Product Marketing KPI's

The ‘product marketing skills’ question has been answered really well by a lot of others on Sharebird already so I will focus my answer specifically to the interview itself:  I always look for candidates who have a strategic mindset and who can articulate what success in their current role looks like. I interviewed one candidate once who really impressed me with her ability to paint ‘before and after’ pictures. It’s less common than you would expect and she completely differentiated herself because of it.

I love this question because in my experience I have hired PMMs from a variety of backgrounds, including people that have had no direct PMM experience, but they all had the right aptitude for the role. Depends on the level of seniority you are looking for OR the kind of product you have, you might have specific technical skills you require. In my opinion, technical skills can often be learned on the job, but there are a few more “softer skills” that cannot. Here is what I always look for: * The ability to think strategically. Be able to see the bigger picture, and the long-term vision. At the same time, you HAVE to be able to roll up your sleeve and execute. No matter how big your org is, you will always have to balance the two. * Strong communication skills. Half of our job is about listening to people, understanding them, and presenting ideas. PMMs lead through influence, and to have influence you have to have clarity of thought and tell stories that will resonate (both internally and externally). * Be comfortable with ambiguity and the ability to pivot quickly. This is even more important at start-ups but working at public companies I've still seen this be extremely useful. PMMs don't’ have a static role (and they should not). Our focus changes with company priorities so it's important to be comfortable with not knowing what each quarter might look like. But also don’t get married to ideas, you have to be able to let go easily and not get frustrated. * Organized and self-driven. PMMs often work on multiple initiatives at the same time, no matter how big the team is. If you are not organized or cannot project manage, you cannot do this job well * Be passionate and want to grow. I think this applies to almost any role, but it's important for me to build a team of people that are willing to learn and want to work on a variety of things to become a more well-rounded PMM.

My answer spans the top hard + soft skills: * Hard: Well-rounded across words and numbers. You often hear that PMMs have to be strong storytellers (framing, positioning, mesaging, writing), but the highest-performing and highest-potential PMMs I've worked with are also very analytical and comfortable with some number crunching. In the B2B space, in particular, backing up any story with inspiring message, facts, and data will do wonders.  * Soft: Empathy and stakeholder management. Someone who can put others first and put him/herself in another's shoes. You often hear that PMMs must act as the voice of the customer, and that is 100% true. Add to that the ability to get other people and teams on the same page (the case for most PMM projects) will go a long way. To the people who asked this question, I'm curious -- What do the best product marketing leaders have in common?

I think the best product marketing candidates — and product marketers — have one thing in common: empathy. Empathy helps you understand where others are coming from, and that is the foundation of great messaging & positioning as well as great collaboration.  If you can put yourselves in your customers' and prospects' shoes — what they care about, their needs and pain points, what success looks like to them, their emotional state at different phases of the customer journey, etc. — you are halfway to creating great messaging.  And if you can put yourselves in the shoes of your cross-functional partners — what they care about, what they're worried about, and what success looks like to them — that is the foundation of a strong and productive collaboration. 

I've done a lot of interviews and hiring over the years and I'm constantly impressed by how smart and driven Product Marketers are! It's one of the things that makes interviewing so much fun - you get an opportunity to talk to and learn from the best of the best. That said, I think there are a few things that really stand out for me, and they are: * Curiosity - Most candidates are well-educated and skilled, so it's the folks with humility and a curiosity to learn that really shine during the interview process and on my team * Customer-First - Candidates with deep empathy for the customer (both buyers and sales) and can show consistent examples of how the work they've done has been developed with them in mind * Creativity - Whether it's their ability to creatively solve problems or the level of creativity they bring to their campaigns and strategies, I often find that these individuals are the spark of innovations that a team or project needs! * Resourcefulness - I believe you don't always have all the answers and neither do those around you. The best candidates can share how they've identified solutions across their team during ambiguous times. They don't let the lack of clarity prohibit their progress. Instead, they take steps to build clarity.  * Impact-Focused - Finally, they never forget that the reason they're leading all the projects and programs at their organization is to have an impact. The best candidates can speak clearly to the impact they have had and have a POV on the additional impact they'd like to see. 

