AMA: Prove Head of Product Marketing, Leandro Margulis on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

This is an iterative process, and always better to over-communicate than under-communicate, so we can get everyone's feedback and input and people feel they have been heard and their input taken into consideration. Even if you do not end up going in a certain way, be able to explain why not and why that input was still helpful.

Product Marketing could be under Marketing or Product depending on the organization. The good thing about a Product Markering role is that the role, by its nature, interacts with many different parts of the business, from Sales to Marketing to Product, so Product Marketing gives you an opportunity to see how the organization works beyond product marketing and prepares you well for leadership roles accross the organization.

Have you help others launched products or features and you can talk about what exactly you did in that process? Or have you launched any type of campaign, event, etc where you can showcase the skills that are transferable to a product launch that you can talk about? A lot of the skills needed to launch products are transferable from other disciplines.

Product Marketing is an evolving role and can mean slightly different things at different companies, from sales enablement to competitive analysis and everything in between. Hence, I would suggest this product manager to define what product marketing means to them and find / build a place most aligned with what they want to do.

I would say that providing the voice of the customer and the voice of the marker to the product manager so we can build products that resonate with our audience is key. I would also say that providing the appropriate messaging and positioing for our products to go to marker is critical. In order to do so, we need to understand the competitive landscape well.

Well, the question of "What is Product Marketing" Could mean different things at different companies, but my answer is that we provide the voice of the market and the voice of the customer internally to the product manager so we can build products that resonate with our audience, and we are the voice of the product externally providing the appropriate messaging and positioning to go to market.

For any promotion, I look for the person to already be performing at the next level, and have an interest in doing so. Not everyone wants to be a people manager. That said, if they do and they are already managing contractors, agencies, and other people are working with them from other departments, we can put a plan together to make this happen and provide any additional coaching if needed to support the person's success. 

Congrats on the new role! Very excited for you. I agree that it is good to have a 30-60-90 day plan and to make sure you can show progress and positive impact early yo make a good impression. That said, I would suggest you give yourself some time during the first 30 days to absorb as much as you can about the company, the interpersonal dynamics, the challenges and opportunities so you can then define and priorities in month 2 and deliver something of value in month 3 on the top 3 opportunities you identified in month 1 and worked on month 2 and 3.

The definition of "Extensive competitive product research" may be different for different people. I suggest asking the CEO and Product / Engineering teams the kind of questions they are looking to answer. Sometimes the high level market research you can get from a 3rd party will not be enough, and you will need to get creative to get the information needed via surveys, primary research or other methods. My best advise here is to define the task in more detail to undertand what people are expecting.

I am more about roles than hierarchies, and Sr. Manager or Director may mean different things at different companies depending on their size and level of development / maturity of the company. I would be more focused on the role, increasing responsibilities and impact than titles so you can write your own story in terms of career progression. That said, in any company you will need to be already performing at the next level to make the jump. So I would look at the Director of Product Marketing job descriptions at companies of similar size and development to the one that you are in, and make sure you are performing at that level to then go for that promotion.

This is one of the reasons to work for a smaller company where you get a wider scope, there is always pros and cons on each company type. Now if you are in a large company with a small scope, Make the implicit explicit and talk to your manager and others to express your interest in learning more about the wider scope. That should open doors to get more involved with a wider variety of product marketing tasks.

It makes sense that the first marketing hire on a product-led organization is the Product Marketing lead :). I would say put your strategy together and depending on the priorities you will see what kind of marketing hires you need, vs perhaps going with external agencies for some marketing activities. You may want to keep the strategic items in-house like competitive intelligence, but anything related to marketing campaigns you could start with external agencies / contractors with the optionf or them to become full-time. It really depends on your audience and what you are trying to do next. For example, if you are targeting developers, my first hire there was a technical writer to clean up the product / API / SDK documentation. So sorry to say that the answer here is "it depends", but hopefully the context above can provide some pointers.

Make sure you have periodic meetings scheduled with each separate and some times with both together. As PMM, we bring the "voice of the customer" and the "Voice of the market" from the outside in, and we provide the messaging and positioning for the go-to-market strategy for the "inside out", so we need to get sales input and feedback intro product to influence the roadmap, and make sure we educate sales on the product in the best way possible so it resonates with their customers.

Congrats on the new role! What you are describing seems like a lateral move, you moved to a similar role to the one you had before, but in a different industry. This could be an opportunity for you to learn the new industry quickly and showcase your PMM skills to have an important impact in the organization quickly. One suggestion here could be to talk to your manager about your career path on either an upcoming 1:1 or during the formal review process. I would come prepared to that meeting understand what is expected for the next level and showcasing how you are already performing at that level and/or by when you will be at that level so that can help drive the promotion conversation.

One of the main skills I see to success in PMM im Empathy. Empathy in the sense of being able to to put yourself in other people's shoes. You are the customer and market advocate internallt and the product advocate externally, so understanding those different perspectives can help a LOT in any PMM materials you are developing, from slides to demos to websites to campaigns.

This question reminds me of Reid Hoffman's book "The Startup of You". If you think of yourself as a startup, think about which skills you have and are good at, what others you want to learn, and see how you can hone on those skills in your current or upcoming role as well as which other skills you want to learn or develop so it will help you get the next role. There are different career paths for product marketers, so you have options.

While all relationships are important, having the right relationship with Product (Product Manager counterparts) is critical, so you can provide them the input about customers and market that can influence the PM's roadmap in a positive way. That said, relationship with Sales are also critical, as you may be supporting them with the right materials for them to do their job.

First of all, you are in the right place in the Sharebird Community :) I would also recommend the Product Marketing Community and PMA. There are not only resources you can consume, but also communities you can consult, stay active with that can enrich your professional and personal life with meaningful connections, and also provide you with additional professional growth opportunities.