What is Product Marketing?

I explain it across 4 core responsibilities: 

Experts on our customers, products, and markets

We find the right insights and turn them into strategy, and make the insights easily consumable for the rest of the org

Marketing owners for product

We partner with product teams to make our products successful — driving awareness, acquisition, adoption and expansion for our product lines

Integrators

We sit at the intersection of most teams, working with each of them to break down silos and get to better results

Customer advocates

We work with internal teams to design and deliver great customer experiences that make them feel understood, empowered, and valued

Simply, we combine market, customer, and competitive insights with product innovation to deliver a unified narrative and winning GTM strategy for the company.

This means focusing on four core areas:

• Product: Drive market success of the product and solutions portfolio by ensuring strong product-market fit, compelling messaging, differentiated positioning, and strategic pricing & packaging
• Demand: Drive demand by supporting strategic marketing plans that cement industry authority, build brand awareness and drive pipeline growth
• Enablement: Drive revenue and retention by empowering sellers and customer success with the content and narratives needed to support the customer journey and sales cycle
• Customer: Drive expansion revenue and adoption by supporting engagement and growth initiatives for existing customers that drive retention, loyalty, and advocacy

We have different types of product marketing teams:

1. Core product marketing - responsibile for working closely with engineering on influencing the product roadmap and developing the value proposition with associated assets to drive awarness, consideration and adoption of our solutions
2. GTM - responsible for training our field and partners to ensure they understand the value proposition and can clearly articulate it to drive consideration and adoption of our solutions 
3. Events - responsible for all first party and third party events where we will be present 

For us the Corp Marketing team is accountable for brand, demand generation, creative, and communication (PR/AR/etc.) along with execution of programs (e.g. project management on campaigns or tradeshow/event work). The content however comes from Product Marketing to deliver in these programs and events.  

I've seen that marketing teams are generally structured in this way -

Corporate Marketing - includes comms (press, analyst relations, internal comms, customer marketing), content marketing (defining a content strategy for each stage of the funnel, social media, blogs), brand (out of home ads, logos/colors, video production etc). This team is generally responsible for getting your company's name out there, make sure everyone knows who you are and what you do. Some of the relevant KPIs for this team are net promoter score, relevancy in significant analyst reports in your industry, blog performance (time on page, CTA lead gen, traffic source breakdown etc), brand awareness score etc.

Demand Generation - this is all about pipeline any typically includes Campaigns, Field Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Strategic Events, SDR, Customer lifecycle marketing (nurture for product usage and upsell opps). KPIs will vary per team but is largely related to inquiries, qualified leads, sales accepted leads, net new names, sales meeting set, and tofu pipeline (stage 1 and 2). This team is responsible for, you guessed it, bringing in demand so that everyone wants to purchase your products/services.

Digital - includes marketing growth teams, paid/organic ads, web, SEO. usually this team is heavy on the "test and learn" approach when introducing new messaging, web changes, targeted ads and aided vs unaided awareness strategies. KPIs for this team usually include impression, CTR (click through rate), cost per click, customer acquisition rate, customer lifetime value etc.

Product Marketing - the scope of product marketing teams varies a lot from company to company, but generally includes core product, tech marketing, solutions/industry marketing, pricing/packaging, competitive intelligence. in my experience, KPIs for product marketing is always tough but a couple of good points are tofu to mid funnel conversion, win/loss ratio (including deeper analysis into deals with competitors), analyst reports, product adoption rates, customer/revenue churn and free trial performance. this is the team that is responsible for getting deals closed.

Marketing Ops - all the tech - campaigns creation and performance reporting, intent data tools, tech/data management, email tools - tldr your entire martech stack. many of the KPIs mirror DG and digital teams, in addition to measuring revenue generated by channel and measuring in-house adoption of the martech stack.

One quibble with this question: I’d start with the assumption that product marketing is a part of the marketing team because product marketers are more marketers than product professionals. PMMs should work closely with the rest of the marketing team to ensure alignment across all outbound marketing.

I think the core responsibilities of product marketing are the following:

• GTM management. Lead the launch of new products and features.

• Sales enablement. Train your sales teams to be experts in selling your product.

• Market intelligence. Be an expert on your competition and how your product stacks up.

With this in mind, product marketing becomes the go-to expert for product and customer intelligence within GTM teams like marketing and sales. PMM creates the foundational materials to enable the rest of the marketing team to execute their core functions. For example, PMM should own the positioning and messaging that fuels the rest of the marketing organization.

Everyone’s definition of soft and hard skills differs, but here are the nine skills that I think are the most important for a product marketer to have. I've used these skills as a compass to help me grow in my own career and have turned them into a success guide for my team at Envoy to use:

Soft skills:

• Cross-functional excellence: As a PMM, you have the opportunity to lead without being a manager of people. A strong product marketer is someone who takes others along with them, rather than telling people exactly what they want them to do. They’re able to create strong relationships across the company, with product managers, engineers, designers, marketers, support folks, and more. They’re natural connectors who know who to go to in an organization to get things done and can influence cross-functional stakeholders to support and prioritize projects.
• Executive presence and clear communication: As you get more senior, you'll spend more and more time presenting plans, public speaking, and communicating with executives in the company. The stronger you are at presenting and public speaking, the easier this will be for you. Executive presence also means knowing how best to leverage an executive’s skills to get feedback that will help your project, manage their expectations, and ensure they feel like they’re in the loop about work that matters to them. 
• A pitch in, get-it-done attitude: Being a PMM can be unglamorous at times. Sure, you get to run the big launches, but what people don’t see are the hours you spend writing support macros to ensure the team has what they need to answer incoming tickets, the amount of times a day you have to field seemingly random requests that don’t always fall neatly into your scope of work, and how often you get looped into last-minute, urgent projects that you didn’t plan for. PMMs that can approach this type of work ready to pitch in and help are often those that are seen as the most dependable and trustworthy, which helps them create strong relationships across the company. In my career, I've always made sure I'm never above doing the grunt work that's needed to get something across the finish line. While I don’t do it every day, I’m happy to roll up my sleeves to take a screenshot for a help article or write a macro if it means the team will be more successful and I reward members of my team that have the same attitude.

