Mike Polner

AMA: Discord Head of Marketing, Mike Polner on Consumer Product Marketing

December 12 @ 10:00AM PST
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Discord Head of Marketing, Mike Polner on Consumer Product Marketing
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
Great question. I would first caveat that this is something we're always working on, so if you haven't figured it out yet, don't worry, goal setting, responsibilities, and KPIs are always a work in progress! I think it's rare that in larger organizations and with significant cross-functional w......Read More
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
Love this question and something I had to do a ton when I first got to Eats and everybody was like - hold on, what is Product Marketing?  I talk a lot about internal marketing and say you have to Product Market, Product Marketing...This starts with a very clear and differentiated articulation ......Read More
1860 Views
1 request
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
In my career path I've looked for a few things and created a few career principles... 1. Finding growth industries that will be more important in the next 3 - 5 years given where I see trends moving...For example, I was in AdTech in 2010 when mobile and display advertising was just starting to t......Read More
2349 Views
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
Budget is earned, not given.  Align to a top-level business goal or objective that's critical, start small with an experiment, measure it, and prove your value. Make it a no-brainer where if the initiative isn't funded somebody will be coming to the team saying - look at how much impact we're ......Read More
1244 Views
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
I touched on this a bit above - I started my career in B2B and learned really valuable lessons before moving more deeply into B2C.  I think Marketing is evolving so quickly that you can learn extremely valuable skills in either the B2B or the B2C world that are applicable across both, so would......Read More
1941 Views
1 request
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
I think Growth Marketing in tech is actually super applicable to Product Marketing on the consumer side. Most of the PMMs I've hired have actually come from growth / performance marketing backgrounds. I don't have any clear recommendations on courses or education apart from just taking on hard pr......Read More
2361 Views
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
I think the two you mention are solid. Thinking outside of just PMM workflows, in general PMMs need to be extremely tight with the customer and have really strong business and market context so I try to read a lot of industry (AdAge, Skift Table for Restaurants), and general business publications......Read More
2556 Views
2 requests
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
This is a great question. I would zoom out and think more holistically about how to approach career advice and what I tell people looking to get into Product Marketing overall.  I usually approach significant career transitions or moves in two-steps. Sometimes, people see the next job and say ......Read More
2449 Views
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Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
Highlighted this one in another question, so will point you there, but overall, yes - we break PMM responsibilities down by audience. Some PMMs will work only on Consumer and some only on Restaurant for example. In a three-sided marketplace, there is naturally a ton of organic collaboration acros......Read More
1513 Views
2 requests
How is your Product Marketing team structured?
By product line, segment, function or by objective (ie. revenue retention, product engagement, etc?
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
Great question! I think about this one a lot...First off, it’s important to callout that there is no perfect org structure :)  In general, you have to identify what you’re optimizing towards and what structure will give you the highest chance to get there. For Eats PMM, we’ve always kept a fai......Read More
2415 Views
3 requests
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
I think there has been a massive shift in just the awareness and momentum around Consumer Product Marketing overall. When I joined Eats 3 years ago as the first Consumer PMM, everybody was asking what this role was and how we were different than Brand Marketing or Performance Marketing. Not only ......Read More
2229 Views
1 request
Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 12
In general, I don't really think "background" is that important. To me, background does not = skills. I hire for signal on skill and not for whether or not somebody has done something before.  We have some absolutely incredible PMMs on Eats and almost all of them came from a background that wa......Read More
1781 Views
1 request