AMA: Shopify Head of Retail Product Marketing, Courtney Craig on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

First, I was patient! I actually got hired as a leader, then for a short timeframe my team was flattened. I didn't enjoy being an individual contributor as much, but I used to the time to deepen my PMM skills and to lead the team by influence. Second, I asked for what I wanted.... and I kept asking for it. This is so important! I was very clear with my manager and demonstrated why I was the best person for the role. I kept doing the best work I could until there was an opportunity to get back to leading. But ultimately, you are in charge of your own development. If you are doing all of the above, have waited long enough and it's still not working out, then don't keep waiting. Don't get stuck. Sometimes the best way to grow is to move to another company where you can see yourself growing, even if it's a lateral move for awhile.

To become a PMM manager, I would: - Demonstrate that you can lead people, even if you aren't a manager. That means leading by influence and leading strategy. Come up with ideas and champion them across your team/organization. Rally others around them and execute, then report on the impact it made. Do this over and over. - ASK. Be vocal about what you want and set up a plan to get there with your manager. Possibly just ask to manage 1 person to start. - Work on as many cross-functional and collaborative projects as possible, to build the muscle of working with many people, lots of opinions, and motivating people to take action.

I've had to coach weak writers, and I will say it's very challenging. If you are set on PMM, then to improve your writing, messaging, and positioning skills I would: - Take a class through PMA, Reforge or MasterClass on messaging, positioning, and storytelling. Or read books on it, there are so many! It's less about writing style, and more about identifying the most captivating parts of a story or the "lead" and how to structure the flow of that narrative wherever you are putting it. - Lean heavily on your copywriters and content marketers to develop good messaging. Many times you can write out the facts, then ask them to workshop how to craft the story with you. - Lead messaging workshops. You can come with the product value propositions, features, etc and brainstorm messaging concepts / how to communicate the product value to the market. This will help you crowdsource ideas and bubble up winners. Then leverage a copy writer or even ai tools to finalize the messaging before it goes to market. - Use AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to get you started, then be an editor instead of a writer. Get really good at prompting and training the ai to provide outputs that give you a lot to work with. - Put yourself in the audience's shoes constantly. Step back and think: If I had no context, would I care about this/understand it? Is this differentiated? Does this explain how we provide value? - Interview your sales team and interview customers/prospects. Write down what they say, identify trends, compelling statements and use that to create your messaging.

* Product Positioning - This is the most important skill you can possess/understand as a PMM. It drives everything else, and nothing else works when this is wrong. * Messaging Development & Storytelling - I don't think you can be a great PMM without being a good storyteller. You need to learn a repeatable process for arriving at good messaging, and understand basic storytelling strategies/skills in order to create results as a PMM. This skill can carry you into any area of Marketing. * Go-to-market Strategy - You need to know all the pieces that go into creating a GTM strategy, and I don't just mean a product launch plan. I mean, what should the business do in order to drive growth for their product/solution, even post-launch? This skill is a business skill and will serve you well no matter where you go or what you do. Also, I personally think it's important to get a mix of experience at different types of companies. Whether they are different industries, B2B vs. B2C, or sizes, all of those differences will make you a stronger business strategist and PMM. Getting stuck in the same formula ultimately will not help anyone grow.

If you want to be an exec, you need to understand other areas of marketing (even as a Product Marketing exec). Period! But, you have choices in how you do that, and it doesn't necessarily mean you need to take a role in a different specialty. 1. Work very closely with other marketing specialities, especially the ones that contribute heavily to growth KPIs. Create pods/rituals/interlocks with Demand or Growth Marketing to understand their strategies, results, and best practices. Also do this with Customer/Lifecycle Marketing, and Content Marketing. 2. Work at smaller companies where PMM often also has to do one of the specialities I mentioned above. 3. Do the PMM function at multiple (and I mean more than 2) companies. PMM is slightly different everywhere, and you will gain different marketing skills at each place. 4. Take a role in an adjacent craft, like Content Marketing, Revenue Marketing, or Lifecycle Marketing. My experience in these roles is what has equipped me to be able to lead large PMM teams, and lead/contribute to the broader marketing strategy for a business beyond just PMM work.

I think Product Marketing will shift beyond product launches and research to a craft that focuses on business and product growth strategy. Meaning, PMM will take more ownership over revenue targets, setting the strategic direction of a business line and product, and then providing the strategic plan that other cross-functional teams will execute. Many companies already do this (like Adobe) and I think others will soon follow.

At about 7-9 years into my career when I was mid-level, I knew I was at a crossroads and it was an important time to assess what I wanted to do next. I made a strategic decision to work at a different type of organization than I had before. --> Up to that point, I had worked in news, PR, online media/marketing, and customer success, then finally PMM, and decided I liked Product Marketing the best. However, I was mainly self-taught as a PMM, doing it at smaller companies. I wanted to see how expert PMMs did it, at scale. I wanted to get my "masters in PMM" so to speak. So, I spoke with a mentor/senior leader I respected, and asked him what I should do. He told me I should work at a larger company for awhile, so I could learn how PMM is designed across a large org, and how deep it goes. Get a playbook so to speak. This was great advice, and was why I made the jump from working at startups to working at GoDaddy. I had to take a "step down" from a Director level for a while to get my foot in the door (I started as a Senior Manager), but it was completely worth it. GoDaddy was a company that had been around a long time, but had interesting new market opportunities. They also had a well-established Product Marketing organization. Luckily, I learned how to deepen my skills in nearly every area of the craft (from messaging to pricing), from who I still think are some of the best product marketers out there. This is all because I had a hunch, trusted myself, stayed humble, and made the leap. (I also leveraged my network to get my application seen.)