Hard skills:

• Market, competitor, and product expertise: PMMs should know their product inside and out, be an expert on its features, capabilities, and limitations, and be able to help partner teams figure out solutions to customer problems. This takes work, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. On top of that, you should know your competitors' products almost as well as you know your own. What does the competitor’s product have that yours does not? Where do you lose? Where do you win? How do they position themselves? These are all questions you should have an answer to. Last, you should know your market. What are the trends in the market in which you operate? What are the factors that influence decision making for your buyers? What’s coming down the line in terms of regulations or industry shifts that your company might want to get in front of? The better equipped you are to answer these questions, the more strategic value you'll bring to your company. 
• Positioning, messaging, and storytelling: Messaging and positioning isn’t a soft skill - this is something you hone and work at. This skill is all about being able to create tight, clear, compelling messaging frameworks that identify the target customer, nail their pain point and the benefits your solution provides, and clearly explain how you're different than what else is on the market today. A leader I used to work under said “The person who most accurately identifies the problem earns the right to solve it”, and I think that’s a really clear articulation of how specific and focused you should be in your messaging. You always know when a messaging framework is ready for prime time when you would defend every single line of copy, are able to explain why each line is necessary, and can show how each phrase ties back to the feature or product itself. 
• Know your customer: There are two parts to this. The first is knowing your personas. Specifically, you should be an expert in who buys your software, what their titles are, where they sit in an organization, what matters most to them, and how to market to them. The second is connecting that customer persona with actual customers who use your product. If you’re not talking to customers throughout your day-to-day, how can you represent the voice of the customer to the product team? I have OKRs for my team to have a certain number of interactions with customers each quarter to make sure that customer empathy doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. The key is getting these customer insights and then doing something with them to make sure that those insights are driving your roadmap and activities. 
• Go-to-market planning and execution: PMMs are responsible for creating unique, impactful, cross-channel GTM plans that will help your product or feature hit it’s launch goals and drive sustained adoption and revenue. Product marketers should understand which channels drive success and identify the metrics they want to move so they consistently hit their goals. Another part of this is studying how other companies run their launches and taking inspiration from that for your own launches to up-level your approach. 
• Process management: It’s often said that PMMs should act as the quarterbacks to a launch. A big part of this is ensuring there’s a process in place within the marketing team and with partner teams in order to make sure that everyone has the information they need and clarity on what’s expected of them to make the launch a success. If there isn’t a process in place, it’s up to the PMM to create and drive new processes to fix problems. It’s also up to PMMs to point out when a process is no longer working for your team. 
• Making data-driven decisions: The need for data and analytical skills continues to grow in the product marketing space. I personally wouldn’t call myself a “numbers person”, and I don’t think you need to have the data skills of an analyst to do the job. That said, I do think you need to understand your company's baseline metrics, be able to pinpoint the data that would help the team make a decision, and back up your plans and initiatives with data that supports your proposal in order to succeed in your role and provide value to your organization.

The number one skill is influencing without authority. More specifically, influencing authority in a matrixed organization. By design, product marketing sits at the intersection of a multitude of functions, each with their individual KPIs. Your job is to balance the needs of your various stakeholders to drive revenue and adoption for your product(s). If your company has one product, then this task may be fairly straight forward. If your company has multiple products or multiple portfolios, then the task becomes exponentially harder. 

The most important hard skills are positioning and messaging. In the end, the product marketer determines what market to go after, how the product will stand out, and what benefits resonate with end consumer. It is extremely tough to take a complex idea and break it into a clear, concise, and relatable benefit statement that anyone can understand.

Hard skills may vary by company, but I think there are two that are critical:

• Insights. Know the difference between an anecdote and an insight. This is especially critical when you work on a service at scale. Your best (and sometimes most challenging) users tend to be the loudest, so make sure that you're helping the team hear from a diverse array of customer voices. I find that one of the most important parts of any study is the recruit/target audience. Spend time getting the team aligned on who you're going to hear from.
• Analytics. Spend time not just understanding how to interpret results, but also understanding what it's possible to understand and how to ask the right questions. I'm not saying you need to learn SQL, but it never hurts! I find that the process of learning simple queries (or asking a trusted analytics partner how they do their work) teaches you how to think about data in a way that makes you sharper.

I think there are many soft skills that matter, but of the ones that I value most, it's Empathy.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes and make sure you're always thinking from this perspective. The business has many things it wants to acheive, but more often than not your customer isn't showing up to hear from you– they're hungry, they're trying to relax, or they want to hear from their friends. Balance the drive for objectives against the needs of the audience. 

Do this equally for your peers, especially those in product. The best tool for empathy I ever built for product teams was shipping my own app years ago. It's certainly not necessary that you do this yourself, but as the engineer, design, PM, and marketer on my own project I learned that the deadlines I most often set were optimistic, that "easy" problems were almost always harder than you might think, and that my wishlist was always longer than my ability. Give your partners the benefit of the doubt, be flexible, and make sure that you're always working together for customers. If you all agree on the audience you're serving and their needs, you'll make the right tradeoffs together over time.

Strong PMMs are good writers, know their product inside and out, experts of the competitive landscape, messaging geniuses and storytellers, BFFs with the sales team, GTM architects and excellent project managers. I like to think about a good PMM as a:

• A psychologist who can develop a deep understanding of the fears, aspirations, hopes, and dreams of buyers and target personas.
• An explorer seeking to learn more, discover more, and do more; bringing curiosity and some risk taking to product messaging and positioning. 
• A teacher who can inspire an audience with subject matter knowledge and possess excellent preparation and organization skills.
• A conductor, leading cross-functional teams, unifying performers, and setting the tempo of product launches and other GTM initiatives.  
• An artist, who is creative and adventurous but also persistent and disciplined to deliver top results.

PMMs are (and need to be) masters at many things but if I had to pick the most important:

1. (Soft) Cross-functional Collaboration: PMM is a highly cross-functional role. On any given project, you’ll work with Product, Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing Channel Experts, Operations, Legal… and the list goes on. A product campaign can’t get done without many partnerships. So you have to be great at working across different teams and getting them to share in your goals.  
2. (Hard) Data Driven: Product and business decisions are most times made based on quantitative insights. PMMs are critical to helping product and business partners make decisions at scale, so you have to have a keen ability for understanding, creating and effectively communicating data as information.

1. Messaging and storytelling: this continues to be the hallmark of a great PMM. In particular, really leaning in on differentiation and value to the customer (not speeds and feeds) while also simplifying concepts down in a memorable way that makes it easy for sales to land, marketing to build copy and content, and ultimately, the customer to understand. I sometimes joke that PMMs like ALL the words...but we don't need to use them ALL the time. Being able to really tell a compelling story that connects with the customer, and romances the product in the way that customers can say "Yes! I can see how this will help me" is a key skill.
2. Business / data acumen: Knowing the business, what are the key levers, how do you actually make revenue, ability to dig into where you have pipeline or conversion issues, etc. Having this business / data acument is really important for narrowing in on where you will focus, and ultimately your ability to drive impact that matters. This also plays a role in effective pricing / packaging strategies and understand the right levers to drive value for the business.
3. Relationship building / collaboration: PMM is at the cross roads of multiple functions - sales, Growth, product, partner, enablement (which is why it's so fun!). The ability to build relationships with those functions, understand their goals / motivations, be conversant enough in their space to identify ways to align, and then work effectively to drive the right actions is critical to PMM success.
4. Communication: There is a lot of complexity to the PMM role. Your ability to communicate ideas, represent data in a way that is meaningful and actionable, and inspire teams to rally behind a shared vision is a top skill in my opinion.

