AMA: TrustRadius Former Sr. Director, Product Marketing & Brand, Harsha Kalapala on Establishing Product Marketing

Copied over from a similar question: There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it. 30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days. 60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy.

Product marketing's biggest challenge (no matter anywhere I go) is defining the scope and sticking to it. Anything under the sun that is not Demand Gen or SEO tends to be seen as a job for product marketing. If we don't get a handle and drive the definition of role as product marketers and clearly write down what we own, and just as important what we don't own, we will be working against the grain. You may be doing a lot of great work, but that is always relative to expectations. In a nutshell, setting expectations is everything. And it's not just with your boss and the exec team. It's important to position and sell the value and focus of product marketing for the rest of the org. Product marketing tends to be the team to go to when you don't know who else to ask about a marketing-related challenge. So it is very helpful to educate cross-functional teams like customer success, sales, and product on what it is that you own. 

There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it. 30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days. 60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy. 

Tech is always a hard question for product marketers who don't have a ton of budget. I try to push for tools that are beneficial to more than product marketing. Tools that help me do my job better with my key partners - sales, CS, product. One way is to just get a seat to jump in on software they are already using. Some of my most helpful tools have been: * Appcues (partner with product and customer success) * Google analytics/Heap (helps you see what's working and where you need to focus) * DocSend (for sales enablement and content delivery) * Salesloft (for sales enablement) * Miro (for brainstorming and concepting) * Hemingway app (for copywriting) * Noun project (for icons) * Lingo (for quick access to logos, colors, fonts, graphics, etc.) * Skitch (for screenshots and quick edits like highlights, comments, blurring) And my recent favorite - LOOM (for short training videos I can send to sales and CS)

The first step to engaging other teams is to make sure they are a key contributor to the go-to-market plan, and they are not just on the receiving end being told what to do. I try to understand the organizational goals of a launch, and also pay attention to what are the success metrics/criteria for each team involved. Every team involved in a GTM plan has to get a win out of it. It's also important to understand teams = people. I get people excited by bringing them along the journey, sharing the why behind key decisions. This really helps people on teams like engineering and design, who are typically removed from the customer-facing activities see the potential outcome of their work and get fired up about it. Product management is a critical partner to work with the entire way. I have had success engaging PM teams by being involved with product development from the early concept and research stage. Being engaged with customer conversations early on helps you develop strong positioning well before you reach the actual launch. One exercise that always makes a big impact is to write a mock press release along with the product team well before the product is made. Imagine you launched the product today - what story would you tell the world? That informs product development as well - and is a great way to build the right product. The risk with this approach is creating an environment where decisions are made by committee - which is not a productive situation. The way I avoid that is to be clear that everyone's input is being considered, but decisions are going to be made by a smaller set of people accountable for the success of the GTM plan.

You can't change/improve what you don't fully understand. When you join a smaller team where product marketing didn't formally exist before, it is important to recognize that product marketing always existed, but was probably executed as a team sport. It may have been carried by the product manager, the CEO, the CMO, or a content marketing lead. I would always begin by learning what worked and didn't work with product-marketing related efforts (which likely was not seen a product marketing work), and understand who is close to these efforts and outcomes. Make sure they understand you are their ally, and you are here to build upon their past efforts. Product marketers will have a hard time succeeding without building allies and support within the team. To bring along the exec/management team, it is important to be clear about what new insight and perspective you bring to the table. Listen first, and then suggest frameworks and ideas to change things that make an immediate impact. Quick action and small wins early on are much more appreciated than strategy and discussions - especially in smaller orgs.