AMA: Thoughtspot Director of Product Marketing & Customer Marketing, Christine Sotelo-Dag on Product Marketing KPI's

This challenge definitely resonates. Without historical data, it can be hard to know what is good, great, excellent, etc. A few tactics we've used in the past, when there wasn't historical data to base our measurements against. * Lightweight market research. We've often looked to some industry standards and benchmarks to set our initial goal - for example, what conversion rates should we be seeing on our website visits, or what kind of open rate should we be expecting from our emails, etc. These kinds of benchmarks can serve as a starting point and you should expect to iterate as you watch your results. In this vain, check out similar companies entering similar markets to gage if there is any benchmarking you can leverage there. * Talk to external experts within your space. I spent a lot of time meeting other marketing teams / PMM teams / PMM leaders to learn from them, how they measured specific launches or projects when I wasnt sure - especially within similar markets. * Be comfortable with flexibility, iteration. Of course you're going to want to set realistic goals - but you also need to be ok that your starting point might be to set conservative estimates - monitor, learn and iterate. That's normal and although it may feel arbitrary -- one has to start somewhere.

I think there is an element (for all teams in an organization) of reporting on metrics to internal stakeholders as a way to promote one's self, team and work. That said, I don't think that detracts from the value of KPIs for PMM teams. At the very least, KPIs help monitor and manage progress. As an example, looking at past launches as a benchmark for future launches - and where there is room for improvement and monitoring if new tactics improved past performance. Good KPIs also help with prioritization and focus and ensuring the right resources are spent in the right areas based on the committed outcome. Performance evaluation. For the business, you'll want to be able to share how your team is contributing to the performance of the business and therefore how well your team performs. But in addition to this, personally this will be something that you'll want as you progress through your career and need to advocate for yourself , especially in a leadership position.

This is a great question. As mentioned earlier, there are so many shared metrics between PMM and other parts of the business - ie Marketing, Product, Sales. So when committing to a specific KPI, make sure you and your team truly are able to influence it. Therefore don't tie yourself or commit to anything you are not able to map back to how you influence that. For example, website or landing page traffic. Sure your messaging may have helped attract those visitors but it will be too hard to attribute this to your work alone. In a similar vain, there are a lot of instances of PMM teams reporting on how many products or features they launched. The launch is just the tip of the ice berg. If you're launching dozens of features a month but no one is using them or finding value - this isn't success. Make sure to double click on these kinds of vanity metrics to connect the KPI to business value

We have multiple KPI's and I'd argue that the bigger challenge is they are often shared metrics. Shared with our marketing, sales and product counterparts - which makes attribution often very very hard. That said, as mentioned in earlier questions / answers - focus on the KPIs that you have the most influence over as a team. In my past, personally, we've focused a lot on product adoption - especially as it pertains to new features and releases as PMM was the driver in building out our GTM plan. Of course adoption also depends on the in-product experience of a user and how easy a feature is to find and use, but with PMM support in this area we can connect how a user engages with our marketing tactics (email, in product messaging and tours, content, etc) and how they then adopted the product / feature. This also extends to new customer acquisition - specifically via new product and feature releases. You have likely built a plan around how to attract new customers with a new product or feature - and although there can be marketing spend attributed to these releases that contributes to the acquisition - as the PMM you are likely driving the GTM plan and how / where / when to attract these new customers.

Without knowing your business or business model, I think your CMO has a few key areas they are focused on, and they are looking to understand how you are going to help influence these areas. 1. Leads. All CMO's are tasked with delivering qualified leads to the sales organization and they need everyone in the marketing organization working towards delivering qualified leads. Figure out how your PMM team is going to contribute to hitting this number. 2. Brand awareness. This can be via your marketing website, digital ads, physical ads, social presence, etc - your CMO wants your organizations brand to be recognized and for that awareness to convert into... Leads (see #1). So make sure your PMM team has KPIs tied to the messaging and positioning that feeds into your brand awareness and strategy. 3. Sales support. Your CMO is being held accountable by your head of Sales to ensure sales has everything they need to convert those marketing leads. Therefore, make sure your team has an enablement strategy that brings the positioning and messaging of your product to the seller to create a throughline from the top of the marketing funnel to the sales funnel. Your CFO wants to keep costs low, and revenue high. Any software your team uses to help do your job (competitive intelligence tools, content management systems, etc) - be sure to demonstrate ROI. And as part of #3 above, tie yourself to revenue anyway you can. How has what you launched, or created for sales, etc led to business growth.

Start with understanding the needs of the business. There are some pre-IPO orgs that are heavily focused on product led growth and therefore your metrics and KPIs should map towards product adoption, onboarding, time to value, etc. However, if you're joining an organization that is more of a sales-led organization - you may be closer to the sales and marketing key metrics and therefore tracking KPIs that are tied to top of funnel metrics. Regardless, make sure you have a clear understanding of the key focus areas for your business, how that ladders down to marketing, and the role of product marketing in supporting those goals. I mentioned this in a previous answer, but if you are working closer with the sales org, look at KPIs that support lead acquisition and lead conversion, revenue, awareness. If you are closer to the product side of PMM, think about product onboarding, adoption, engagement, and awareness.

I think my first question here is why you aren't able to? If you are creating content (blogs, whitepapers, webinars, etc) you should be measuring high level metrics like views, downloads, registrants. Ideally, you don't stop there though. These are really high level metrics that don't necessarily signal success. You should be able to take these metrics a step further and understand how they continued through the marketing funnel. Did they engage with any other content, did they become a lead, did that lead convert, etc? If you aren't able to double click to those meaningful metrics (for now) lean on those high level engagement metrics as a signal.

Must have KPIs will always vary from company to company based on size, industry, business model, etc (I have to add this disclaimer in). So, I'll break this out a bit by the stage of company I have been at. At the earlier-stage B2B companies that I've been at, the core KPIs we tracked were: Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads or website visitors that convert into paying customers. We as PMM would monitor this as it related to product or solution pages, to measure effectiveness of landing pages (that we were predominantly creating) and marketing campaigns where we created positioning and messaging. Product Awareness and Reach: We focused on this metric, predominantly with any product launch or release - measuring metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates. Product Adoption Rate: Again, we predominantly focused on this as it pertains to new product releases as a way to gage how and when and to what extent customers start using the product after its launch or release. However, it's also a large part of understanding the customer journey, which is next. Customer Engagement Metrics: Tracking metrics like time spent on the product, feature usage, and interactions to indicate how engaged customers are with the product. This is a good signal towards retention and active users, etc. These metrics are often shared with other teams like marketing counterparts around demand and growth and our product counterparts around adoption and engagement.

This answer probably varies from PMM leader to PMM leader but my personal 30-60-90 day break down typically looks like: First 30 days: Onboard. Meet everyone you should meet. Gather all the context you can. Approach things with fresh eyes. Don't be afraid to flag something that doesn't sit right - we are looking for fresh, new perspectives. First 60 days: Begin scoping out your initial projects. Who are your stakeholders, ramp up on what you need to know and how to kick these projects off. First 90 days: Clear plan in place for projects, including how to measure success, timelines, milestones, etc. This is probably the first time we see KPIs.