From my hiring experience there are typically there are a few key characteristics and examples I look out for * Has to be a great storyteller - go beyond writing copy, and able to craft narratives * Ability to take complex topics and translate them into value * Customer-centric  * Cross-functional / team players  * Organized, ability to prioirtize and pull together disperate workstreams 

I have some data here. For years, I used "candidate fit tests" (offered by Pittari.io). It's like Myers-Briggs but focused on workplace style & drivers. For successful PMMs, I noticed a pattern. When it comes to workplace style, PMMs scored highly for "commanding" and "outgoing", favoring an "easygoing" style more than "exactlng". In other words, they like to enage with people and push conversations forward, but they're still flexible in groups. Then, across 7 possible drivers, PMMs scored highest on creativity and altruism. This makes a lot of sense for positioning work, and "atruism" echoes Jenna Crane's answer about empathy. The PMMs were less motivated by "individualism" (i.e. they're generally not mavericks). Though I like using the Pittari test to spark a conversation, I'm sure you can assess these traits through behavioral interviewing. Sidenote: If you look for these traits, you can find hidden gems in unlikely places. One of our best PMMs at Twilio came from a completely different role in Marketing Ops with no PMM experience. If the hiring manager only looked at resumes, it wouldn't have happened.

I don't care about the candidate's background when interviewing for my team. I've hired folks from engineering, solution engineering, sales, and customer success teams and they've become successful PMMs. That being said, most of them have this in common:  * Can-do and flexible attitude - Ready to take on any challenge. Open to solving it creatively and however long it takes to wrap it up.  * Connecting the dots - Instead of being siloed as just a PMM, thinking about the adjacent functions like campaigns / content / GTM teams and how to involve them. * Good copywriting skills - Flair for writing is key for a PMM.  * Product experts - Know the product extremely well and ready to strategize with the product team for roadmap discussions.  * Creative problem-solvers - Always thinking about ways to do things differently and not afraid to try something new. 

In my mind, the best performing product marketers exhibit three must-have skills: 1. Research 2. Storytelling 3. Project management To expand on each: 1. The instinct and ability to research, talk to customers, and analyze data to find new insights 2. The ability to combine insights + product features into stories that resonate with your audience 3. The drive and cross-functional skills to work across any internal scenario to drive external results In my experience, folks with (1) and (2) but not (3) tend to be really thoughtful and analytical, but have a harder time connecting that rich insight to business outcomes. Folks with (2) and (3) but not (1) tend to move fast and ship often, but the substance of their work might not hit the mark. For what it's worth, I've never found someone who spikes in all 3 (for those curious, I personally have been on a long journey at getting better on storytelling). I've also found that every company operates differently. Some companies are SO good at data and insights that you don't need to be an expert analyst. Some have product ops teams that help run the cross-functional projects. There will be places where your spikes just don't fit for the team. So if you're a PMM candidate, don't worry about nailing every spike. Instead, make sure that the anecdotes and ideas you share help provide a well-rounded picture of who you are.

I’m always wary of painting with too broad a brushstroke when it comes to hiring. Your job as a hiring manager is to spend time understand the super powers of the people you meet as part of your interview process, and to evaluate if those super powers have a place at your company. With that in mind and the current context of our work at Coda, I can share some commonalities in some of our recent all-star hires: 1. Curiosity with the intrinsic motivation to go find answers (vs. letting questions persist indefinitely or waiting for an answer to be handed on a silver platter) 2. A genuine interest and engagement with our product 3. Stellar, engaging, thorough communication 4. A “test and measure” mentality that knows (1.) what they want/ought to measure, and (2.) how to structure a test to get the insights they need to do the job well 5. Belief in the innate capabilities of humans to do amazing things with positive impact

I think the best product marketing candidates have three things in common * They are strong on the core requirements for the role. In most cases, it involves a degree of comfort with developing or activating messaging/positioning/value propositions for products/solutions/audiences/segments. They can simplify complex ideas, convey it in different media types and can explain the process behind it confidently * They are natural collaboators and very very strong at working with others. Could be product, sales, CS, other folks in marketing. Best PMM candidates, even the junior ones, can comfortably play an aligner/orchestrator role. They can bring consensus and calm to heated discussions, and connect different factions together * They have a ‘growth mindset’. Strong PMM candidates know that PMM is a ‘breadth function’ and that they will often wear multiple hats -even if it is not part of their job description today. Strong PMMs are adaptive and flexible, eager to learn new skills and take on new challenges and help drive ownership and accountability with a strong ‘growth mindset’

The best product marketing candidates have: * Excellent communication skills that come to "fitting" them to the role I'm hiring. * Proven experience in product marketing with measurable results. The best candidates have hands-on experience with user research, competitors research, ICPs, GTM: strategy + execution, narrative design, sales enablement, and content. * Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with use cases from their past experiences. * Desire to invest time into preparation. They have done their homework on the company, our products, persona nd market. It's rare to find such candidates but maybe YOU will be such one :)

