AMA: SurveyMonkey Director of Product Marketing, Mike Greenberg on Building a Product Marketing Team

We have 9 product marketers split across two teams that collaborate closely. Broadly, my team of 5 (including me) is responsible for new product and feature GTM targeting a general audience, as well as competitive intelligence. Our peer team of 4, led by another awesome PMM Director, is responsible for persona-specific GTM and international GTM strategy. For broader context on our product and space, SurveyMonkey offers both self-serve (Freemium) and Enterprise feedback products targeting teams and organizations of all sizes. Our product supports a ton of use cases for online forms and feedback, but we have several prioritized use cases and personas that we develop for and market to, including employee experience, customer experience, and market research. So for us, it makes sense to have both general and persona-focused GTM motions working. Within my team, focus areas by PMM are: * Our core features and freemium surveys product * Enterprise product and AI features * Online form features and third party integrations * Competitive intelligence and product-led growth initiatives Maintaining 1-2 core focus areas per PMM allows everyone to develop a solid level of domain expertise, and we have a range of skillsets and experience levels on the team that helps us stay agile, engaged, and effective. I’ve spoken about this in more detail in another Sharebird AMA, but one of the things we’ve done a little differently than many PMM teams is bringing on dedicated competitive intelligence expertise rather than splitting this responsibility across PMMs. Centralizing CI in this way, and as a function within PMM, has paid dividends and helped us improve sales confidence and win rates, influence product roadmaps, and develop a competitive GTM strategy at the company level. It’s a function I highly recommend adding to maturing PMM teams.

Product Marketing is great for growth because there are always new problem spaces to learn and GTM strategies to challenge us. I love building teams that are curious and eager to try something new. Here's how I do my best to facilitate growth: * Hire well and bring on PMMs of different skill levels and experiences to round out your team * Create a culture of mentorship where your more senior PMMs are teaching and delegating to junior team members; don't allow silos to form on your team * Align work with everyone’s areas of interests and growth to the extent that you can, partnering those with experience with those who want it when possible * Stretch your PMMs outside their core areas of responsibility with a new challenge or project when you can (I’ll often do this when balancing workload across the team, if I can take something off the plate of an overstretched PMM that aligns with the interests or career goals of another team member, regardless of whether the project is within their typical day-to-day scope.) * Support your team’s success by finding opportunities to make them and their work visible internally and externally so that they earn the trust of partners and leaders * Invest in their professional growth (Product Marketing Alliance provides great resources and opportunities here) * Celebrate learning moments and big swings, even when they don't work out

At a high level I would expect somebody in a PMM role to have a few years of relevant experience and be able to act as the internal product / domain expert for the marketing team in their area(s) of responsibility. They should know or be able to learn the core technologies, problem space, and target market/buyers very well. They should be able to interface with the product team, develop messaging, and lead a cross-functional go-to-market motion with a moderate amount of guidance or partnership from their direct manager or a Sr. PMM on the team. At the Senior PMM level, I expect a higher level of influence and autonomy, with an eye toward mastering the role and eventually managing/teaching more junior PMMs. They are making strategic decisions and influencing product roadmaps based on thoughtful market analyses with light guidance. They are capable of tackling complex GTM motions, including high profile launches, and may act as the public face of the product for external audiences. They have full command of performance metrics and use them to decide what to do next. Internally, they are influencing strategic decision-making at the Sr. Director+ level, and potentially beginning to influence the PMM team by creating or improving processes and frameworks for the team to leverage. Personally, I really enjoy having a breadth of experience on the team, which provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to assigning work and creates clear growth paths and mentorship opportunities as the team evolves. At SurveyMonkey, we maintain a career ladder framework for each job level within PMM that includes both job-specific skills and company-level competencies like communication skills, accountability, and living our values. Having a clear framework is a great way to assess and grow the talent on your team, and I recommend partnering with your People team to develop one if you haven’t already!

Great question. I’ve worked in and led PMM teams with a number of different structures throughout my career (and in different functional organizations: Product vs. Marketing). At the end of the day, the best team structure is the one that’s aligned with your product and business goals. If you have one or few products that appeal to many buyers, or are trying to expand your business by attracting customers in new or specific verticals, it might make sense to organize at least part of your team by vertical so that you’re developing experts in the customers and problem spaces you’re trying to connect with. We have a PMM team at SurveyMonkey that is dedicated to this, with team members laser-focused on the needs of HR buyers, market researchers, and so on, who have autonomy over messaging and GTM strategy targeting those buyers. One product, many messages to articulate its benefits as they apply to buyers with different needs. If, on the other hand, you have a large portfolio of products that each address a distinct audience, and your growth model is based on introducing new solutions and improving existing ones (i.e. the suite model), you might align your team by product or product line. Early in my career, when I was in the consumer applications marketing group at Apple, the team was organized by product suite (iWork, iLife, etc.) and there was a PMM for each application within the suite who was an expert in that product space, and PMMs would work together with their team lead to develop suite-level messaging and GTM strategy. This made great sense for a set of creative applications that each targeted different audiences and use cases: aspiring musicians, photographers, filmmakers, etc. Think about your product offering(s), target audience(s), and growth strategy — and this will lead you to the best team structure. And don’t be afraid to shake things up as your offerings and organization evolve.

