AMA: National Basketball Association Senior Director, Marketing, Kristen Brophy on Building Product Marketing Team

It's hard to pick a favorite because most of my interviews look different from candidate to candidate. Often, my questions are focused on deeply understanding their past experience and asking for relevant examples that demonstrate the skills and compentencies that will be unqiue to the role and business need. Or, we unpack a case study together. I also go beyond the resume when I'm interviewing. One question that I typically ask is where the candidates want to learn and grow. The best answers to ...Read More

Structuring a product marketing team is unique to every business. You could start by asking questions like:  What are the business metrics that the organization needs to drive and how can your product marketing team contribute to those top line goals? I like tying product marketing to topline business goals because it's easier to point directly to impact that the organization care most about.  What are the key outcomes and objectives for our team and what are the intiatives, roles, and responsib ...Read More

One effective way to scale a PMM team is to understand what the business needs and align PMMs to support those needs or goals. But, what a business needs can range from gaps in employee skill sets to stalling revenue growth.  For example, Is your business investing in entering a new vertical? Maybe they need PMM support in understanding the market dynamics and consumer behaviors in that industry or space  Is your Product team building new feature bundles or entirely new product suites? They migh ...Read More

Product marketing is a relatively new function so this is a question I get a lot.  A great way to help companies undestand the PMM function is by helping them understand the value of product marketing. There are all sorts of way to establish value. One place to start is by clearly defining what you and your team's contribution will be (which should map to the overarching business goals) and then delivering against those goals. Socializing your team's stated goals and objectives with internal roa ...Read More

This is a great question! Developing and building relationships with your colleagues is so important, espeically in a remote world. Here are a few ways that I've seen success in building relationships with product managers:  Shared goals. Align on what's most important to the business (e.g. revenue goals, a user growth goal, a feature growth goal) and how each of you (or your teams) will uniquely contribute to those topline goals. For example: If the goal is to drive overall feature growth, will ...Read More