Know your ARR/Pipegen numbers and analytics tools: Get comfortable with building reports and dashboards. Know how to run reports and play around with that data. You will start uncovering interesting things - ex: we are weak in a certain market segment or we tend to have higher win rate for certain industries or deal cycles are longer for certain regions - Each of these insights can lead you to move from being tactical to being strategic. Learn, experiment and gain new skills: So, am I suggesting you to do project management product launches? Yes. It is ok to do that if that is the business need. I will worry when it starts becoming a pattern and you do more project management that product marketing. In that case, have a conversation with your manager. Understand why this is happening? Is it because the company doesn’t have a project manager and you are the best one to do it OR is it because you are seen as a better fit for the project manager role. Both of these are solvable but your course of actions would be very different. Focus on some initiatives that may not be urgent but are very important: You will have unique advantage when these initiatives become urgent. Don’t think only about this quarter, think of the next and the one after that. Don’t compromise your on-going projects but still give some thoughts to the company priorities for the upcoming quarters. I am sure your management would be happy to discuss company priorities for the upcoming quarters. Company priorities are typically set 90 days in advance so that the rest of teams can craft their’s based on the company's priorities. A lot of people say know your customer but it is not easy for a junior PMM to ask to be part of a customer visit or CAB or sales call (been there!). One way to learn about your customers and in fact the most efficient way I found is to do win-loss interviews & analysis. Get your hands on as many win-loss reports as you can. Don't know where to find - go to Salesforce and run report and add loss reason (or something similar) field. Learn why customers buy or don't buy our products. Ask sales, what went well or what went wrong?  

That's an interesting question. I see the PMM role as the GTM strategy which includes a success launch. And I see PMMs as the owner of product messaging. Not sure I can help here. Now if you're looking to move beyond those tasks and elevate your role then that's different question with a different answer.

Does not matter if you are a junior PMM or a seasoned PMM leader - owning/coordinating launches and copywriting will always be part of your job in one way or another so embrace those, be the best at it, and use the experience to hone your craft. But you also don’t want to be pigeonholed into JUST being a project manager or copywriter - that’s when you need to make sure that you are working on a variety of projects in your role, and there are multiple ways to make that happen. * Have an open discussion with your manager and make sure that you have at least 1 big strategic initiative to own per quarter, whether that is helping define a new use case, building messaging or buyer personas, defining your ICP, helping sales with Win/Loss, etc - whatever the need is in your organization * Don’t wait to be told what to do. If you have ambition and want to grow in your role, just look at where the gaps are and take the initiative to fill them. For example, Market research or competitive analysis are usually things that get left on the back burner for a lot of orgs unless you have a large team to divide the work - so just go ahead and do that and share those insights with the relevant teams like the product or sales team. In order to be a more strategic PMM and for you to get a seat at any table, junior or not, you have to bring something of value to other teams - so figure out what is missing and just do it!

Having consulted for PMM teams, and built/run one from scratch, it's safe to say the areas of responsibility for any PMM is on an ever-evolving continuum. However, I see a difference between a junior PMM vs a first PMM hire... in that the first PMM hire should NOT be junior. That's not a knock on the junior role. In fact, I'm urging early stage Founders/CEOs/VP Marketing to have some semblance of a career path for PMM if your natural inclination is to maximize value from a high performing yet low cost junior PMM unicorn. It's possible, but unless that individual is truly exceptional the situation will quickly erode into lack of equity and anxiety. Why? Because it's easy to staff a PMM on any (and many) projects and not everyone can handle the load without prior exposure. To actually answer your question -- my advice to a junior PMM and first marketing hire: It was nice knowing you? Godspeed? Jokes aside, have an honest and mature conversation with your manager on the expectations if you see the mound of projects transform into a mountain overnight. A critical skill to becoming a successful PMM is stakholder management, so it ought to start early in your career whether it's with your manager, his/her boss, or your peers. Finally, don't hesitate to ask for help to prioritize when you're overwhelmed 

Being a launch project manager is part of the job – PMMs own product launches, the creation, strategy and management of it. Being a strong copywriter for releases is also part of the job. We write a lot of content or partner with writers and clean up their content so we can use these for our product launches. If you don’t like writing, then being a PMM may not be for you, it’s a core skill set and PMM leaders pass on candidates that tell us they don't like to write. Both these skills are needed in a full stack PMM. If you are asking how to be more strategic and be seen as more strategic, please look at my phases of success for a PMM in my first 100 days here. And look here for the best skills and traits I think a PMM should have. 

