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

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 ...Read More

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 quit ...Read More

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 knowle ...Read More

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 straightfo ...Read More

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 & ...Read More

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 func ...Read More