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Kelly Esten

AMA: Toast Chief Marketing Officer, Kelly Esten on Developing Your Product Marketing Career Path

January 22 @ 9:00AM PT

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  1. How do product marketers become valued if you are not responsible for any metrics?

    Kelly Esten
    Kelly Esten

    Toast Chief Marketing Officer • 5mo

    Product marketers should be responsible for metrics! Whether or not you are "officially" responsible for metrics, you can and should measure the impact of your work. We measure product marketing primarily on win rate at a team level. Every project also has a set of goals that we measure success against. For example, each launch we run has a handful of metrics - things that directly tie to the business goals like revenue generated from a new product or package launch, reach of the launch campaign ...Read More

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  2. Why do you recommend building a personal brand online to grow thought leadership?

    Kelly Esten
    Kelly Esten

    Toast Chief Marketing Officer • 5mo

    For me, there are three reasons why you'd build a personal brand online: 1. Recruiting the top talent to your team - the top talent want to hear that you're working on interesting problems, finding new solutions and using the best thinking in your domain if they're going to join your team. Being seen as a thought leader in your domain on platforms like LinkedIn can help recruit great talent to your company and team. 2. Landing your next gig - the same applies when you're looking for your next jo ...Read More

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  3. What books were the most insightful for PMM in the last 2 years?

    Kelly Esten
    Kelly Esten

    Toast Chief Marketing Officer • 5mo

    One book I've been recommending a lot lately is Zones to Win by Geoffrey Moore. For product marketers, it provides great context as to how your organization may be thinking about allocating resources, the challenges that come with different stages of maturity for different product lines and how to think about facing those challenges. Depending on the product line you're working on, it will fall into one of the "zones" from the book. Knowing what zone you are operating in will help hone messaging ...Read More

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  4. What separates a "good" product marketer from an "elite" one?

    Kelly Esten
    Kelly Esten

    Toast Chief Marketing Officer • 5mo

    Great product marketers share a few common practices:

    • they take the time to really know their customer and their market

    • they're deep on the business that they support - they know the drivers and metrics and are orienting their work to support them

    • they think about new ideas for how to message, package and market their product area, always looking to get better

    • they align internal stakeholders towards work that matters - and don't get caught in endless internal meetings and swirl

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  5. What steps can product marketers take to move into leadership roles?

    Kelly Esten
    Kelly Esten

    Toast Chief Marketing Officer • 5mo

    The first step towards a leadership role in product marketing usually involves leading a project team (rather than managing a team full time). A great way to get started towards a leadership track is to raise your hand to lead a launch, do some research into a new segment or product idea and run a small team for that project. When you get the opportunity to lead a project, and then lead others on a project, take the time to invest in the success of the whole team you are working with. Get to kno ...Read More

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