AMA: MyFitnessPal VP of PMM, Katie Levinson on Consumer Product Marketing

I have found that people who come from a customer-facing role in the past, or roles that combine the analytical with the creative, make for good hires. Specifically, I look for: * Consumer-centric mindset and empathy: when thinking about problems to solve, do you put your audience at the center? How does that come to life within your role today? Have you ever pushed for something on behalf of your target audience because you cared deeply about building or communicating something to them that would help them? * Analytical skills: are you comfortable with data and research? How have you used data in the past to come to conclusions and recommendations? * Communication skills, both verbal and written: you have to be a decent writer to be a good product marketer. This does not mean you’re a copy writer, but you have to be able to clearly communicate things like value propositions, go-to-market plans, strategies, etc. You will also be managing up and out a lot in meetings, so being clear in your verbal communications is also important and what I watch out for in interviews (don’t be verbose!). * Creative thinking/problem solving: can you overcome obstacles? How do you take on challenges?

As someone who started in consumer brand, then went to B2B2C product marketing, then back to B2C product marketing, these are the areas of overlap I’ve seen between the two: * Competitive landscape and audience insights: Deep understanding of both the competitive landscape and your target audience (in B2B that tends to be buyers/decision makers in certain verticals/industries, whereas in B2C it’s a broader psychographic/behavioral target) * Cross-functional collaboration: Working cross-functionally, especially in a role of influencer versus direct decision-maker is similar across both * Analytical skills: ability to interpret data—be it business metrics, customer feedback, or product performance—is crucial for driving informed decisions in both B2B and B2C marketing * A/B testing: to optimize strategies, campaigns and messaging effectively * Strategic thinking and written communication skills: help bring teams along to a plan/vision and aligning key stakeholders Some of the gaps that you might encounter when going from B2B to B2C: * Emotional benefits and insights: in the consumer world, you have to hone in on the emotional element and genuine insights in order to stand out. This is really hard to do and a skill that takes time, effort and a lot of feedback to develop. * Brand and creative partnership: PMM plays a larger role here than in B2B. This entails crafting briefs and providing feedback on creative assets. * Channel strategy: because you aren’t working with a sales team, you need to have broader knowledge of different marketing channels, how they work, when to use them, etc, and help tailor messages to different channels.

Since I work in B2C organizations, we don't actually have a B2B PMMs (or any other b2b marketers). I've seen consumer product marketing organized in a few different ways: * By vertical/business unit * By audience (if there are multiple different consumers the org serves that are different enough) * By KPI/goal * By product team (about 3:1 PM to PMM) There's no wrong or right way to do it, it depends on the size of your organization, your revenue model, and how robust the product platform is.

One of the things I love most about product marketing is the opportunity to help shape the consumer experience, both in product and through various marketing channels. It’s a true end-to-end lifecycle role, starting with research, developing positioning and messaging, and setting GTM strategy that all influence the success of your product and business. I also love that in order to be an excellent product marketer, you have to really understand and empathize with your target audience. A key part of the role is having conversations with your target audience, understanding their pain points and needs and translating that for your cross-functional partners. Last but not least, it’s probably one of the least silo’d roles. In order to be successful, you have to work with pretty much everyone, from of course product and other marketers, but also data science, research, business operations, analytics, and even engineering.

One: talk to as many different product marketers as you can across a wide variety of company sizes and industries. What you’ll hear from each of them is that product marketing means different things at different companies, and they aren’t kidding. It’s good to get a sense of what the role entails/will entail and see what resonates with you. This will also help you to identify any skills/experience gaps you might have. Two: Take on projects that allow you to develop and highlight these skills: * Research (qualitative or quantitative, ideally both) and analytical projects to get comfortable with data and making recommendations from it. * Managing a marketing launch from start to finish. Some of the job can be project manager-esque, so showing how you work cross-functionally to get something off the ground is important. * Partnering with product on a new feature launch or even smaller experiments.

Partnerships can have a great multiplier effect on your product marketing efforts, depending on how strategic the partnership is and also what you’re hoping to get out of it. But, your GTM strategy, your value propositions, messaging and overall marketing and product strategy have to be solid first - if those components aren’t strong, then a partnership isn’t going to help. There are lots of positives, with the caveat that the partnership makes sense strategically from a brand and product standpoint: * Increased reach: you expand your audience size, so your top of funnel should be larger and thus overall conversion numbers (to whatever primary metric you’re tracking) should also be higher * Cross-promotion: you can have opportunities to dip into other people’s audiences and tap a group of people that you may not reach without a partnership via promotions directly through their channels * Consumer experience: partnerships that are driven by product can oftentimes lead to great experiences for your end users (for example integrations of data from one company into another company’s product)