AMA: SmartRecruiters Former Sr Director, Product & Customer Marketing, Jack Wei on Product Marketing KPI's

My answer spans the top hard + soft skills: Hard: Well-rounded across words and numbers. You often hear that PMMs have to be strong storytellers (framing, positioning, mesaging, writing), but the highest-performing and highest-potential PMMs I've worked with are also very analytical and comfortable with some number crunching. In the B2B space, in particular, backing up any story with inspiring message, facts, and data will do wonders.  Soft: Empathy and stakeholder management. Someone who can pu ...Read More

There are dfinitely many directions to take. I'll try to distill down to two metrics across external & internal GTM KPIs: External Leads, or Revenue within X days of launch Activation/adoption within X days of launch Internal Stakeholder satisfaction (survey) GTM on time delivery, asset readiness The X in days depends on the type of business you're in. For B2C you'll focus on MRR and shorter conversion cycles, likely within the first 15-30 days. For B2B align it with your avg sales cycle for ...Read More

I go back to ensuring that the team structure is aligned to business objectives and associated KPIs. My company does have aggressive sales, customer satisfaction, and product adoption metrics (spans across the board) so I like to structure the team accordingly.  I'll use a buyer journey framework to illustrate my ideal state team structure given these objectives (moving from top to bottom of funnel): Content Marketer: Focuses on creating top of funnel assets to drive demand & support categor ...Read More

Having consulted for PMM teams, and built/run one from scratch, it's safe to say the areas of responsibility for any PMM is on an ever-evolving continuum. However, I see a difference between a junior PMM vs a first PMM hire... in that the first PMM hire should NOT be junior. That's not a knock on the junior role. In fact, I'm urging early stage Founders/CEOs/VP Marketing to have some semblance of a career path for PMM if your natural inclination is to maximize value from a high performing yet lo ...Read More

Internal newsletters, revenue org all-hands, relevant slack channels, and team-specific meetings. Of course, not every activity is shared through every channel. Depending on the "size" of the project or deliverable, we choose which channels to broadcast through. Thankfully we have a well-organized enablement team that manages these channel logistics, so we're able to efficiently streamline internal comms.On a personal level, it's critical that I provide key executives and other team leads with v ...Read More

Ultimately, the change in win rate against that particular competitor before vs. after your CI project.  There are sub goals and metrics to unpack here:  QoQ change in the competitor features & functions, and messaging The pace at which your product team is able to ship against new intel PM survey results on the usefulness of your CI program This may be a controversial statement, but after seeing CI programs run out of Product, PMM, and Ops at different companies, I think the actual research ...Read More

Such is life in business? At the risk of sounding like a corporate stiff, we must set markers to swim towards, otherwise we're just swimming in circles... So if the KPI feels arbitrary, narrow the scope or make the number smaller. If other stakeholders disagree, that's a different problem to solve. We go by setting SMART goals (google it). It is a cheesy acronym but it works. It forces you to scrutinize and be honest with yourself and your team on the goal. And it will be realistic if all boxes ...Read More

Maybe this is a better question for my team.  For me, I think it's the opposite. KPIs are valuable for me as a PMM because, through all the noise and new requests/projects that I inevitably get in a specific period of time, I can pull my head out of the weeds and make sure I'm moving towards that targeted KPI. It helps to bring measurable meaning to my work. Due to the fact that PMMs don't have "direct impact" on key biz metrics like revenue or renewal/upsell/churn, the value perceived by other ...Read More

Not sure I understand the question. If this is to set revenue targets for a new industry expansion where GTM resources have not yet been assigned, I'd do a top-down and bottom-up analysis of the total addressable market (TAM), then take a percentage of that TAM to set the revenue target. You'll need to have marketing-only activities ready to back up your assumptions if no other resources are available. Top-down: Research the overall industry, audience size, propensity to spend, competitive prici ...Read More

This ties back to business objectives (corporate level KPIs), and how your team / individual role & responsibility is structured against those objectives. You'll often see that, depending on the company stage and maturity, PMM will skew towards alignment with either Product OR Sales. But it's rarely perfectly positioned in the middle.  Let's say your business has an aggressive product growth target... well then you're likely to staff a PMM that'll specialize in launches, or maybe even a life ...Read More

Know the business forecasts for as far out as possible( preferably at least 1 year) -- overall strategy, revenue, R&D investments, headcount, budget, HR/hiring policies, etc. Have a vision of the team structure that aligns with this strategy List out the net-new roles you're planning for, prioritizing must haves vs. nice to haves Assign the must have roles to a timeline (order of hiring), supported by a note on why Shop this around to your manager and any other key stakeholder; confirm budge ...Read More

I must ask back: in what context? Because PMM can flex its priorities and alignment towards Product vs. Sales vs. Customer Success (or even Marketing demand gen/comms, I go back do ensuring that whatever KPI is set supports a top 3 corporate objective that the C-Suite cares about. If you forced me to point to a specific KPI, I'd pick #leads or $pipeline generated. You see this especially at smaller, early stage companies where the Marketing team is just getting built out and the team is trying t ...Read More