Build relationships with your stakeholders in Product Management, Sales and other Marketing teams (Content, Digital, DG, Integrated, etc.). Ask them to invite you to meetings and listen intently to identify areas where they need help, and volunteer to help with with those areas - e.g. market trends analysis, customer segmentation, competitive analysis, content creation, sales enablement collateral, etc. In short, take the initiative to rise above your title and rank and prove to your stakeholders that you have what it takes to deliver meaningful impact on the business.

My advice is to work on building relationship with the Product org. Proactively find ways you can bring them value - whether it be through market or competitive insights, product teardowns, industry knowledge, customer insights, etc. Find out what information they wish they had more of, and figure out how you can bring that to them.  This partnership is so important for PMMs - and will help break down the metaphorical wall that stands between product and marketing, that products are tossed over to be shipped. This relationship should be bi-lateral. 

Product Marketers should always be thinking of ways to contribute directly to revenue. In my mind, if it doesn't move the needle, its not meant to be worked on. Prioritization needs to be ruthlessly put into check. Product Marketers should always key in on: * Driving pipeline and top-line revenue growth, inclusive of new logo and cross-sell / up-sell (land & expand growth) * Partner with Enablement to ensure quota-carrying teams know what to say to whom and when * Develop strategic sales plays

If you are a junior product marketing manager who is the first product marketing hire, you may be facing some unique challenges and opportunities. To succeed in this role, here are some pieces of advice to keep in mind: 1. Deeply understand the product and market: Take the time to thoroughly understand the product that you are marketing and the market it is targeting. This will help you position and promote the product effectively and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise to others. You should become the product, market, and users Wikipedia.  2. Build relationships with other teams: As the first product marketing hire, you will need to build strong relationships with other teams, such as Product Management, Sales, and Marketing. This will help you understand their perspectives and priorities, and will also make it easier for you to get the support and resources you need to succeed. 3. Be proactive and take initiative: As a team of one, you will need to be proactive and take on all PMM initiatives because no one else will do them :) 4. Seek guidance and support: As a junior product marketing manager, you may not have all the knowledge and experience you need to succeed. Seek help from more experienced colleagues in cross-functional roles (PMs, sales, marketing), PMM mentors, and product marketing communities like Sharebird or Product Marketing Alliance. 5. Be patient and persistent: Building a successful product marketing function from scratch can be a challenging and rewarding process. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes and adapt your approach as needed. Good luck to the junior PMM who asked this question ❤️

Not everything we do is measurable and this is especially true for PMMs.  Unless there is a compelling reason to measure every aspect of sales enablement, I would not suggest you do so.   But if you must, then for most things, a simple survey to the sales org is best. Ask them how useful a specific task was in their sales cycle? And if you should stop, continue or improve that specific task? Remember to give them an incentive to complete the survey.  You can also try other indirect means, like measuring the sales success rate of someone who took a training vs. not, but none of these methods are reliable because a lot goes into sales success. 

A mix of qualitative and quantitative data is always the gold standard.  For training, take time to connect sellers both before and after trainings to ask what questions they have, what they took away, or what they might still need. Mix up who you go to so you hear from both your most and least engaged teammates. Then, for consistent quant data, make simple post-training surveys a standard (required!) part of training so your teams provide you with consistent feedback, and you can learn as you experiment with different formats.  For call best practices, build opportunities for role playing to build consistency across teammates. It's a great way to create cross-seller visibility of what's working well so others can model. When possible, join calls to hear the real deal, and, if you have access to it, use tooling like Gong to really scale your visibility into calls. You can search for specific call topics, products, sellers, etc. to narrow in on priority motions. 

Qualitative measures require qualitative assessment. I don’t see a way around spending time listening to calls (at 1.75x speed of course) :) The best way to measure performance is to select a random sample of sales conversations - enough to be quantitative (10+) and assess the intangibles on a score sheet - objection handling, trap setting, etc.). I would try to make the scoring as subjective as possible—not how “ideally” it was delivered, but how the prospect reacted to it. You can learn a lot from winning conversations. But also a ton to learn from loss conversations. Reducing instances of losses can be an effective way of measuring performance and course correction.

Great question. When it comes to measuring objection handling: * Leverage a conversation intelligence tool such as Gong, where you can report on keywords within sales calls and attribute those conversations to deal pipelines. For training: * The best way to measure impact of a training is to run 'workshops' in addition to a training such as an eLearning. For example... I'd recommend reps taking an eLearning that walks through the 'what and the why' and then organize a workshop where they put it to practice to understand the 'how'. With the workshop, create a simple matrix scorecard to judge/grade their effectiveness in putting it to practice. This could be a role play or it could be the rep recording a mock pitch and submitting it to their manager to grade. * I'd also recommend looking at 'before' and 'after' snapshots within your reporting. What was the runrate before they took the training, and what did it look like 30, 60, 90 days after? * In some cases, depending on the training, you'll be able to better track things. For example, if you lead a training on 'improving win rates against X competitor by leveraging new objection handling techniqes' then you can look at deals that involved that competitor and whether you saw a meaningful increase in win rates.  At the end of the day, not everything is going to have a direct line to tangible results. But there are more and more solutions on the market to help today, and creative ways to think about it. 

