AMA: Unity Vice President Product Marketing, Jon Rooney on Building a Product Marketing Team

December 6 @ 10:00AM PT

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What's the best way to split up responsibilities in a Product Marketing team within an Enterprise company?

Should PMMs be split into products, Regions, Projects, Teams, A mixture?

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

I've always structured my PMM teams around customer segments/audiences (a "buyer back" approach), which is an outside-in vs. an inside-out view that better aligns to sale...

614 Views

3 requests

Do you have any advice for those starting out in product marketing? Are there certain things you wish you knew before going into the field?

Advice and foresight

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

The analogy I like to use for folks new to Product Marketing is that it's like archery on horseback. The role requires two very different skills sets that are hard enough...

475 Views

2 requests

How do you build a business case to quickly grow a product marketing team? What metrics do you look at to make sure you're driving ROI for the business overall?

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

Any business case for expanding PMM should be built around the expansion of target use cases or audiences. If your company is selling new stuff to existing customer types...

485 Views

2 requests

With the job market so hot, how do you structure the recruiting process to go slow enough for you and the team to evaluate several people and fast enough not to lose them to another company?

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

I try to have as much of the recruiting, interviewing and offer process planned as possible before the role is opened and posted. Keep a repository of job descriptions (J...

487 Views

2 requests

What are the three most important metrics to measure the impact of a product marketing team?

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

Obviously exact metrics will vary by company, but metrics that fall in one of these 3 buckets:Revenue (ARR, MRR, LTV) - some measure that shows that the products/areas yo...

555 Views

2 requests

What are your top questions to ensure you are hiring the right product marketing candidates and why?

Jon Rooney•

Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 2y

These may seem overly simplistic, but I've found these to be effective even when interviewing for senior PMM roles:Tell me about your current/last company - what do they ...

702 Views

2 requests