AMA: Zendesk Sr Director of Technology Marketing and Communications, Teresa Haun on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

I often like to ask, “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” as well as, “In your last performance review, what were your opportunities to improve and how have you worked to address them?” I like the question “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” because it often helps me understand w...more

For product marketers that want to stay in product marketing, the classic career path I usually see in terms of roles and titles is PMM → Senior PMM → Group or Principal PMM → Director → Senior Director → VP → SVP → CMO. From my experience, I’ve seen managing a report or a team typically starts a...more

If you haven’t already, I would start by making sure your manager actually knows that you aspire to become a Senior PMM and would like to work towards getting promoted. It’s often implied as most people want to continuously work towards the next level, but that’s definitely not always the case an...more

You are definitely not alone! I think a lot of new and experienced PMMs struggle with messaging and I absolutely did and still think I have plenty of room to improve. Since I’m unfortunately running out of time in this AMA, I wanted to at least suggest this similar question and thread that has a ...more

In my experience, I’ve never seen Sales → Product Marketing as a direct path, but like someone else asked about here, it’s definitely one you can pursue and I think many product marketing hiring managers would be open to it if you displayed you had the right skill set and potential. Here’s what m...more

I would try to highlight anything that shows you have the key skills to be an effective product marketer. That definitely includes strong writing samples and case studies like you suggested, but also: * Presentations that show you can create a compelling narrative and convince an audience ...more

This question is very similar to this one someone else asked https://sharebird.com/how-can-a-junior-digital-marketing-generalist-stand-out-as-a-pmm-candidate-in-a-role-that-requires-3-years-of-product-marketing-experience?answer=nOrEYkp4B7 so going to share my answer from there here too: I think...more

There’s an awesome blog post that I’d highly recommend written by Dave Gerhardt (super impressive marketer who produces a lot of solid, thoughtful content) for your question what does product marketing do and what are we responsible for: https://www.drift.com/blog/what-is-product-marketing/. For ...more

I think this blog post https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-succeed-at-asking-for-a-pay-raise-2071868 does a nice job walking through key considerations and things to do when generally asking for a raise, including specifically in the “Research” section highlighting some of the classic source...more

I’m going to split my answer here because the additional question details suggest you may be feeling frustrated that PMM has become more strategic, but for me, the strategic work in product marketing is a large part of why I love the function so much :). I’m hoping I can still be helpful to you i...more

I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk and I’ve found this reporting structure seems to work well for our team. I believe it’s because eve...more

This is a great question, but unfortunately not one I have much personal experience with as I haven’t made that particular transition and also haven’t hired anyone with a Sales background so far. I would absolutely be open to hiring someone from Sales though if they showed they had the potential ...more

I think it’s all about making it clear that you have relevant skills and experience that will apply. Also, that you have tremendous potential and are so eager to learn! If you really don’t have a lot of experience that you can make clear is very relevant for product marketing (although I bet you ...more