I like to define PMM excellence in the following way: You are the master of three truths. 1) The product truths - what the product does / doesnt do, how it delivers value to the customer, how it stacks up vs. the competition, etc 2) The customer truths - what are the needs, pain points, outcomes that the customer cares about and how you can adress them in productive ways and 3) Market truths - where is the opportunity in the market, what trends should we be paying attention to, what is the competition doing (or might do), etc. And the combining those truths into an integrated GTM that drives the right outcomes for the business.  

So if you buy that definition, the hard and soft skills that map to mastering those truths are critical. 

I talked about soft skills in another question, so let's laser focus on the hard skills needed to succeed in PMM here. Here are 3 hard skills you can focus on right now:  

1. Data-Driven Decision Making: I actually teach a dedicated course on this topic at Loyola Chicago because I believe in it so much! Data helps with identifying and speaking to your target audience, defining the value of your product and ROI, market sizing, predicting buyer behavior, validating success in the market, and so much more. Even if you don't fancy yourself a "numbers person" - it is important to get into enough detail both qualitatively and quantitatively to target your approach. 

2. Storytelling: You will more often than not need to use an emotional connection to convince buyers of the value of your product, service, or solution. By telling the story of your product and getting your prospective buyer to relate on a personal level, you are creating empathy that can take you miles. Take them through highs and lows and make them feel something. I took an amazing Pixar class on this a few years ago that I highly recommend to really harness this skill. 

3. Program Management: PMMs are often tasked with huge initiatives, like product launches. I hear over and over that PMMs are the "quarterbacks" in product launches (yay sports!). By being the QB, you need to make sure there is a collective goal, a process in place, defined roles & responsibilities, and everyone has what they need to complete their responsibilities. This comes with epic organization, program, and process management skills.

If I had to pick just one then it is (customer) empathy. PMM becomes strategic and business-critical when we harness this soft skill to generate breakthrough insights (hard skill) that helps the company not chase the taillights of competition but leapfrog them.

For example, winning strategic narratives (in B2B SaaS especially) first attack the old game—your audience’s orthodox, status quo approach to winning—by credibly showing how it’s now unwinnable. Then they name the new game that winners are already playing (for which your product is designed to confer advantage). This winning narrative/positioning has to be rooted in a deep understanding of customer insights and market trends. This requires empathy.

The easiest way to break into product marketing is within your current company. Don't try to break into product marketing at a new company — it will be an uphill battle. You have a few pros trying to break into PMM at the current company: You already know the product, target market, and the business. Here's what you can do:

• Start having coffee chats with your PMM team. PMM at every company is very different, so understand their role and responsibilities more.

• See if you can do a joint project with the PMM team. Customer stories, demos, focus groups, events, etc. That gives you a good glimpse into the everyday life of a PMM.

• Share with your manager your goal and get their support right off the bat, so they will also identify opportunities for you to move to PMM.

I think the best way to do this is to try and get PMM experience and exposure at your current company. I've seen really successful content marketers and solutions engineers and sellers pivot into PMM and you have an advantage because you already understand your target market, business model, and the product. Here's what I'd recommend

• Familiarize yourself with general PMM concepts & frameworks through Sharebird, PMA etc. Take a course so you can start speaking the same language as your PMM team.

• Schedule coffee chats with existing PMMs at your company. Understand their core responsibilities, how they measure success, what their top priorities are.

• Figure out opportunities where you can partner with PMM on projects. There are SO many opportunities here whether its customer research, demos, events, competitive research, etc.

• Work with your manager and see if you can do a rotation in PMM or build it into your career growth plan

You have to start with understanding your audience and your product. For the audience – understand their key business issues and pain points and for the product, understand the differentiators / value drivers so you can craft a message that connects your product as a solution for your audience’s pain.

It’s also incredibly important to have a high-level understanding of the competition and their messaging so you can differentiate there as well. As you become more familiar with the industry and your org’s product offering as it compares to competitors, this becomes much easier, but should be revisited with every new launch. If you are successful, you’ll notice that your competitors will start to use your verbiage and messaging as their own. This applies to products too.

Beyond that foundation, there are two additional rules I stick to for messaging: Use the power of 3 and always provide proof. My messaging gets used a lot by our executives for our bi-annual updates, which means I need to keep my content brief but memorable so I stick to the power of 3 – three messaging pillars, areas of differentiation or impact – you choose, just keep it to 3. And last – always provide proof. This can be examples of how your product is innovative or a customer story or an analyst quote, etc. You need to be able to back up what you’re saying.

There are 3 core areas that I ensure I have a solid understanding of before I create new messaging and positioning:

• Target buyer(s) & their pain points: Get a clear understanding of who my target buyer is (budget, motivation to buy, purchase blockers) and what their pain points are (as it relates to the problem space your target buyer is looking to solve)
• Product knowledge: What features and functionality are we delivering and how does that translate into a unique value proposition and set of customer benefits
• Competitive landscape: What similar offerings exist in the market today and how does our offering differentiate

From there, I leverage a messaging framework that leverages the learnings from above and includes details on the following:

• Target Audience(s)
• Market Trends
• Problem Statement
• General customer challenges / pain points
• Elevator pitch
• Key solution benefits (supported by features) -- I always keep these to 3-4 main ones!
• Competitive differentiation
• Customer evidence/proof points (if available)

I usually go through several rounds of edits after receiving feedback from key internal and external stakeholders (though I typically keep it to key messages when seeking external feedback).

I'd sum up my process as: JTBD > target audience > buyer journey > market, competitive, VoC > insight > internal positioning > external messaging > GTM strategy 

Expanding on the above, here's how I've approached building out messaging for an entirely new product line & audience: 

1. Start by seeking to understand the relevant jobs to be done in your space & align on the whitespace you can uniquely solve for 
2. Hypothesize and validate the target audience you want to go after (who has the most pain when it comes to this job?)
3. Understand the target audience's journey when it comes to the JTBD 
4. Deeply understand the market trends, competitive players, and voice of the target audience through research
5. Identify & assert your guiding market insight (usually comes out through research) 
6. Develop internal positioning (data, differentiate, value prop)
7. Develop external messaging (short form, long form, reasons to believe / product proof, narrative)
8. Develop GTM strategy (channels, tactics, timing) 

1. Create a Leadership Team: - Typically composed of the PMM who will lead the launch, define messaging and positioning and rally the org plus the product manager who owns the product and then key stakeholders from PR, Analyst Relations, and GTM / Sales Readiness.
2. Set a timeline: Build a detailed timeline with key launch milestones such as when the product will be ready, executive reviews, the deadline for creative requests, and content creation timelines. Getting clarity on dependencies and the time needed to deliver is essential. Having a launch day helps to develop a work back schedule.
3. Activate and align the x-functional team: Teamwork is the most important aspect of launching products -- a good team can operate quickly, independently, and have fun while delivering business results. A disconnected team without trust will often stall on launches, require oversight -- and generate more meetings than necessary. Key members of the cross-functional team are sales enablement, customer/partner teams, the broader PM org, internal and external comms teams in addition to PR (i.e. social, blogs), content, campaign, and creative teams.
4. Agree on the Bill of Materials: Once you’ve got the team in place - focus on the Bill of Materials (the essential marketing content needed such as the customer pitch, FAQ (internal/external), press release, product demo, etc.), entry/exit criteria to determine product readiness and the training and roll-out plan for sales.
5. Brief Executives: Keep execs updated with briefings that also line up to signoff moments.

