AMA: SurveyMonkey Senior Director, Head of Product & Solutions Marketing, Morgan (Molnar) Lehmann on Product Marketing Skills

On your path from Sr. PMM to Director of Product Marketing, you may have a couple roles in between: Lead PMM (sometimes called Principle PMM) which is typically the highest PMM level for individual contributors Manager & Sr. Manager of Product Marketing, which would be your first people managing roles in the Product Marketing org Here are the major competencies you'll want to develop on your path to Director level (summarized from the PMM career ladder we have at SurveyMonkey): 1) Leadership ...Read More

Messaging is a skill that takes time and effort to improve. And not everyone intuitively "gets it" when it comes to crafting great messaging. Here are 8 ways I'd recommend PMMs improve their messaging skills: Talk to your customers: Get their lingo down. Talk to them in the same way they talk about themselves & their needs. The more you talk to customers, the more you'll be able to echo them in your messaging. Consult the competition: competitive websites can be a great place to understand h ...Read More

When I think about scaling content creation (this could be sales decks, collateral, long-form content, etc), my best tactical suggestion is to create a self-service template. Here's an example: Several years ago, we had a process at SurveyMonkey for creating sales one-pagers that involved PMM writing copy, Content Strategy proof-reading, then Design creating a PDF. The PDFs were difficult to edit/personalize, so we kept having to go back to Design for versions. Then we created a project where De ...Read More

I really like the term you used here: "data-informed". At SurveyMonkey, we strive to use the best data we have available to inform our decisions. But you don't always have data, so that's where a PMM's intuition comes into play. I'll also challenge you that it's not always hard "data" that you need to inform a decision. Sometimes it's sources like: Conversations - with those on the frontlines like sales & success managers, or with customers themselves Qualitative interviews / ethnographies I ...Read More

We recently stood up our CI function at SurveyMonkey a couple years ago. Before then, competitive intel responsibilities were previously scattered and shared across the product marketing team. CI as a dedicated role is still growing, so you may find it challenging to find someone with a CI background. Our current CI lead had an education & product marketing background, and is FABULOUS in the role :) When hiring someone to stand up CI, these were the must-haves we looked for: Research experie ...Read More

My top tip for being successful in Product Marketing is getting close to the customer. Ways to get close to the customer: Do your own customer interviews Get your hands on as much customer research as possible (product research, user research, win/loss, NPS surveys, brand health research, segmentation, etc.) Shadow customer-facing teams like Sales, Success, and Support Get access to tools like Gong for analytics on customer conversations Attend events & conferences, and simply talk to people ...Read More