When it comes to understanding product pipeline, the most effective thing I've done as a PMM leader is to nurture great relationships with our Product Management leads. We have a ratio of 1 PMM to every 3-4 PMs, with varying levels of experience in these functions collaborating, so at the leadership level we need to be able to partner well and have open conversations about what's working and what's not so that we can consolidate product schedules and remove roadblocks that might prevent us from having visibility into what's coming and when. If my team isn't getting what they need from their product-side contacts (or vice versa), we need to work together to resolve it and be above a lot of the product/marketing animosity that can develop in other organizations. At a tactical level, my team manages both our customer-facing roadmap assets and an internal go-to-market calendar that we update in line with our twice-yearly planning cycles, and maintain in-between as things change through the course of development. These are great resources that enable our Sales and Marketing teams, respectively, but also provide a good forcing function for regular roadmap-related collaboration between Product and PMM teams to ensure accuracy of our plans. I’ll typically collaborate directly with Product Management leadership on these deliverables, and let them bring in their team members as necessary to keep us accurate. We also maintain a partner map of the PMs, PMMs, Engineers, and Designers that typically work together (based on feature areas) that helps define the executional teams meeting on a regular basis. On the Product side, the PM team has started doing a quarterly internal "roadmap roadshow" that highlights recent releases and previews what's coming, which is yet another opportunity to provide full-company visibility into our product plans. That’s not to say that we’re perfect: product plans and timelines change, people come and go, and new ideas or priorities come up between planning cycles. One of the ways I’m working to improve things is through more formal alignment of our product development and GTM processes with ideas like assigning PMMs as soon as roadmap tickets are created, joint acknowledgement at key development milestones (i.e. everyone has seen and agrees to final product requirements), and ensuring experimentation timelines are fully estimated and baked into delivery timelines. I'm convinced that steps like this can go a long way toward creating a more visible and accurate pipeline into PMM without adding a lot of red tape.

Vulnerable moment: I have never built a product marketing function from scratch! But I love this question, and as an experienced PMM who believes deeply in the value we add, I have thoughts on how I'd approach this. Bottom line: even if you don't have a PMM function, somebody in the company is probably doing Product Marketing (in tech, it’s often Product). The trick is structuring your internal pitch around the tangible benefits of centralizing those activities under a PMM function, and the tangible ROI gains (of having dedicated go-to-market experts, as well as refocusing the bandwidth of other teams who are picking up the slack today). Here’s how you might structure a pitch for a dedicated PMM function: 1. Educate decision-makers on what PMM does, and how we add value. If you need resources to help define or articulate this, the Product Marketing Alliance (PMA) have some excellent content. 2. Identify who is handling that PMM scope for your organization today (examples might include gathering market & competitive intelligence, creating messaging, leading launches, and creating Sales training and materials). Are there any gaps (things you’re not doing at all today)? How could these activities be more efficient or coordinated with a centralized PMM function? What additional ROI could others be driving if they didn’t have to do this work themselves? 3. Illustrate how an experienced PMM could up-level these activities, in line with your business priorities. Examples might include knowing that your organization is focused on solving the right pain points, improving conversion with better messaging and targeting, or increasing speed-to-market. Consider metrics like win rates and feature adoption that PMM can influence: point out any that are problem areas today and which PMM might be tasked with addressing. 4. Look for case studies of similar businesses who saw results after adding a Product Marketing function (PMA may be a good resource here too). Ideally you can find a success story or two featuring a company with a similar business stage, struggle, or problem space to support your cause.

Congratulations on growing your Product Marketing team! Even with a team of two, there are a number of different ways you can consider structuring the team. The ‘north star’ question that will guide you is, “Why am I hiring?” And the answer will likely influence the profile of the people you choose to hire and how you divide up the work. Here are a few examples: If you are hiring just to get help, for example to keep up with an accelerated pace of product innovation in a fast-growing company — and without major changes to your target market or product portfolio — you might bring on a more junior PMM to handle lower-tier feature launches, content creation, and sales enablement (if applicable), while you focus on more strategic responsibilities such as overall GTM strategy and process, market intelligence, and higher tier / new product GTM. Over time, you would teach some of your scope to your new hire, and eventually delegate more as they progress in their career and your team continues to grow. If you are hiring because your product portfolio is expanding (you are currently making widgets and are about to start selling sprockets, too), you might structure your team by product line. In this case, you might hire a somewhat more seasoned PMM who can drive even a high profile GTM with minimal guidance, as you would still be responsible for one product line in addition to people management responsibilities, leaving less bandwidth to manage the delegated product line. You might be hiring to drive market expansion via a new geo, vertical, or sales motion, or to accelerate those motions by bringing on expertise you don’t possess. In this case also you might hire a seasoned PMM with demonstrated expertise in the specific market you’re hoping to penetrate. You would maintain responsibilities in your areas of expertise & strength, and delegate & learn where your new hire is strongest, while ensuring that your combined efforts ladder up to your common strategic goals. Hope that’s helpful framing for considering how you’ll structure your growing team!