AMA: Kiva Former VP of Growth, Henrique Saboia on Growth Product Marketing

I hope I understand your question correctly, but some of the most successful PMMs I've hired include some that came from more traditional, non-tech companies before. There are many transferable skills, like the ones you outlined above. That said, it can be difficult to find a Product Marketing leader open to hiring someone from a different background. My advice is to network aggressively so you can find a leader that will invest in your development.

Traditional Product Marketing and Growth Product Marketing should be complementary functions. When done successfully, a Growth Product Marketing team will be more focused on rapid experimentation and growing user engagement metrics, and less focused on product development and product launches. And vice-versa for the traditional PMM team. Both teams will still engage in consumer insights, research, analytics, and planning activities equally. That said, both teams will likely do all the activities listed above, but the mix of those activities will look different. I'd propose something like this. Growth PMM * 60%: rapid experimentation and growing user engagement metrics * 20%: product development and product launches * 20%: consumer insights, research, analytics, and planning Traditional PMM * 60%: product development and product launches * 20%: rapid experimentation and growing user engagement metrics * 20%: consumer insights, research, analytics, and planning

That's such an interesting question. Over the last 5-10 years, I've seen multiple organizations split Brand/Traditional Marketing from Growth Marketing. While that creates focus and specialization, it also creates a confusing and disconnected user experience. Organizations have started to recognize that and correct it by merging growth and marketing back together to optimize for alignment and consistency in the user funnel. I ultimately believe organizations will merge back together, and that Marketing departments will have to adopt quantifiable growth goals in addition to softer brand goals. So, if you want to be successful in marketing, no matter which function, figure out how to measure the impact of your function.

It really depends on the lifecycle stage of the product and the goals/OKRs set up each quarter. But it is very common for growth-focused initiatives to be organized around the audience lifecycle. I often organize my teams, strategies, and tactics around some version of the following but adapted to fit my product needs: acquisition, onboarding, retention, resurrection. That way you will empower different team members to be accountable for each part of the customer journey and be able to measure where your product is excelling and struggling. 

Finding the best possible KPI to measure the success of a product both qualitatively and quantitatively is incredibly challenging, and very few companies ever get it right. I have found that the OKR process can be a great help in that process. Specifically, if Growth and Product Marketing share the same objective, they can own different Key Results. Here is a made-up example: At Amazon e-commerce, they may look like this. Goal: To be the first place where prospective buyers search for products on the internet. Growth KR: To increase traffic and conversion on Amazon.com PMM KR: To create trust and preference for Amazon.com The further away you organize the growth and PMM organizations, the harder it is to have this level of alignment.

Well, it looks like you have many of the skills necessary to be an effective product marketer. Your challenge will be to tell a compelling story to a PMM leader that you have built all those transferable skills necessary to be a successful PMM. I'd expect your recruiting cycle may take a bit longer than someone already within the PMM track, and networking with multiple PMM leaders will be key to your success.

At Kiva, we're very lucky to benefit from the institutional knowledge of almost 15 years in the social impact space. Not only do we have great documentation, but there are also many Kiva veterans that can help share and onboard new team members. When it comes to impact-specific KPIs, we have many. My favorite is an impact score for every dollar that Kiva places around the world. Depending on the characteristics of the location, recipient, activity that that dollar goes towards, and others, we score how impactful that dollar is to achieve our mission. That way, we can be accountable for creating global financial inclusion.