One of the most important steps is to get organizational alignment and buy-in that you need a launch discipline. Some early-stage organizations may prioritize agility and move quickly without formal processes. It's crucial to ensure everyone recognizes the value of having a structured approach. 

Once alignment is in place, keep the launch discipline simple and adaptable to your organization's culture. Begin with a straightforward framework and build upon it gradually to add complexity as needed. Two fundamental elements for this process are having a central Go-To-Market (GTM) point of contact who can coordinate and rally teams and a reliable, easily accessible product roadmap with spec docs so that the launch task force can have clarity and insight on what is launching and when. 

Customer insights are the bedrock of any product marketing function. There are 4 key steps when planning research: 1) knowing your objectives, 2) establishing your hypotheses, 3) discerning which methodology will deliver the right inputs to drive your decisions, and 4) articulating the 'so what'. 

1) Establish your top 2 learning objectives for the exercise. It may be helpful to gather input from key stakeholders on how this study may inform their function. For example, you may be looking to determine the dimensions on which a customer segment evaluates product quality and the segment's willingness to pay. You are likely to find out more than 2 insights while executing research, but it is important to focus your questions and methods on solving a couple of larger objectives. 

2) Synthesize any existing relevant customer research, external papers, and internal customer behavior analysis that can help you establish a baseline on what is understood about your research question today. Use this information to write out your hypotheses. This is an important check to ensure that your selected methodology can actually prove or disprove your hypothesis. 

3) There are many market research tools that product marketers can leverage, ranging from qualitative to quantitative. I have used everything from large sample quantitative surveys to simply having conversations with friends and family. In general, I find that quantitative methodologies like surveys are great for establishing systematic drivers of purchase behavior and customer use cases. Qualitative studies like focus groups provide insight into nuanced elements such as customers' emotional connection to products or their reaction to the tone of messaging or testing new concepts. Once you pick a method, it's time to execute.

4) Articulate your findings with the following: 1) consumer insight, 2) how it changes product or GTM strategy decisions, and 3) further questions that have been raised. It is not a bad outcome to surface new customer questions or dimensions coming out of the research. It usually means you are heading down the right path to uncover something really compelling. 

I wrote a comprehensive guide to doing market research here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/market-research-ultimate-guide/

It walks you through planning & scoping, study design, data collection, analysis, and taking action. Note that it is mostly focused on survey research, but the guide does touch on quantitative and qualitative methods.

Just like in marketing, sales enablement is all about knowing your audience. At the top level, that means understanding what motivates them (i.e. closing more deals, expanding existing customer base, etc.), and tailoring your enablement to help them understand how a new product/feature will help them achieve those goals. To refine this, I like to bring sales stakeholders into the enablement creation process so they can advocate for their team's needs. The side benefit of this is that it gives your enablement program a better chance of success.

Additionally, remember that there are different audiences within a revenue org. It's not just salespeople, there are often technical sales and customer success personas. In some cases, I find it helpful to break enablement into those smaller groups to cater to their specific needs. For example, sales aren't as interested in the technical nuts and bolts of a product or feature, but for technical sales it is crucial they understand the inner workings to build effective demo stories. For that reason, I often have separate "technical enablement" sessions to best meet those needs, as opposed to trying to lump everything together and risking the chance of losing people along the way.

Finally, I think we sometimes forget that humans all learn in different ways, and none of us fully understand something the first time we learn it. For those reasons, I try to find ways to present information in different ways, and not be afraid to repeat myself in various forums. For example, some people might learn best visually with slides, others might be auditory learners and love a podcast-style training session. And no matter the mediums you use, be sure to share them widely across various channels (email, Slack, sales enablement platforms, etc.).

One of the biggest pitfalls I see in product launches in underestimating enablement. Don't skimp on this, you want to make sure your customer facing teams are armed with right tools to take your product launch to the next level. A solid enablement plan will stem off these 4 questions:  

1. WHO is the internal audience? (SDR, AE, SE, CSM, Segment) 

2. What do they need to KNOW? (Timelines, expectations, goals, FAQs, etc.)  

3. What do they need to SAY? (Messaging, discovery questions, business value, etc) 

4. What do they need to SHOW? (Deck, demo, etc)   

By enabling the right teams with exactly what they need to know, say, and show, they should be ready to sprint and handle anything that comes their way.  

First, the sales team needs to know what is launching and when so they can make appropriate plans to incorporate it in their sales conversations. To facilitate these conversations, the choice of tools and practices should be tailored to the product's complexity, the sales cycle, and the team structure.

• Clear Early Communication: Ensure the sales team knows what is launching and when, enabling them to plan their sales conversations accordingly. 

• Training: Provide in-depth training on the product, including its features, caveats, and functionality. 

• Sales Deck: Equip the sales team with a sales deck that outlines key talking points and messaging to effectively communicate the product's value. 

• Competitive Analysis: Offer insights on how your product differs from the competition in the market. Highlight the incumbent, feature gaps, advantages, and parity. 

• Battle cards: Summarize competitive analysis and key points in easy-to-reference battle cards, aiding the sales team in their conversations. 

• Sales Script and Role-Playing: Provide sales scripts and conduct role-playing scenarios to help sales representatives practice and improve their sales pitches. 

• Lead Generation Forms: Offer lead generation forms, if appropriate, to capture potential customer information during sales interactions.

• Don't do what hasn't worked in the past. Do a quick audit/ survey with teams and understand what are the most-utilized and successful assets available and training formats so you can automatically have the trust of the team. 
• Experiment with resources that you know your prospect will find value in, not just your sales team. e.g. "We need one-pagers". No one looks at PDFs anymore. Can you create a landing page that tells a story that they can tell, or a quick video that gets decision-maker buy-in without having to sit through a demo. 
• Iterate. Listen to feedback, track usage, and iterate post-launch until you see adoption and attributed sales revenue moving (or at least signals of associated success).  

