to the job description of the PMM role you're looking at.  Everyone wants to see experience, but if you don't yet have formal product marketing experience think about volunteering for a project to build that muscle (and ensure you like doing the work ...Read More