AMA: Zeplin Former Chief Marketing Officer, Naman Khan on Developing Your Product Marketing Career

Yes! Here are a few examples, mostly B2B SaaS. Asana: I love how they take, what is a horizontal app, and position it to address specific use cases by function & persona. Whether the target user is in Sales, Product, Operations, HR or some other function, the PMM team at Asana know your top use cases and help you understand how Asana can help. Notion: Also do a great job positioning a horizontal product but the highlight for me is the core content & messaging. Its so human and straightforward, no jargon or fluff. The tone of voice is also friendly and approachable. Webflow: I love the simplicity of messaging, its really easy to understand what value Webflow provides and how it is unique, they also develop a ton of great content. Zeplin: Impossible not to include this on the list! I'm really proud of our core messaging & assets like our hero product video, I think its beautifully crafted and tells a great differentiated story in a crowded market.

There is a ramp plan that I like & have used many times, both for myself and members of the team. Like most things that are awesome, it takes the form of a very simple looking table. 3 Columns: * People: Meet with stakeholders and the team I will be working with, understanding their needs & determine how to best work with each person * Product: Learn the product, value prop, messaging, pitch and know how to do a killer demo * Business: Understand the buyer journey, key metrics, market and all the "math camp" things 4 Rows: * 30 Day: List of activities I will do in my first 30 days for each column * 60 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (more advanced) * 90 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (even more advanced) * Deliverables: These are "contained projects" I will take ownership of each month, so that while I'm learning things, I'm also shipping things. This plan is focused on successfully ramping during the first 90 days, its not focused on making a big impact during th first 90 days. This is because you are only the "newbie" for a limited period of time. The first 90 days are the time to ask all the questions, re-ask the same questions and have people spend hours explaining it all to you. This is not time that will come back, so its important to take advantage of it. TLDR: Don't short circuit your ramp, it will be the investment that will make the big impact possible. If your stakeholders see you asking insightful questions, ramping well on the business and mastering the product in the first 90 days, you're already winning.

There is one key learning: Actively plan & manage your development. Here is what is involved: * Know the menu: Since Product Marketing is such a broad discipline, its important to understand the various functional competenices that comprise it. This way, you can assess where you have strengths and where you want to develop. These competenices span target segmentation definition, messaging & positioning, content development, sales enablement, pricing/packaging, PR/AR and more, they are quite different and require different skills. * The market will evolve: There are also constant market changes effecting PMM like sales lead GTM models moving to PLG models, B2B moving to B2B2C and more. These also add to the range of competencies required for a given PMM role. You might be strong in B2B SaaS content when there is a sales team but what about when most revenue is from self service? PMM needs to evolve to the market and the market should be reflected in your plan. * Becoming great takes time: With any of these functional areas, it actually requires experience to develop proficiency over time if you want to be able to do it well and lead others in the future. For example, core positioning development is actually quite difficult to do well, you need to have done it more than once. By understanding what PMM is all about, where you currently fit & where you want to go next you'll be able to take control over your career journey and make more thoughtful choices. Sometimes, a seemingly awesome role at a glamorous company might actually take you backwards, unless you know where it fits within your plan. Remember: If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there - Lewis Carroll PS: Alternatively, you could not build a plan at all. Instead, just focus on doing great work and trust that good things will happen in the future. This might just work out great. Or, it might not. My learning: Build a plan and take control of your PMM journey, don't leave it to some other mystical force.....if its really a mystical force, it will still be there despite your planning. 

I approach competenices in 2 areas: Functional and Core. * Functional competenices are specific to the role, so for PMM these would include messaging, pricing, content etc. I actually did a session on these last year * Core competenices are applicable across roles and are usually defined at the company level, like collaboation, managing ambiguity, decision making etc. For PMM, there are a handful of competenices I think are "foundational" in nature across both areas: Functional: * Target Market & Audience Definition: A building block of PMM is identifying the market and the audience that is the target for your product. This involves working with market research, customers, support, sales and more to learn about the customer, build behavioral, demographic and firmographic data to define a clear segment & persona. This is a ton of work and takes time to do well. * Product Positioning & Messaging: Ability to define clear positioning and messaging framework that’s hardened and thoroughly backed by data. If you can remove your companies logo and replace with a competitor, it's not quite there yet. * Core Content: Delivery of the core bill of materials needed to communicate your product value to your audience. This can include web copy, email templates, pitch decks, lead gen assets and more. You actually need to be able to write a bit of copy or work with a copywriter than can extend your messaging. Core: * Cross Group Collaboration: An awesome attribute of PMM is the exposure this role has across product managers, engineers, finance, legal, brand, sales & more. With this comes the challenge of establishing strong collaboration across teams that are quite different. * Communication Clarity: Although we might not be communications specialists, as marketers we do need to be able to communicate clearly and succinctly. Proposing why the upcoming feature should only go into the enterpise SKU plan shouldn't take more than 30s to explain. * Planning & Organization: Any PMM that has ever been through a launch moment knows its like orchestrating 5 weddings that take place on the same day. Will the images in the product video match what we'll release on GA? Will the demo scripts have the latest messaging? Will the registration app send reminders to peole who already registered? Will there be road contruction that day? All of this requires strong planning & organization skills.

1. Goal Alignment: Given the broad span of PMM, its important to align on the specific areas that you will focus on with your stakeholders (and by default, the areas where you will not). You might need to focus on re-defining core differentiation, value proposition, content and enabling the sale team. This means, you won't spend any time on the SKU plans that apparently need a complete revamp according to your sales partners. 2. PM/PMM Operating Model: Since Product is the first word in our function, you'll want to have a clear operating model with PM. This is basically way of defining what PM will do and what PMM will do. For example, when a new feature is going to be shipped, who determines naming? What is the model for naming? Do we use descriptive names or abstract names? Should that feature carry a revenue goal or an adoption goal? Who drives early adopter programs? What tier of launch is it? There is a ton of ambiguity here and a fair bit of overlap so defining this early and aligning with PM is a good investment. 3. Longer Term: Many of the decisions you make in year 1 will only be good decisions if they are part of a longer term plan of PMM. Although the market is constantly changing, its important to have a vision for PMM across perhaps a 3 year timeframe. Maybe year 2 is when we get into quant research and focus groups to refine messaging and year 3 is when you go big on press/analyst outreach. Your plan will show the way.

It's tough to answer broadly as different business will have different needs but if I were to pick one area that PMM can uniquely add value its: A compelling understanding of the customer. There are so many teams that have knowledge & insight into the customer but PMM is in a unique position to synthesize customer insight across several areas including product, sales, success, support, market & competition and more. It takes a ton of work and time to develop this level of customer knowledge but if you are able to build it, you will be among a small group of people that can credibly represent your target customer. No matter what topic is being discussed or who is in the meeting room, when someone says "I've spent time with 8 customers, 3 analysts and our sales team this month and this is consistently what I'm hearing", there is very little that can challenge that. So, know your customer well. Know why they hire your product, know what problem it solves for them, know how big of a problem it is, know what benefit it provides, know why they don't churn, know how they buy. Know it all. Know your customer and you'll be able to add lots of value.