Product Marketing is about product and sales success so your OKRs should align with company, CMO and product OKRs. However, I think these 3 serve as a good 

"PMM OKR template"

1. Build a POV and become the hub of market intelligence: Think of this as all PMM programs: Competitive intel, Voice of Customer, Analyst Relations, 

2. Bridge the gap between product and sales: Product launches, sales enablement, technical and release marketing, Roadmaps, CABs

3. Win in your core market: Your ranking, Customer advocacy, SOV, Content hubs, Thought leadership, Pipegen, ACV, Website 

In general, product marketing OKRs can become quite vague and hard to measure. However, the product marketing OKRs I’ve seen that are easier to measure are:
1) Successful and ontime product launches. This means the product launch was able to happen on time with all cross functional teams trained up prior to the product launch so there were no surprises.
2) Completed messaging maps/documents for a target segment or new feature.
3) Completed research around target customer segments and who to go after next.
4) Updated pricing model or structure for new features.

Product Marketing OKRs are really important to keeping teams focused on driving the most impact for the company. At a Product Marketing OKR level, it often depends on what the company goals are for that particular time period. If the company is going after a new market or focusing on customer retention, that's going to influence what a PMM's KR will be.

Second, I think it's importnt to set a KR that you have direct influence or impact on. Sometimes, PMMs at Lyft share KRs with PMs, but ideally, there is a sub-KR that indicates whether a PMM's investment of resources is succeeding at supporting the overall KR. Most notably, what a PMM can influence directly is product/feature adoption, sales enablement success (for B2B), and active user growth. I advise my team to use 'absolute' KRs sparingly and only if there is no other option. For example 'Launch new marketing website by Q3' would be an absolute KR. I would suggest to think about 'why' we're launching a new marketing website and what that will do for the product or company. You may revise the KR to say 'Launch a marketing website that results in a 10% increase in self-service signups by the end of Q4'. In this example, we've pushed out the measurement to Q4 and determined directly in the KR how this work will move the business forward.

The short answer is 'it depends'.....let me explain... 

A product marketer, in my opinion, is like the CEO of a product. And just like a CEO, has to do whatever it takes to make the company (in this case product) successful. Hence, she/he should be measured on what is relevant for that specific year. 

PMM OKRs depend on your answer to questions such as - what is the stage of the product lifecycle? Do you own all of product marketing or a specific PMM function? What are the business goals and objectives this year? etc. 

Stage of product lifecycle

If you are working on an early stage product, then perhaps you are trying to determine product-market fit, understand market needs, or launch a product this year. If you are working on a mature product, then perhaps you are trying to beat competition, optimize pricing, and gain market share. The OKRs for both situations will clearly be very different. 

Product marketing function

OKRs vary by PMM function - positioning and messaging, competitive intel, sales enablement, customer insights, etc. 

Business goals and objectives

If the business objective this year is geographic expansion or establishing the partner channel org, then your OKRs should be tied to these initiatives, as you are obviously going to enable, drive and support them. 

In the meantime, if you have a very traditional role and just want a list. Here is a great list to get started, but remember to adopt it and change it to what matters most to your org and PMM function.   

If you are looking for key Product Marketing metrics to determine success, here are some ideas:

• For a mature product: new users, adoption (usage), active users, daily active users, monthly active users, retention, net retention, pipeline, revenue, deal size, win rate, close rate, velocity
• For a very immature product: # of early customers, # of customer demos, # of trial signups, adoption (usage)
• For going after a new buyer: # of new relevant titles added to the database, # of wins in a new vertical

The key is to determine what the objective is given where the product is in its lifecycle, and come up with the right metric accordingly.

Good Product Marketing OKRs really depend on the business and what the company is trying to achieve. For example, if there's no unified launch process, you may set an objective to develop a launch program. Or another example: you're starting to lose deals to a specific competitor. You may kick off a competitive program to mitigate losses on competitive deals. It really depends on the business.

For product launches:

• Did I reach my intended audience for this launch? How many people engaged with our launch materials? Read the blog post? Watched the video? Engaged with the landing page?
• How many existing customers adopted the new feature or product within a reasonable amount of time?
• Were we expecting a certain amount of leads or pipeline from the launch?
• Did we brief the analyst community properly?
• Is our sales team enabled on what's new and why customers should care?

For campaigns:

• Content delivery
• Gated content downloads
• Webinar registrations and number of viewers
• Lead flow

For sales enablement:

• What % of reps are certified on the pitch and demo?
• What % of reps have gone through persona training?

My favorite product marketing OKRs are the ones that clearly support the company's OKRs. And the second-best OKRs are ones that are shared with other departments because you can always do better, together, with other departments — when you work in PMM.

Let's say that your company's OKRs are the following:

- Increase self-serve, credit card growth.
- Increase sales-led growth with large enterprise customers.

Now, let's take one of those: "increase self-serve, credit card growth."

Well, then your OKRs could be:

- Launch new X feature on the self-serve pricing plan with Y customers upgrading by Z date (co-owned with Product Management)

- Overhaul email and in-app communications with small and mid-sized customers to drive X upgrades in 90 days (co-owned with Lifecycle Team and Growth Product Management)

See how your OKRs ladder up into the company ones? And how they're shared?

I'll preface this w/ saying my own POV of PMM is very much GTM-oriented. And so in developing the O's for my team, everything should track back to pipe & revenue. It's what pays the bills ;).

Below are the 4 O's that I've put in place for my team. It's purposefully high level and general at my level, and as you cascade it down, the O's and KR's may be more specific depending on your team setup.

1. Craft compelling narratives: this is the foundation, which includes messaging docs, positioning statements, market research, everything you do to craft compelling positioning and messaging. To me this is the heart of Product Marketing -- translating product & tech into benefits & impact to help buyers understand why buy now.

2. Fuel the pipe gen machine: PMMs don't typically control marketing dollars, but we do a LOT of activities that support the growth/demand gen machine. This includes website work, marketing asset development, event support & speaking engagements. It even goes into release marketing or product adoption metrics -- the thought should be "how is what we're doing going to help drive future revenue??"

3. Arm sales to exceed revenue targets: this encompasses all the work we do in terms of building pitch decks, datasheets, CI, and everything that supports the sales motion. And this might be "net new sales", it might be "expansion sales", but the "O" is all about building and supporting these teams to hit and exceed targets. If you're GTM motion is PLG, might have to tweak a bit :).

4. Become the model marketing team: you can't forget about the team and the people who make it up. So ensuring people have growth opportunities, that you're building a great culture, and creating a safe space for people to do their best work... at the end of the day it all comes down to the team and people.

There’s two main drivers I think about with respect to org structure. Important caveat on the below being I primarily have worked at smaller organizations where org structures across the company are often highly nimble.