The best way is to use sales feedback to show improvement over time. You can easily do that by measuring things like sales confidence using a survey to show performance improvement over time. You can also just run feedback surveys post-training to capture feedback on the training itself. The other things you can directly attribute to sales enablement can be things like shorter sales cycles over time, improvement in win-rates or improvement in competitive win-rates, etc.

Start with these: 1. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) - it measures how long a customer stays with you and how much they spend during that time. It's a good early warning metric.  2. Win/Loss Ratio - of all the deals you have the opportunity to win, the number you win and the number you lose. It's a great tracking metric to help measure the effectiveness of things like sales enablement. 3. Retention Rate - the king of metrics in SaaS. What is the rate at which customer are staying (or the opposite - leaving). If your retention rate goes south, it means you have to sell that many more deals to get ahead.

I take the approach of getting both quantitative and qualitative measures, both bottom line (e.g. revenue) and project-specific (e.g. collateral usage) metrics. Quantitative metrics include: revenue, win/loss rates, launch metrics, product usage, retention Qualitative metrics include: internal feedback (e.g. sales team surveys), external feedback (e.g. brand awareness surveys) A little bit more on that here, with suggestions from other product marketers: https://www.crayon.co/blog/product-marketing-metrics

Below are some key metrics we track, many already shared by David and Ellie, but I have bolded a few that are slightly different: * Revenue of product line (or product portfolio) * Average lead age or length of sale * # of customer interactions * Customer NPS * Average win rate (win/loss ratio) The average lead age is an interesting one for enterprise B2B companies, as those sales cycles can take some time and have certain friction points. As product marketing, are you finding ways to resolve those frictions and improve the length of sale? 

In a proper program, Industry Marketing & Campaigns have joint ownership so we both look at the same metrics in order to build pipeline and win NARR. I say this as a preface because Industry and Campaign leadership should work together to: * Establish business objectives * Set targets, goals, and key intiiatives * Help with cross-industry efforts This should then yield to: * Pipeline generation * Open Pipe * NARR As such, we should always be looking at broad metrics that lead to: * Global NARR * Rep Productivity (monthly) * ASP (monthly) * Close Rate (monthly) * Cycle Time (monthly) * Market Penetration (quarterly)

That's would be a tough problem if you are trying to understand the impact on one deal over a period of 18 months. I would flip this on its head and instead try to focus on measuring pipeline progression and map it to product marketing work.  For example: Let's say your sales funnel is a 6 stage funnel. Start by understanding the current health of your funnel. Analyze data from the last 3-4 years to see where the which stage do the opportunities are stuck for the longest. For example, let's say that the deals are stuck in stage 4. Now, this could just be the nature of your industry but most likely there would be some things thatmight help you accelerate this stage by 2-3 weeks on average. Multiply that with the number of deals in that stage, and you will see a huge impact on the "Deal Cycle" metric. To make it more real, let's say currently stage 4 is 100 days average. You realize that by creating an ROI report and a set of relevant customer case studies, your buyers would make the decision in 75 days. If you have 1000 deals in stage 4, you have basically reduced the sales cycle by 25 days on average and 25000 days in total for your existing funnel. That's a lot! :)  Some metrics that would help you assess the health of your pipeline are = Average Sales Cycle Last Activity Date on opportunities Push Count Average Deal Size Slice & dice by Customer Industry & Win Rate - move the needle in a few of these Regional Distribution - again pick regions where you can make a significant impact Funnel Shape: Better when you have a funnel that looks like a funnel. Many times, one of the stages would have a ton of pipeline stuck. The funnel then is distorted. 

Naturally you want to look at how your content and its assets have touched the sales cycle. Typically here are a few ways I tend to look at metrics with long sales cycles (upmarket): * Conversions NARR * Attachment rates - new logo and cross selling * Product ASP - the sales price, keep a close eye on this * Industry/Segment NARR * Gross Pipeline * Win/close rates

This ties back to business objectives (corporate level KPIs), and how your team / individual role & responsibility is structured against those objectives. You'll often see that, depending on the company stage and maturity, PMM will skew towards alignment with either Product OR Sales. But it's rarely perfectly positioned in the middle.  * Let's say your business has an aggressive product growth target... well then you're likely to staff a PMM that'll specialize in launches, or maybe even a lifecycle marketer (the next hottest role after PMM in marketing, I might add). In that case the metric to hold this particular PMM accountable to is: Activation, adoption, or engagement rate within the first 5, 10, 30 days post-launch -- something to that effect. * On the other hand, if there is a clear sales target, then you could have the PMM aligned to: Revenue, win rate, close rate, ASP, etc. I recommend to stick with 1 metric wherever possible to not muddy the water. And again, enure alignment with the business objective and take advantage of the fact that most PMM teams get a comprehensive view of the business and can position against critical initiatives (and associated metrics).

