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Maria Jiang

AMA: Upwork Director, Product and Solution Marketing, Maria Jiang on Establishing Product Marketing

October 3, 2024 @ 10:00AM PT

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Maria Jiang

Director of PMM

👋 Hi! I'm Maria from San Francisco

💼 Formerly @ Upwork, Meta, PagerDuty, Zendesk

👀 I'm open to product marketing leadership opportunities in B2B SaaS

🤝 I specialize in the hardest parts of product marketing — translating complex products into clear market narratives, building GTM strategies that actually convert, and aligning cross-functional teams around a shared story. My core expertise: new product launches, messaging & positioning, persona development, and cross-functional leadership across enterprise and mid-market B2B SaaS

🍦 My favorite ice cream flavor is mint choco chip!

  1. Should a product marketing manager be a SaaS startup's first hire, and why?

    Maria Jiang
    Maria Jiang

    Director of PMM | Formerly Meta, Upwork, Zendesk, PagerDuty • 1y

    A SaaS startup's first marketing hire should be a generalist who can wear multiple hats across different functions of marketing and has a founder mentality to move fast. Whether you hire someone who is more senior or a junior executor will depend on the skills of the founding team, the size of the marketing budget and the playbook you want to execute. Assuming your startup has reached some level of product-market-fit, you'll want to hire someone who has digital marketing experience and knows how ...Read More

    3,918 Views
    2 requests

  2. How do you introduce Product Marketing functionality in an organization that lacks the relationship with Product Management?

    Still in startup mode, our Product Managers are very tactical and development focused. They don't have the ability to work directly with Marketing on positioning, messaging or competitive analysis. Essentially, reactive. How do you suggest creating a Product Marketing workflow that helps close this gap?

    Maria Jiang
    Maria Jiang

    Director of PMM | Formerly Meta, Upwork, Zendesk, PagerDuty • 1y

    There's a couple of tactical ways in which you can start building trust with PMs. It all starts with knowing the product. I would get to know the product intimately by using the product and talking to customers to understand how they are using it. Armed with this knowledge, I would offer these insights to PMs and give them ideas of what are the features that customers love, point out where there might be product confusion/friction, and offer up ideas based on asks/requests for new features or fu ...Read More

    2,789 Views
    2 requests

  3. How can I get started in setting up Product Marketing w/in my organization?

    Product Marketing is new to our organization. A lot of folks don't understand the role. Additionally, it's very difficult to identify metrics for this function. What do you recommend in terms of how to earn buy-in, as well as where to start in the beginning to be able to add value?

    Maria Jiang
    Maria Jiang

    Director of PMM | Formerly Meta, Upwork, Zendesk, PagerDuty • 1y

    Owning a product launch would be a great way to get started in setting up the role of product marketing and defining the responsibilities of that role. By bringing together different x-functional stakeholders across sales, product, customer success and the rest of the marketing towards a launch date would be a concrete way to show the value of PMM. If you don't have a new product to launch, you could also simply create a launch moment of a product that's already been in market to boost its perfo ...Read More

    1,769 Views
    2 requests

  4. When establishing the PMM function in an org, how can you manage expectations and change perception if leadership (CEO, Founder, CMO) have a different interpretation of the role?

    Maria Jiang
    Maria Jiang

    Director of PMM | Formerly Meta, Upwork, Zendesk, PagerDuty • 1y

    I would start by meeting 1:1 with your leadership team (CEO, Founder, CMO) to understand each leader's interpretations of the PMM function. You can probe with questions like, "How would you describe PMM's primary role within our company today? What does success look like for you? What are your most important metrics that PMM can own and influence?" You want this to be a conversation so be ready to listen, but also be prepared to offer your POV based on your personal experiences and different typ ...Read More

    1,450 Views
    1 request