1. How established the function is - When the PMM function is new, oftentimes you might be the only Product Marketer or have just one report. In that scenario I think it’s important to keep yourself and your report as generalists and prioritize the most important projects across the business as opposed to specializing by product/persona/etc. This enables you to learn the business much faster and build a lot of credibility by adding value on the most pressing opportunities — both essential precursors to being able to figure out the longer-term org structure and advocate for growing your team since you know where the need is. As the function becomes more established, I like to add in a Market/Customer Insights function within PMM and start aligning the rest of the team around business strategy.
   
2. Business strategy - Org structure should reflect the direction the business is going, not the other way around (this is true outside of PMM, too!). Sometimes that means I’ll have one PMM staffed to each core product, other times it might be audience focused (e.g. SMB vs. ENT; partners vs. customers), and still other times it might be based on a strategic priority like expanding into a new self-serve transaction GTM channel. I’ll also be clear with my team or candidates I’m interviewing how the competencies required differ based on which part of the business strategy they align against where there might be more or less focus on things like upstream market opportunity validation vs. messaging and launches vs. growth marketing.

This is a question I get a LOT. Everyone wants to know whats the idea PMM team structure. The short answer is there isn't one.

Firstly, the role of a PMM looks different in every company. Secondly, the role of a PMM is not static. The role should evolve based on business priorities. So while you may structure the team a particular way today, know that you might need to change that structure a year from now if your priorities shift, especially at a start-up where things change quickly. Here are a few things to keep in mind though:

• Look at the ratio of PM to PMM as a starting point, especially if you have a product-led organization. You want to keep this ratio as small as possible because if you have multiple products and launches to manage, you will need more PMMs to help manage them.
• If your priority is more sales-led then try to focus your team on either personas or GTM segments. For example, if you sell into different verticals, you might also want to think about how you divide vertical expertise within the team.
• Another approach is to structure a team based on functional areas: Sales-enablement, competitive intel, product launches, etc. This is not my favorite tBH but I've seen people do this. I believe this pigeonholes your team and leaves no room for their growth.
• A hybrid approach is also ideal for small teams. You want to build a matrix of priorities and then divide them amongst the team but make sure you have clear swim lanes and that each person has ownership of a certain area. This will help career growth, give you a more well-rounded team and it makes it easy for people to move around and work on different, interesting projects.

Currently, my PMM team is structured on the different parts of our platform because that's where I need my team to be focused. Additionally, I also own content strategy so we have that role on our team - since that person is a hybrid for marketing and product content. (Lots of open roles on my team if you are interested, reach out :) )

I go back to ensuring that the team structure is aligned to business objectives and associated KPIs. My company does have aggressive sales, customer satisfaction, and product adoption metrics (spans across the board) so I like to structure the team accordingly. 

I'll use a buyer journey framework to illustrate my ideal state team structure given these objectives (moving from top to bottom of funnel):

1. Content Marketer: Focuses on creating top of funnel assets to drive demand & support category creation
2. Technical PMM: Partners with our platform and alliances team to create mid-funnel assets and target a new persona, drive new business
3. PMM - Core and Launches: Subject matter expert of our main product, focusing on quarterly and ongoing product releases, drive activation
4. PMM - Add-ons: Subject matter expert of a group of add-on products, drive attach rate and category creation
5. Product Marketing associate/analyst: Support across to gain experience/ownership, build data-driven muscle

Other roles not technically PMM, but on team:

• Customer marketer
• Lifecycle marketer
• Advocacy & community manager
• Marketing designer 1
• Marketing designer 2

Organization structures for the PMM team vary depending on your companies’ stage, customer base, and product suite. There are 4 basic approaches for designing PMM teams: 1) functional (i.e. sales enablement, monetization, GTM, product strategy), 2) product lines (i.e. subscriptions, retail), 3) customer segments (i.e. enterprise, small business, consumer), or 4) Lifecycle (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention.)

When determining a new PMM team org structure, I think about these 3 questions:

1) What drives distinction in the sales/conversion cycle? For some companies that will be customer-based, such as selling to enterprise clients versus small business or business versus consumer for marketplaces. For others, the product drives the most distinction, such as a consumer subscription service versus consumer a la carte/retail. For other companies with smaller product suites and a less complex client base, it may be best to align against areas of the funnel (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention). Lastly, depending on the functional areas that PMM teams are responsible for it may make sense to organize against these areas to recruit for specific skill sets.

2) What domain knowledge will be most important to develop and maintain within the team? Which team members will benefit most from collaboration? This again is often tied to the answer in question one. Sometimes deep expertise on one customer segment will be critical relative to deep expertise on one specific product or vice versa.

3) How are your stakeholder teams organized? Aligning closely with product management teams will smooth the team’s ability to become trusted and consistent partners with that team.

As PMM organizations become larger and more complex, I have often combined two of the organizational approaches for maximum impact. For example, organizing my PMM teams by product lines, but having dedicated functional PMM roles underneath each product line team.

Our product marketing org strucuture is made up of 6 groups. Most of our groups are aligned directly to product, and how product strucutres their org. So each product group that is focused on building customer facing product - has a PMM group aligned to it. We refer to these PMMs as "full stack" PMMs partnering closely with product in defining roadmap and scope and GTM teams in bringing new products and features to market. 

We also have a group focused on enablement - supporting our customer facing teams with industry and segment positioning and messaging, customer facing assets, content and more. 

I will say that our team has evolved many times over the years, and we continue to be flexible and adapt to the needs of the business. PMM orgs need to take into account a companies gtm strategy, product strategy, etc and adapt as those things evolve as well. 

Great question and one that comes up all the time! The structure of the PMM team can vary depending on the size of the organization, the nature of the product, and other factors. I lead the Service Cloud PMM team, the largest cloud for Salesforce. So, it is a mature product with a billion+ annual revenue. So, my team is structured by the product portfolio, and I have one team that leads the strategic PMM initiatives like AR, PR, Launches, Website, etc. Each PMM on my team needs to be the product expert — so working closely with the product team on defining the roadmap to working on the right content to enable the field. So they are more of a generalist PMM who goes deep on a product.

The PMM org structure is highly variable based on the company – and also shifts and changes through a company’s lifecycle to best meet company needs. 

There are four primary structures

1. Product lines (i.e. Software, service, etc)

2. Customer segments (i.e., small business, mid-market, enterprise, accountant),

3. Functional (i.e. insights, product strategy, GTM, monetization, sales enablement) - Not my favorite as I think PMMs do their best work when they are deep on the customer problem and product solution and then bring full-stack PMM skills to the table.

4. Lifecycle (i.e. acquisition, engagement, retention)

Here are some things to consider as you determine the right structure of the PMM team for your org:

1. Start with the right ratio. The avg is ~2.5 PMs to 1 PMM. The ratio tends to be lower for product-led and for earlier stage products that need more from an insights, rapid testing and iteration standpoint.

