![Jason Perocho](https://sharebird.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=256,quality=75,format=auto/https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sharebird-production/user_profiles/avatars/000/002/750/thumb/avatar.jpeg?1620835470)
AMA: Salesforce Former Senior Director, Product Marketing, Jason Perocho on Developing your Product Marketing Career
March 10 @ 10:00AM PST
View AMA Answers
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
When hiring a junior product marketer, I try and balance between hard and soft skills. For hard skills, I check to see if they are good at 1. Diagnosing the market 2. Identifying pains and benefits 3. Writing. I can't emphasize that last point enough. Make sure your junior PMM is a great writer because they will tend to be your content engine. For soft skills, I check to see if they're good at influencing direction and are genuinely a good person to be around. Questions that I would ask to test the aforementioned would be: * Tell me about a product that's good, but not marketed well. * How would you describe to someone who was not familiar with our company or products? * Tell me about a time you've influenced people without any authority? * What is your favorite product? (It could be anything) * Who is the target? * What are the key benefits? * Who are the competitors? * How should it be packaged, if differently than it is now? * Tell me about a time you encountered a road block and had to change direction? * What do you like to do outside of work? * What are two professional development areas where you would like to or that you are working to improve?
...Read More2875 Views
2 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
First, remember there is a difference between a product marketing and campaigns/demand generation lead. Product Marketers focus their time on customer research, value prop, go-to-market plan, competitive landscape, and market programs. In companies big and small, you would probably have a demand gen specialist who would keep up to date on marketing tools in order to optimize spend across channels. If you are part of the team that is investing in marketing technologies, you should talk to your customer, refresh your personas, and track changes in preferences over time. As a product marketer, your ultimate job is to know the customer better than anyone else. Identify what channel your customers want to be communicated through and then investigate technologies that would help you optimize your outreach. I keep abreast of innovations in marketing technologies by networking, attending conferences, or coffee chats with mentors. When talking with peers, I usually ask what's the most impactful book or blog they read that helped them in their careers. I'm also a huge believer in having mentors that help navigate what technologies companies are investing in. When I notice a trend, I'll research and start learning the tool as a side project.
...Read More3139 Views
2 requests
What are key certifications or courses to become a product marketing manager?
I'm a digital marketing specialist looking to transition to product marketing
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
I am not aware of any one key certification for product marketers. I work with PMMs that come from backgrounds in campaigns, sales, engineering, and product management. Each of those backgrounds lend themselves to a specific function in product marketing. In my experience, there are three types of product marketers: 1. Technical PMM 2. Market Programs PMM 3. Go-to-Market PMM. An aspiring product marketer should identify their entry point into one of the aforementioned functions. If there was one skill that unites each type of PMM, it is their ability to diagnose a market, create a positioning statement, and craft messaging that is clear, concise, and relatable. This skill can be picked up in intro marketing classes undergrad, MBA, or MOOCs. * Technical PMMs - I would look for certifications or experience in the functional area of the product. Solution Engineers are usually the perfect fit because they can create demos and deliver messaging. * Market Programs PMMs - I would look for someone who is intimately familiar with the customer or who has experience demand generation programs. Customer marketing or campaign leads are usually a great fit because they understand the customer journey. * GTM PMM - I would look for someone who has sales experience. Sales has no time for marketing BS. Those who were on the front lines remember what training works and what doesn't. I've also hired folks who have a teaching background because in the end, that's what sales enablement is.
...Read More6886 Views
5 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
The number one skill is influencing without authority. More specifically, influencing authority in a matrixed organization. By design, product marketing sits at the intersection of a multitude of functions, each with their individual KPIs. Your job is to balance the needs of your various stakeholders to drive revenue and adoption for your product(s). If your company has one product, then this task may be fairly straight forward. If your company has multiple products or multiple portfolios, then the task becomes exponentially harder. The most important hard skills are positioning and messaging. In the end, the product marketer determines what market to go after, how the product will stand out, and what benefits resonate with end consumer. It is extremely tough to take a complex idea and break it into a clear, concise, and relatable benefit statement that anyone can understand.
...Read More4199 Views
3 requests
How important are brand marketing skills for product marketers compared to analytical skills?
There is often a huge emphasis on analytical skills, instead of brand marketing skills, when it comes to product marketing job descriptions.
