AMA: Quizlet Director of Product and Lifecycle Marketing, Caroline Walthall on Product Marketing Career Path

As with products you sell, positioning yourself successfully has to be led by actual value creation.  10 tips to position yourself for a PMM lead role by delivering expanded value: Increase your role’s scope by offering or asking to take on additional features or product pods. This gives you broader exposure to the overall business and to different leaders across the organization. Enhance the depth of your understanding in at least one area. Become the go-to expert for either an audience, a set ...Read More

Both can be valuable, but what you’ll get from each is different and the risks of each path are different. You’ll also want to think through what you need most from this next chapter in your career. The upside of going with a scrappy startup is you can get your hands dirty and rapidly gain experience on a wide range of product marketing projects across inbound and outbound PMM. It can be refreshing, especially early in your career to be given latitude to own more projects and the accountability ...Read More

Careers in product marketing can be really varied, but I’ve noticed a few commonalities in successful PMMs’ stories. (Caveat: This is a simplification of a linear career path, but most people's paths aren't actually like this the whole way through!) Establish marketing experience in one or a few channels early in your career to learn how to create great campaigns, bring messages to like through copy and creative, and test and learn via experimentation. Learn the ins and outs of your channel and ...Read More

First of all – you have to make sure you are being very explicit with them about your goal to grow into a product marketing role. Ask them if they’d be willing to help you build a short one page career growth document where you can align on high value activities that suit the company’s needs and your own aspirations for growth. When framed this way, it’s very hard for a manager to say no to laying out ideas and having a conversation.  Three approaches to consider (and you can mix them): Ask for ...Read More

First, check in to ask what the roles and responsibilities have been up to now. If they haven’t been documented, do a mini “listening tour” with the key players to offer to document how things have gone and what they think could be better. Listen closely for what they really care about. Ask to get your hands on other core documentation that has held together GTM plans.  After reviewing what has been done, think about ways you can demonstrate how you can drive efficiency and clarity in the overal ...Read More

It’s going to vary depending on the company and your manager’s expectations. So make sure to have this conversation directly with them as well! That said, here’s a starter checklist to see where you stand. You know not just how to do the work, but how to scope what needs to be done. You’ve become quite autonomous and a driver of your own project list. Related to this, you ask for feedback, but your manager trusts your work output and is okay with not reviewing everything you put together. You’ve ...Read More