2. Align to how the business is organized and how stakeholder teams are organized

3. Map PMM head count to the top biz priorities that PMM can have the biggest impact on.

4. Consider hybrid approaches where, for example, you have PMMs mapped to product lines, but also have each person specialize and be the lead in a customer segment, functional area, etc. This allows for more opportunities for stretch projects and career dev. 

Product Marketing org structure varies depending on the size, stage of growth, and nature of your product (i.e multiple product, persona, ICP). Ultimately you want to make sure you have enough coverage and the right skillset to cover the key pillars of Product Marketing (product launches, pipe gen, sales enablement, competitive intel, pricing and packaging). Here's a model that I've seen work really well:
1. Core PMMs - These are product marketing managers who align very closely with Product Management. They cover either a particular product in a multi-product organization or a grouping of capabilities (i.e AI). You'll want core PMMs to be adept at partnering with product and bringing them market, customer, and competitive insights to influence the product roadmap. You'll also want your core PMMs to have some GTM launch experience.
2. Solutions PMMs - These are PMMS who cover GTM for a particular segment, industry or persona. They go really deep on their particular segment and craft solutions focused messaging, integrated campaigns, sales collateral etc. Their closest partners are growth marketing, sales, and CS and they tend to be exceptional storytellers, skilled at messaging & positioning, and well versed in demand gen strategies.
3. Specialized PMMs - Pricing and packaging often lives in product marketing and requires a specific skillset, as does competitive intel. Often times sales enablement can also live under PMM in a smaller organization but as the organization grows the enablement org will typically sit under the sales team.

Regardless of role, there's a universal tradeoff between small and large companies and it's about what kind of impact you find most motivating. Would you rather have broader impact across the business and more autonomy/flexibility in the scope of where you focus, or would have rather have a deeper impact on a narrower slice of the business but at a scale that touches millions or even billions of customers/users? This is just as true of product marketing. Typically you'll have a much more structured, much more narrowly scoped remit at a larger company but the scale of revenue/customers will be drastically larger -- and you'll also have much more resourcing to draw upon (e.g. agencies, GTM budget, cross-functional teams to assist you, etc.).

The biggest difference is the level of specialization. At a smaller company, PMMs should be generalists. One quarter they may be working on bringing a new feature to market and another quarter they may be revamping the pitch deck. As the company grows and evolves to become a multi-product company with a segmented sales team, you start to see PMMs specialize. There may be a dedicated or embedded PMM for each product along with PMMs for each customer segment. 

The other difference I've seen is that PMM tends to be responsible for more aspects of product launches at smaller companies. In addition to planning the launch, they'll likely be writing the blog post, coordinating the email campaign, creating the landing page, etc. However, at a larger company with a more established marketing team, the PMM will focus more on planning/messaging and then work with their specialist counterparts to execute that plan. 

I'll caveat my answer here by saying that I haven't worked in PMM in a really large (1000s of employees) company - my experience has been mainly within startups and mid-sized companies. When I joined Intercom, we were about 150 people and now we're nearly 800. Here's what I've seen change for PMM during that growth:

• PMM doing a 'bit of everything' vs specialised - in smaller companies, PMM tends to do a little bit of everything within marketing, but as a company grows, you start to (hopefully!) hire more specialists to take on those areas. For example, when I first joined Intercom PMM wrote all the website copy, we'd write and set up the email/messaging campaigns, write copy for social etc. Now, we have amazing people who specialise in those skills, so our job has become more focused on core product marketing work such as positioning and messaging, and then enabling and coordinating with those other teams to bring that messaging to life. Similarly, in larger companies, you're more likely to have more resources in other teams such as research, biz ops etc. who can support your work.
• Launches become more complex - Related to the point above, in larger companies you're more likely to be working with multiple different teams within marketing such as brand, corporate marketing, customer lifecycle marketing etc (and likely more teams outside of marketing too!). This means co-ordinating launches can get more complex, as you have many more teams to enable and co-ordinate with, so communication and organisation become even more important. 
• Enablement becomes more and more important - as your sales and marketing teams grow, there is a greater need for a solid enablement strategy. Getting 100s of sales people aligned and telling a consistent story is much more difficult than doing so with a small group, and you have to be much more deliberate about what and when you're sharing information. In my experience, enablement get less ad hoc (say, on a launch-by-launch basis) and more of a consistent, regular 'beat' of activities.
• More structure and processes - larger companies are more likely to have more structure and repeatable processes in place such as messaging frameworks, launch processes, and even things like legal policies to take into account. If you're like me and like structure and organisation, then this is usually a good thing!
• Opportunity to be a subject matter expert - in a larger company and larger PMM team, you'll likely be focused on a more specific product or solution area/audience. This is a great opportunity to really focus and know that product and audience inside out, rather than trying to stay across multiple different areas
• More need for close co-ordination across PMM and product areas - as noted above, in a larger company you're more likely to have many different product teams, and PMMs with more specific focus areas. The risk of this is that you end up with disjointed efforts across your products or portfolio, so you have to be more deliberate about staying in sync to ensure messaging and strategy are aligned across different areas

While a large company will have a dedicated individual or even team to a particular function, like competitive analysis or social media, at a startup you may be the one-stop-shop for all things marketing.

At my previous company TrueWork for example, we built the entire marketing org from scratch. I jokingly signed one mail as “the Product Marketing, Partner Marketing, Content Creation, Social Media, Press Relations, Analyst Relations, Sales Enablement, Events, and Web Team.”

The challenge of this is obviously juggling what would be ten different jobs at a large company. It’s also difficult accepting quality typically below a standard you’ve set at a large company, where you have the extra time and resources. With so much to do, “perfect is the enemy of good enough,” and it’s more about optimizing for the system as a whole rather than a single asset.

The reward is experiencing that breadth. If your goal is to lead marketing or be CMO, this is an accelerated crash-course to live nearly every job function, albeit in a part-time capacity.

We eventually hired dedicated experts in Demand Gen and Sales Enablement.

The biggest difference in my experience is that most PMMs are smaller companies that are full-stack PMMs and very early learn how to do a little bit of everything. They often need to wear multiple hats and do everything from writing blog posts to owning the GTM strategy and do all of that in parallel.

PMM teams at larger companies can afford to build more specialized skillsets and you often find PMMs at larger organizations that become SMEs in certain areas.

30 days: Prioritize understanding your customers, your product, and your company:

• Shadow customer calls (or listen to recordings if they exist).
• Get to know your cross-functional partners - schedule time with people from product, sales, marketing, engineering, design, etc. This will help you understand areas of opportunity as you establish relationships internally. 
• Learn about your product - get access to a sandbox account, read the documentation, read case studies, etc.
• Educate your company on what product marketing is and how other teams can work with you. 
• Ask a lot of questions! 