Messaging and revenue. But to be clear, here are the specifics: * Drive pipeline and top-line revenue growth, inclusive of new logo and cross-sell / up-sell (land & expand growth) * Partner with enablement to ensure quota-carrying teams know what to say to whom and when * Bring customer feedback into the product and technology team in order to inform product roadmaps. * Prioritize, open, and adapt to new markets and industries * Drive home differentiated and unique value

Great question - Because I am so focused on Industry Marketing right now, I have it divided between Product Marketing KPIs and Industry Marketing KPIs: For Product Marketing: * Conversions NARR * Attachment rates - new logo and cross selling * Product ASP - the sales price, keep a close eye on this Industry marketers on the other hand look at: * Industry/Segment NARR * Gross Pipeline * Win/close rates

This is a big question! It would be impossible for me to detail all the ways we work with these teams, but at a high level: * Sales & CSM: I'm bundling these two together, as the type of work we do with each is similar at a high level. We work closely with sales leaders and the sales enablement team to understand sales' needs, develop messaging and content for them to use with both existing and prospective customers, understand how that messaging is resonating, and creating training and other enablement materials. We have a sales enablement group within PMM who drive the strategy here and work with other PMMs to create the content for specific solutions/areas.  * Marketing: We work with all parts of marketing (at Intercom, marketing is split into 4 main areas - PMM, Corporate Marketing, Demand Marketing and Growth). This includes everything from partnering with our brand team on our narratives and campaign strategy, enabling the demand teams on who to target and what messaging to use, co-ordinating launches across the whole team, working with growth on improving our web journey and landing pages, and so on. In short, we work with all areas of marketing very closely, both on an ongoing basis and on specific projects like launches.  * Product: PMMs are partnered directly with PMs for their specific product area and meet regularly (usually weekly). They work closely together, with PMM providing market and customer insights, and inputting into the product strategy and roadmaps. PMM also develops the positioning, messaging and launch plans for our solutions and new features, ensuring the PM is aligned along the way.

Cross-functional work is Product Marketing's middle name!  PMM <> Sales * Key deliverables: Pitch decks, enablement assets (internal resources like battlecards and personas, external resources like one-pagers and case studies), and trainings  * Key goals: Improve win rates, improve competitive win rates, increase ASP, shorten sales cycles, improve demo request to demo held rates, generate pipeline, improve sales team confidence  PMM <> CS * Key deliverables: Same as sales, but with an existing customer upgrade / health / cross-sell / retention angle. Add in enablement on new features and important changes (like pricing), and resources like maturity models or crawl/walk/run decks.  * Key goals: Average customer health score, net retention or churn rates, NPS, CS-driven expansion, lifetime value [though be careful about signing up for these, as seen in one of my other answers!] PMM <> Marketing * Key deliverables: Messaging and positioning, launch moments and/or campaigns, website pages, case studies, personas and customer insights, demo and/or explainer videos, competitive intelligence, and more * Key goals: Website traffic, share of voice, engagement metrics for external moments like launches or campaigns, website conversion rate / bounce rate, and (whenever possible) revenue-focused metrics like leads/demo requests, MQLs, opportunities/pipeline, and self-serve ARR PMM <> Product * Key deliverables: Product positioning, roadmap feedback, market/customer research, competitive intelligence, launches, GTM strategy for new products, support with onboarding experiences and product-led growth/virality * Key goals: Feature adoption, adoption and/or revenue generated from new product lines, self-serve revenue, NPS, net retention rate, specific virality metrics