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
Analytical skills tend to be the preferred skill set of a product marketer because they are "running the business". Product Marketers own a product's P&L and must have the business acumen to drive revenue. Important the ones trying to size and segment the marketplace. Additionally, they'll probably be on the front lines trying to determine what segment, region, or geo to invest their budget. Brand marketing's closest overlap is with the Marketing Programs PMM function. They will ensure that the outbound messaging of the product ladders up to company's overall messaging. Additionally, they will ensure that customer facing presentations, events, and content stay true to the company's look, feel, and messaging hierarchy.
...Read More2158 Views
3 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
PMMs are responsible for the following: * Positioning Statement & Messaging - This is the heart of Product Marketing. Using our expertise, we'll create the positioning and messages we want in the market. * Business Goal - We'll define what impact we're trying to have on the business. This includes what segment / industry / geo we need to go after to lift our business. * Market / TAM - We'll identify and define the market and opportunity we're going after * Sales Enablement - We will work with sales ops to create a standard BOM that includes training, a playbook, customer stories, a first call deck, discovery questions, CTAs, and incentives (if budget) Campaigns are responsible for the following: * Campaign messaging - Campaigns will take our positioning and create campaign messaging that shifts a customer's perspective on your product. * Channels - Campaigns will identify what channels they will use to reach the prospective buyer. This includes identify content types for each channel. * Customer Journey - Campaigns will craft how the prospect will become a marketing qualified lead. * Account list - They will work with field demand gen teams to identify what accounts to go after.
...Read More5431 Views
3 requests
What's the earliest stage a startup should consider hiring a Product Marketing Manager?
I'm curious if you've observed the impact of adding a PMM to smaller organizations or if you think they're most impactful in larger organizations?
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
Seed funding is when I've generally seen PMMs hired. They're generally hired at the same time or just after a PM. Legendary HBS professor Clayton Christensen's research shows that 95% of products fail because there is no market fit. A product marketer's role in an early stage company should be to validate the market, research the customer, and identify the pain points. This type of qualitative and quantitative research is necessary to ensure your company is developing a product the market needs.
...Read More2683 Views
2 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
Product Marketing at a SaaS company requires two distinct motions: 1. Acquiring new logos 2. Expanding your install base through upsell and cross sell products. In general, most SaaS companies lead with a core product to attract new logos. Acquiring new logos in the B2B space is a heavy lift, usually with very long deal cycle times. Product marketers must depply understand not only the persona, but must intimately understand the buying team and how decisions are made. Content should be aligned to help these buying teams come to consensus at each stage of your sales proces. They then launch additional features or products designed to expand that install base. We make the bulk of our revenue by upselling their install base. For Product Marketers, this requires marketing programs that help customers understand the value of the products they currently own and ensuring they are well adopted.
...Read More2622 Views
3 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
Tough question since titles vary from company to company. My answer for this question is strictly from a Salesforce perspective. My expectation for a Sr. PMM to Director would be that they are able to build a team across all functions of PMM and align cross functional partners (PMs, AR, PR, Campaigns, Content) around an initiative that has a significant business impact. This includes, but not limited to, launching a product, repositioning a product in the marketplace, coordinating a worldwide enablement effort, or driving new, innovative marketing programs across a large area. Each of these requires mastery of your specific area of PMM and the ability to influence senior stakeholders across the business.
...Read More2946 Views
1 request
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
The path towards senior management is anything but a straight line. The best product marketers I've encountered worked in something other than product marketing early in their careers. These roles include sales, demand gen, or engineering. Personally, I career transitioned a lot in my 20s and pursued whatever interested me. I started by studying IT (Database systems) and was an engineer, wrote speeches in the government, became a product manager in the Pentagon, and then became a product marketer. I did not "move up" quickly, but rather was building a wide range of skills that I'd eventually use as a PMM. That skillset helped me move fairly quickly in my 30s because I understood what each stakeholder was looking for and how to best work with them. Once you have your foot in the door as a PMM, you have two options. You can specialize in a specific area or become a generalist. There's no wrong career path. You can make it to VP by being the best Sales Enablement or Market Programs lead out there. In order to make it to CMO, then you need to have a firm grasp of each area in addition to functions found in corporate marketing like campaigns.