60 days: Plan and validate

• Based on what you've learned, start creating a plan for what you and your team should prioritize over the next quarter and year.
• Share your plan and priorities broadly to get feedback and adjust your plan based on that feedback.
• Develop a hiring plan and start recruiting. 
• Continue meeting with customers, teammates, etc. 
• By the end of 60 days, try to get a quick win out: revamp the pitch deck, launch a new product/feature, etc. 

90 days: Execute and refine 

• Focus on hiring and recruiting - the PMM market is really competitive and recruiting takes time. 
• Continue meeting with customers, teammates, etc. Product marketing is one of the most cross-functional roles - your cross-functional relationships are really important. 
• Continue to share your plan, progress, and accomplishments.

I’ve come in as the first PMM at several companies. My experience has been different every time, and I’ve learned a few hard lessons on rushing in too quickly. A large chunk of the first 90 days centers around education and getting quick wins.

30 days: Understand

Figure out who does what. If you’re the first PMM, then someone else is probably doing some work that PMM would normally do. See how the team is structured, where they need help, and where you may be taking over someone else’s role

Talk to customers. A lot. Understand the market and become the expert that can provide value to multiple teams

Build bridges. Focus on developing relationships and regular meetings with cross-functional partners. Even lend a helping hand outside of PMM to foster relationships

60 days: Educate

Explain what PMM can do. Many of your cross-functional partners may not understand the PMM role. Only half of the PMs I work with understand the PMM role

Find quick wins to show the potential of PMM. A few examples can include small messaging work or optimizing target customer

90 days: Implement

Outline the key GTM and research projects PMM can lead. Define the PMM processes and frameworks that you will leverage, and start to build to larger wins!

Finally, you may also want to read The First 90 Days (comes highly recommended from PMM friends and is on my reading list).

your 30-60-90 day plan will really depend on where the company is focused for the next 12 months and where they really need the most help. But in general, you want to look at a few key areas:

- Build strong cross-functional relationships

- Build a PMM charter, establish your function and roles and responsibilities, and if you have been asked to build a team, figure our your org design

- Establish key processes before you bring anyone on board. This can include things like product launches, internal comms, etc.

- Then dive into the key gaps, which almost always starts with having a clear positioning and messaging strategy. As part of that effort, you want to have a clear outline of your market category if that's unclear, and clarity on your competitive landscape.

It's important to build these 90-day goals with your executive team so that everyone is aligned on what you are responsible for delivering.

Here's how I typically tackle the first 30-60-90 days for establishing PMM:

First 30 - Listening tours + product/data downloads

• Shadow sales demos, listen to customer calls on Chorus or Gong, watch Fullstory sessions and marinate in any and all of the data you can find

• Get your hands on the product, get so comfortable with it you can give a demo

• Start market research, understand your TAM (total addressable market) and personas

First 60 - Assess, Align and Establish

• Assess orgs needs + company goals and individual departments

• Establish product development process and align on GTM (go to market) process with product leadership

• Understand ICP (ideal customer profile)

First 90 - Wins and Plans

• Act on any quick wins and present plans for PMM department build

• Identify the red (gaps) and plans for optimization

• Balance tackling low hanging fruit and longer-term wins

• Leverage Notion as your command center for templates, org design and team wiki

Setting up a Product Marketing function for the first time in an organization requires careful planning and strategic execution. Here's a general outline of a 30-60-90 day plan to help you establish a Product Marketing function effectively:

First 30 Days: Understanding and Planning

1. Understand the Business:

   • Dive into the company's products, services, and overall business strategy.

   • Meet with key stakeholders, including product managers, sales, and leadership, to gain insights into the company's goals and challenges.

2. Define Objectives:

   • Clarify the objectives and goals for the Product Marketing function.

   • Align with the broader marketing and company objectives.

3. Assess Resources:

   • Evaluate existing resources, both human and material, that can be leveraged for Product Marketing.

   • Identify any gaps or additional resources needed.

4. Build Relationships:

   • Establish relationships with cross-functional teams, especially product management, sales, and customer support.

   • Gain insights into their perspectives and expectations.

5. Competitive Analysis:

   • Conduct a thorough competitive analysis to understand the market landscape.

   • Identify key competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning.

Next 30 Days: Strategy Development

6. Define Target Audience:

   • Refine or develop buyer personas based on market research and discussions with stakeholders.

   • Ensure alignment with sales and product teams on target customer segments.

7. Messaging Framework:

   • Develop a messaging framework that clearly communicates the value proposition and differentiation.

   • Ensure consistency across all communication channels.

8. Content Strategy:

   • Outline a content strategy to support product marketing initiatives.

   • Identify key content types needed throughout the customer journey.

9. Sales Enablement:

   • Collaborate with sales teams to understand their needs.

   • Develop sales enablement materials, including product guides, FAQs, and pitch decks.

10. Metrics and KPIs:

    • Define key metrics and KPIs to measure the success of Product Marketing efforts.

    • Set up tracking mechanisms and reporting systems.

Next 30 Days: Execution and Optimization

11. Campaign Launch:

    • Plan and launch initial product marketing campaigns.

    • Monitor performance and gather feedback for optimization.

12. Feedback Loops:

    • Establish feedback mechanisms with sales, product, and other teams.

    • Use feedback to iterate and improve messaging and strategies.

13. Customer Communication:

    • Develop a plan for communicating product updates and news to existing customers.

    • Ensure customer-facing teams are briefed on these updates.

14. Evaluate and Optimize:

    • Analyze the performance of the initial campaigns and make data-driven adjustments.

    • Identify areas for improvement and optimization.

15. Documentation:

    • Document processes, strategies, and outcomes.

    • Create a knowledge base for the Product Marketing function.

Beyond 90 Days: Scaling and Growth

16. Iterate and Expand:

    • Iterate on successful strategies and expand product marketing efforts to new markets or customer segments.

    • Scale the function based on the evolving needs of the business.

17. Training and Development:

    • Provide training sessions for other teams on product messaging and positioning.

    • Develop a continuous learning plan for the Product Marketing team.

18. Cross-Functional Collaboration:

    • Strengthen collaboration with other departments, fostering a culture of alignment and shared goals.

    • Seek opportunities for joint initiatives with sales, product, and customer support.

19. Thought Leadership:

    • Establish the Product Marketing team as thought leaders in the industry.

    • Explore opportunities for speaking engagements, webinars, and content partnerships.

20. Measure Impact:

    • Continuously measure the impact of Product Marketing on overall business goals.

    • Use insights to refine strategies and demonstrate the value of the function.

This plan provides a structured approach to setting up a Product Marketing function and ensures a balance between understanding the organization, strategic planning, and tactical execution. Adjust the specifics based on the unique needs and dynamics of the organization you are working with.