AMA: Spotify Associate Director, Head of Product Marketing at Spotify for Artists, Josephine Ruiz-Healy on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

Depends on the role. If I’m hiring an Associate PMM, I don’t expect to see prior PMM experience. It’s more about seeing a demonstrable record of achieving results, hearing a growth mindset during the live interview, and evaluating their communication skills with a take-home interview. If I’m hiring a PMM or Senior PMM, I look at their prior PMM experience to determine if they have related experience for the open role. PMM can vary depending on the customer you’re serving (B2C vs B2B), the sales motion (sales-led vs product-led), the industry (ads vs healthcare), etc. For example, if I’m hiring a PMM focused on b2b ad solutions, I hope to see prior experience with b2b PMM or with ad products. But, related experience isn’t everything; passion and hustle can take you far. Stand out in the interview by researching the company and team via company blog posts or podcasts with the CEO, demonstrating your passion for the audience or market you’re serving with nuanced insights, and testing the product such that you’re able to articulate differentiation, benefits, and opportunities to the interview panel.

Yes, as long as you are connecting the dots with your own work and applying what you’ve learned to your team. For example, I’m a big fan of Lenny’s Podcast and the MKT1 Newsletter — they’re great ways to learn how other companies approach product, marketing, and strategy and improve your own team’s growth or launch initiatives. I directly used one of the MKT1 Newsletters to inform annual planning for my team. You can find inspiration everywhere — keep your eyes peeled for good marketing in the wild. That can come in the form of email copy, direct mail, subway ads, etc. I was in the Meatpacking district last year and ran across the Pinterest Predicts popup — it was a great example of how to tangibly bring their competitive differentiation to life. 

I wanted to develop mastery across PMM core competencies — inbound and outbound. At some companies, they split up product marketing into inbound or outbound teams, but I find that the most successful PMMs are those that can do both. * Inbound, i.e. the research that dictates what features and products to build for your target audience. This includes a strong understanding of your customer, competitors, and their market. Earlier in my career, I focused on taking on increasingly more challenging inbound projects, like leading a customer segmentation or a customer immersion that I could use to inform the product roadmap. * Outbound, i.e. the strategy and tactics to successfully bring a product to market. This includes quarterbacking all the work that eventually is customer-facing — positioning and pricing, messaging, sales enablement, gtm channels, launch objectives, run-of-shows, etc. While PMM may not be personally executing on every detail, they’re quarterbacking the GTM effort and are the main POC on project updates. Throughout my career, I’ve worked on different types of products to become a better outbound marketer. Some examples: B2B vs B2C, 0-1 vs scaling, free vs paid, U.S. only vs global, etc. And then beyond the hard skills, there are soft skills like team leadership and XFN influence. Before I started directly hiring and managing a team, I looked for many ways to demonstrate leadership on my broader marketing team. For example, I volunteered to manage an intern, I proposed a new launch prioritization framework to improve our team’s ways of working, and I started mentoring more junior members of the team. 

While an important part of product marketing is aligning with product goals and plans, most product marketers don’t spend enough time developing marketing-led strategies. I see a lot of PMMs that rely on product for direction, but the best marketing teams develop narratives that are out in front of the product, implement marketing levers that bring that messaging to life, and ultimately guide product direction. For example, our marketing team noticed that customers were increasingly viewing and using our increasingly multi-product portfolio as a platform, instead of distinct product lines which were how they appeared in-product. As a result, our team developed a new portfolio brand that could help bring together our products under one unified umbrella — this helped reduce customer acquisition costs, streamline marketing programs, grow adoption through cross-sell, and lay the breadcrumbs for a future platform product. Had we waited for product to build that platform first, we would have incurred compounding marketing debt and missed the opportunity to give product valuable insights about packaging and use cases. 

Start by clarifying where you want to go and what experiences will get you there. Where do you want to be in two, five, ten years? When you research or chat to people in those roles, what experiences have they had that you’re missing? Some of the best advice I ever received is to think about your career less like a straight shot up a corporate ladder and more like a portfolio of different experiences. With that lens, growth can take many forms beyond just promotion — leading a challenging new project, learning from a new set of cross-functional partners and leaders, shadowing a partner team to learn a new skill, marketing a new set of products with a different GTM motion, mentoring a new team member or college intern, etc. If you need inspiration, develop a network of marketer or PMM friends who can help you bounce ideas. After you’ve identified the skills you want to learn, talk to your manager. They’re invested in your success, so they should help you brainstorm new projects or give you feedback on opportunities that you’ve proactively identified. Chat with your skip-manager and close XFN partners to get their feedback. For example, if your experience is primarily in B2B PMM, see if you can get staffed on a B2C PMM project. Or, if you're a PMM who wants a broader marketing skillset, see if you can lead a growth marketing project where there’s a business need. Or, if you’ve only worked with Product Area X but heard great things about the leaders on Product Area Y, see if you can take on a step-up project to develop relationships with that team.