...Read More2652 Views
1 request
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
Product Marketing is an interesting role because it puts you at the intersection of so many different functions, allowing you to "run the business". Outside of CMO, a couple other logical steps I've seen PMMs take are Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or General Manager (GM). Chief Revenue Officer is the most interesting of the bunch because it puts you at the center of all revenue growth. Most of the time, you would find a sales leader occupying this role, but I have seen several with a strong product marketing background. General Manager is perhaps the easiest to get into beause the ultimate job of the GM is to drive revenue by understanding the end customer and delivering a product and message that solves their problem or need. The important difference is that they must also must manage product development as well as influence sales GTM motions.
...Read More3320 Views
2 requests
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
We understand what marketing channels work best for a feature rollout by talking to our customer. Everything we do always comes back to understanding the customer better than anyone else in the company. For example, if I talk to a customer and I ask them why they haven't enabled a specific feature, I would ask them how would they like to learn about new features. I'd run surveys, focus groups, and A/B testing to determine the most effective communication strategy to ensure customers adopot our features. SaaS companies should also not over look using utilization reports to segment their customer base and then run in app campaigns to highlight new features. The is especially true if adoption of that feature will lead to upsell or cross sell opportunities at a later point in the customer lifecycle.
...Read More2235 Views
1 request
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
I wish I understood how product marketing ideally works. Based on my experience, here's how product marketing teams should work together: 1. A Product marketing lead identifes a goal. The three goals are usually to create pipe, mature pipe, or close deals. 2. The PMM will select a target based off what the business needs. They can double down on a region/segment/geo that is working, or try to lift a poor performing area. 3. They'll create a positioning statement and messaging hierarchy that will be used for this initiative. 4. They'll allocate a portion of their budget to spread across campaigns and GTM to execute. At this point, a PMM would bring in campaigns and work with them on the following: 1. Identifiy the goal of the campaign. 2. Allcoate budget from demand gen. 3. Create campaign messaging. This messaging should shift the customer's mindset from one state to another (as defined by the positioning statement) 4. Select what channels and content form factors the campaign will use to reach prospects 5. Create the customer flows (both targeting and re-targeting in order to get a prospect to fill out a form). If new content needs to be created, then the PMM will work with creative/agency to produce that content. Finally, a GTM lead will work with sales ops to priortize a selling motion. 1. The GTM team will set a specific sales goal with sales ops 2. PMM will create a playbook with discovery questions intentionally selected to hit on the campaign. 3. PMM will determine if they want to incentivize sales. 4. PMM will reach out to a specific sales "horse" depending on the objective. Sales horses are SDRs (inbound leads), BDRs (outbound leads), AEs (Account owners), Specilaist (LOB buyers), or SE (Solutions Engineers). 5. PMM will define teh sales action this horse is suppose to take 6. PMM will define the CTA where they can send customers to learn more or deepen them in the sales funnel 7. PMM will work with sales ops to create a tracking dashboard that measures success. Ultimately, that's it! There are nuances that are glossed over, especially when it comes to certain channels like AR or PR.
...Read More9081 Views
1 request
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
You're absolutley right! The first starts by understanding how much emphasis the company puts on distribution vs. product. An observation I've made is that companies who have a CEO with a sales/marketing background give PMMs more authority over product development and GTM. Companies with CEOs with an engineering/product background tend to give PMMs a more limited scope focused on market validation, positioning, and messaging. What has made me successful in a PMM career was starting on a nascent product in which we were "firefighting" every single day. I thrive in startups or ambiguous environment when we're trying to prioritize what's important. When I first joined, our programs in my product group were not complex to begin with. It was about getting the bare necessities out to customers and sales in order to drive demand, mature pipe, and close deals. I shuffled from function to function, experimenting and quickly learning about all the levers I could pull to drive revenue.
...Read More3171 Views
1 request
Jason Perocho
Amperity SVP, Head of Marketing • March 11
The best approach would be to ensure you have some great facing public content that you can attach to your CV when applying for a job. Post-MBA PMMs tend to be content workhorses. Leaders need PMMs that can write clearly, concisely, and relatably. I also recommend MBAs go out and get some practical demand gen marketing experience. Start a blog and then invest a few dollars to promote it. Try and get syndicated on a content hungry site like Business Insider, HuffPo, or Forbes. This will give you a great story in interviews marketing something that you're truly passionate about.
...Read More3811 Views
2 requests