AMA: Payrix Former VP of Product Marketing, Charlene Wang on Establishing Product Marketing

Product Marketing and Growth perform different roles in a marketing team and need to be measured in different ways. Whereas Growth is often easier to quantify, concrete measurements that can be attributed to Product Marketing only become clearer as you get further down the funnel, once deals have been created and the effectiveness of positioning is easier to see on a case-by-case basis. However, Product Marketing does meaningfully contribute to every stage of the GTM journey.   At a high level, ...Read More

My current group has almost a thousand people, so I’ll let someone else chime in on specifics for a smaller organization.   In general, the first thing I do in any new organization is try to understand the state of the business, customers, and team, including everyone I would directly or indirectly support. That means lots of background research and introducing myself to internal collaborators and key customers. I keep these conversations open ended to listen for what’s working, what’s not, and ...Read More

There are a handful of key measures that I care about as a Product Marketing leader. To prioritize the top 3, I would look at messaging adoption, win rates, and number of customer advocates.       The primary day-to-day weapon of Product Marketing is messaging and enablement, so I first look at messaging clarity, adoption, and feedback. To measure clarity, I keep track of the consistency of key messaging points and differentiators used by sales and other field teams. Adoption can be quantified b ...Read More

I like to start by defining what is Product Marketing, what we care about, and why it matters.   What is Product Marketing? Product Marketing lives and breathes everything surrounding our target audiences. We deeply understand and empathize with audiences internally and externally, creating differentiated positioning based on our products and messaging that resonates. Product Marketers are masters of storytelling, strategy, and structure. We quarterback across product, marketing, sales, and othe ...Read More

Delegating is extremely important as you grow! It can feel unnatural when you’re getting started, so here are some tips if you’re doing it for the first time: Scope for the person: Try to understand your new teammate and what they bring to the table. Try to understand their strengths and where they may need coaching. Based on their unique skills, define a workstream that plays to their strengths and allows them to stretch their skills, while limiting the downsides if they don’t ramp up right awa ...Read More

Product Marketing is a highly cross-functional team that sits at the intersection of all customer-facing and product teams, which can be exciting and create a lot of challenges. Product Marketers often end up falling into one of two categories: a catch all for content requests or the engine of go-to-market strategy. To be a strategic partner to the business, Product Marketing leaders need to build trust-based relationships across teams and prioritize areas that move the needle.   A common challe ...Read More

Every marketing team operates differently, so the answer depends on the organization.   In general, Product Marketers own the core positioning of the company & products and are responsible for translating this into messaging that wins deals and market share. To do so, Product Marketers need to deeply understand target audiences, the buying process, competitors and the market, and the company and product(s). Product Marketing often sits in Marketing, sometimes in Product, and rarely in other ...Read More