These are some of the main stakeholders a core PMM would work with.  With Sales, I tend to like to see what is resonating with prospects. Is there a specific line or way of telling our story that clicks? I tend to like to use this insight to guide early funnel materials to proactively talk to prospects in a way that resonates.  With CSMs, I’m looking for how current customers are using products and how we can tell stories of unique wins. I think it helps overall positioning if you can factor in real world usage, and customers may leverage a product in a way that you or your PM may not have thought of.  For both Sales and CS, though, I tend to look at these relationships as ones where you build and cultivate on a one off basis. Over time, as you prove value to these teams by delivering back materials that help them in their roles, you’ll build a better cadence, but they aren't roles where it's easy to get a recurring cadence going without proving value first. In an old role, we actually sat our PMM team on the sales floor so that we could stay connected with top sellers and sales managers to keep a pulse on the market. This really helped drive business forward as we could easily market around what was working for prospects.  For Marketing, you really do need to have close coordination. After all, a PMM would be the SME on the product itself, why it's of value to customers and how to talk about the product. Our fellow marketers would be the SMEs on how to get that message out in the market and how to drive the KPIs that we’re looking to see relative to the funnel. This relationship feels the most likely, to me, for a regular sync to stay connected.  And product tends to be, in my opinion, the main stakeholder. Some of the best PM/PMM relationships I’ve had didn't require a weekly or bi-weekly cadence, because we’d each connect with our counterparts for the areas where their expertise was needed. But I’d suggest you go into meetings with your PM stakeholders with a mindset of showcasing the market and the user trends or competitive issues that you're seeing that can help product do their jobs well. 

Regular engagement and alignment in key. I meet with my cross-functional leadership team bi-weekly to ensure we’re aligned on the needs of each team as they evolve and areas of focus. Key goals and deliverables: PMM with Sales: Drive sales success by developing content needed to support the pre-sales customer journey and business goals, such as use cases, pitch decks, customer case studies, and other prospect facing content. PMM with CSM: Drive customer success by developing more in-depth content needed to support the post-sales customer journey and business goals, such as detailed use cases, QBR decks (quarterly business review), roadmap decks, and other customer facing content. PMM with Marketing: Drive pipeline and bookings by supporting strategic marketing plans (demand gen campaigns, paid media, growth experiments) that build brand/product awareness and interest. PMM with Product: Drive market success of the product / solution / service with a strong GTM strategy, compelling messaging, differentiated positioning, and strategic pricing & packaging.

1. PMM with Sales: I ask for links to chorus/gong calls to listen to customer's positioning. We tackle enterprise needs on-going and jam on enablement materials + content market fit. I also pitch new concepts/messaging to sales for reaction and ask for on-going market feedback on concepts/campaigns. Success is measured by revenue attainment but more specifically, how PMM can influence closed/won rate - deal velocity - pipe gen - upsell/expansion and AVC. Deliverables: pitch decks, one-pagers, enablement content, demo overview videos, snippets, outreach templates, case studies, eBooks/playbooks, persona guides 2. PMM with CSM: Similar motions as above but more from the technical able lens (v. value story with sales). Success is measured by land and expand, net retention, NPS, engagement and utilization. Deliverables: knowledgebase articles, snippets/outreach templates, messaging guidance, overview videos, product tours, one-pagers, eBooks/playbooks, case studies, events/webinars 3. PMM with Marketing: We meet pretty regularly but focus on integrated campaigns/growth goals. We measure success by PQLs generated, funnel conversion and overarching project execution. Deliverables for marketing mostly consist of launch plans, positioning + messaging docs, product overviews, videos, scripts, outlines, case studies, reviews, webinars, newsletters, slide decks. etc. 4. PMM with Product: we meet weekly with product and individually with PMs as product/features advance throughout roadmap. Goals: attach rate, WAUs/MAUs, utiliaztion, use case activation. Deliverables - executing launch plans and meeting attach goals, case studies, messaging + positioning, 

The best products are built with the market in mind–and product marketing should contribute long before anything gets put on a shelf. It is an expectation that product marketing is involved way before the feature gets built and can answer "can I sell this?" with product. It definitely helps to have joint goals with product so work is not at odds. Product and product marketing are a true partnership and PMMs/PMs who realize this and don't treat the relationship as transactional are far better for it.  Product marketing lives in 3 worlds — customers, product, and marketing (of course). And we bring the 3 together. It rests on product marketing to shape a clear, compelling, consistent voice for the product in the market.  My marketing counterparts (analyst relations, demand gen, PR, performance marketing, brand, analytics, etc.) are in my team slack channels, attend my team meetings, and we have regular sparring sessions. I treat them as if they are on my team, because they are! Shared goals help here too.  To work with CSM and sales, I have monthly business reviews where we do go to market deep dives and swap intel. We have regular win/loss reports, I get pulled in to do customer calls, we make enablement with a feedback loop from sales and CSM on what is needed. 

