AMA: Match Group Director of Product & Brand Marketing, Match Group North America, Jane Reynolds on Establishing Product Marketing

Market research is 100% necessary, both from a product perspective and marketing perspective, so you're making the right moves! From my experience, most organizations have market research owned by it's own separate team or the product team, but depending on the size of your org, it could make sense to live within product marketing since it serves both sides. For example, market research allows PMs to develop features that retain users while also serving the marketing team in knowing how to best sell the product. The business case is simple—with many companies tightening budgets in the past couple years, it's a huge money and time saver to test out product ideas and campaign slogans before they go live. Plus, product marketers are storytellers—and that includes for internal comms as well. With market research living within your function, you can make sure all teams, from product to marketing to design etc, have the information they need to make the best decisions for their functions based on the insights you uncover.

You'll earn buy-in by identifying the hole in your company that product marketing will fill. Do you currently have strategies for how to increase user adoption of features? Do you have a team dedicated to ideating features or offers that can serve both top-of-funnel growth and brand loyalty? Do you have any understanding if a feature could have had more adoption if different language or timing was deployed? If the answer is no to any of those questions, then your organization needs a product marketing function. As far as metrics, it depends on the project but I find I'm most often looking to adoption and retention—did users adopt the new feature and did it improve their experience so they stuck around. AB testing is also crucial to the product marketing function so you can continue to iterate and personalize the experience to each user dependent on their usage, age, location, interests, etc.

Data, data, data. * Communicate your KPIs early and often. Make sure everyone knows what they are and that they're aligned. * AB test all areas that product marketing touches to ensure you're not only reaching your KPIs but ensuring that you're getting the best possible outcome. * Don't set it and forget it. Continue to test, come up with new ideas, and iterate on the work you've done. * Data isn't just from testing and user metrics. Get feedback from colleagues to ensure your work is seen as valuable and create a plan for how to incorporate that feedback into future work.

1) Don't get edged out of product roadmap planning. Product marketing and the product team have to be in lock-step to align on goals and timelines. 2) Don't ignore your design team. Working closely on how to deliver messaging and educate throughout the user experience. 3) Don't get discouraged! I've never heard of an org that did not benefit from a product marketing function, so stick with it.

* Challenge your team. Strong talent wants challenges in their work, so give it to them. Loop them into important conversations so they can think strategically. Challenge their decisions - not just for the sake of doing so, but to make sure every angle has been considered. * Champion your team. You are your team's advocate. Socialize the work they do. Make sure their name is known by people who can act as mentors and promoters. * Give them autonomy. You hired them for a reason; let them do their job. Be a resource but not a micromanager. * Provide consistency. Treat all members across the team equally and commit to your management style early on.