AMA: Stack Overflow Former VP of Marketing, Alexa Scordato on Structuring a Product Marketing Team

My first piece of advice: Talk to your direct manager about this and make it known that a) you're interested in becoming a manager b) you'd appreciate any professional development they can provide in this area. The reason I call this out to start is because it's not always clear or obvious to managers that a team member wants this for him or herself (I've managed PMMs who want to stay individual contributors or move laterally into product management roles). I also know that there are a ton of ma ...Read More

1. Is the business taking a product to market, trying to achieve product market fit, or accelerate demand? I recognize that some teams might say, "All 3!" but if you had to pick one, what's most important?  2. Based on the answer above, product marketing can flex towards supporting product vs. sales. I like asking each functional leader what their top 3 needs are and actually exposing that list. Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise afterwards and both functions will actually request the same or ...Read More

Where to start? Every company has different policies for promotion criteria, but ultimately it needs to take into account 2 things: merit and business need. Business need has to come first. It means that there's a larger scope of a role that needs to be done - more responsibility and complexity within an org / team - and there's now an opportunity or need for someone to fill that. If that doesn't exist, promotions shouldn't be happening arbitrarily. I recongize that especially within startups, i ...Read More

The first 2 PMM's are going to wear many hats and serve many masters. There's unfortunately no way around that given the breadth of the function. The biggest tension is striking the balance between supporting product, supporting sales, and establishing an operational cadence for go-to-market (GTM) within the organization. I believe that a pod of 3-4 PMMs is really when the team can start hitting its stride by working across insights, GTM, and sales enablement. Until then, there are always going ...Read More

If product marketing is embedded within product, what that usually tells me is that marketing is a secondary function to product. If you're operating within a product-led organization, the cadence of the business will be determined by product leadership and the roadmap they set. That said, marketing can certainly influence it, but it's a shared service to product. When product marketing reports into marketing leadership, that's usually a signal that marketing is a leading function at the executi ...Read More

It's a good practice for anyone at a company, regardless of function, to ask themselves how their role impacts the bottom line. I think of revenue as a shared goal that helps frame goals and initiativese, but when it comes to the actual work product, I usually lean on other KPI's that are more immediately tied with the output. For example, a product marketing team is tasked with converting free trial users into paid subscribers. The overall goals and plans are specifically in service of increasi ...Read More