In my experience, it varies based on your product portfolio/customer segments... When my company had only 1 product we were separated by function (i.e. pricing/packaging, sales enablement, product launches, market research, etc.), but in other companies we were focused on segment (enterprise vs SMB product marketing and then had teams that supported us). Other roles that i've seen in smaller companies - customer marketing, content, even PR/AR (bc product marketing is usually the keeper of the message)

I've seen it work in many different ways. It's usually dependent upon where the PMM org lives, and what the other organizations look like along side of it. If it's in Marketing, it's very dependent on who the leader of marketing is. If it's in Product Management, it's usually broken out by product or vertical. I'm currently building up the team at Socrata, so we're broken out more by strategy vs. execusion and a person who owns the website. We'll go to a more verticalized approach as we expand. We live within Marketing, but I report to the SVP of Marketing/Biz Dev and there's a separate Director of Marketing who runs Demand Gen and Customer Marketing. 

See the answer above to the question "I wanna make the case to hire some more product marketers - we're a team of 2 for a company of 400. Whats the ratio where you are? Have you seen any external data on this?" -- I think I mostly covered this in that answer.  In short, we have a Go-to-Market team focused on the commercialization of our product straetgy and a Sales Readiness team focused on competitve/market intel, analyst relations and sales content developmenet. And our key partners are Solutions Engineers and Sales Enablement. 

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

Product Marketing org structures can vary by organization. Previously at Attentive, our PMM organization is comprised of the following teams: Product Marketing Core (focused on our product offering, more to come here), Sales Enablement & Competitve, Technical Writers, and Training. Our PMM Core team is split by our products with a 2-3 PMMs managing a single product offering usually comprised of several features. Collectively we all report into a VP of PMM who reports into our CPO. Yes, Attentive's PMM team is under the Product org. and we partner very closely with our Marketing counterparts. 

We've changed our structure several times over the years as the business has grown and priorities have shifted, but because PMM at Intercom works very closely with product we have always largely mapped PMMs to specific solutions or product areas. Our current team structure roughly mirrors that of the product team. That means we have 1 or more PMMs mapped to each specific product group, which are either focused on a solution (for example our support solution) or a product area (for example, platform which covers our data platform, app ecosystem etc.) Some groups have multiple PMMs, depending on how big the group in R&D is - we aim for a ratio of 1 PMM to 2 or 3 PMs.  These PMM roles are what's typically called 'full stack' - i.e. they do everything from inputting to the product strategy, to taking those products to market including messaging and positioning, launches, and enabling marketing and sales. We do this because we've found that lots of PMMs find satisfaction in being involved in the whole product lifecycle. We also have some additional groups within PMM that aren't directly tied to a specific solution or product area. These include our Enablement group - focused on enabling our sales and demand teams - and our 'Core' group - which owns our overarching positioning and GTM strategy (inc. personas, support analyst relations etc). I recently wrote a post on the Intercom blog that gets into a bit more detail about how we work.

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. 

Like many have said here, Product Marketing org structures can be vastly different. I believe the organizational structure starts with where Product Marketing sits in the org. Traditionally, there are three options for this: marketing, product, and reporting directly to the CEO. In my experience, PMM teams that report outside of marketing are more likely to be aligned to product strategy and the strategic roadmap planning and therefore might reflect a similar structure as the Product Management org (by product line, solution, vertical, etc). It's important to look at the needs of the company, the size of the PMM team, and how the product is positioned in the market.  The short answer is there is no "right" answer. 

For longer sales cycles, the product marketing team should be creating assets and programs that rally stakeholders, enable champions and fend off competitors during Request For Proposal (RFP) bakeoffs to help drive early opportunities to close. Long sales cycles frequently involve RFPs heavily influenced by third-party artifacts like Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves that map out critical capabilities, functional requirements and other vectors of consideration. The PMM team should create and own a "golden" response ready to go with core messaging, up-to-date product capabilities and pricing/packaging so account teams aren't scrambling to pull that info together at the last minute. Pulling a "golden" RFP response off the shelf and making a few tweaks based on the customer is a much better path to success for account teams.  Long sales cycles often mean dealing with multiple stakeholders, so if you're selling to a line of business you'll also have to get through reviews from IT, security, legal, compliance, etc. Have spec sheets, whitepapers, demos and other artifacts ready to go for those personas. PMM needs to stay close to the account teams to understand what works and what doesn't then pivot accordingly. Internal champions at the customer/prospect are often critical in winning long sales cycles so the PMM team should figure out what those champions need to rally their peers and senior leaders to help win the deal. It might be a reference customer "brag book" that shows how other companies in their industry have been successful using your product or it might be architectural diagrams or demos to win over more technical audiences. Again, staying close to the account teams and building a relationship with the champion (if possible) will help ensure PMM creates the right content for the right audiences.