Brand Strategy

Good question. I am sure you have heard this statement many times - “PM and PMMs are like two sides of the same coin”. It’s absolutely true, and work wise I see the roles to have a Venn diagram. There are things each team leads and drives by themselves and then there are overlap areas. The overlap areas usually are: 1. Product strategy 2. Product roadmap 3. Target markets 4. Positioning and messaging 5. Sales enablement (includes launches) The first step to building joint KPIs is building a trusted, valued and collaborative relationship. Where each party trusts that the other ...

My advice would be to build this into your regular team processes. If your company has an OKR setting process, this would be the right time to cross-functionally align with product partners on shared KRs or KPIs at a high level. Beyond that, I would suggest gaining this alignment at the PRD and GTM plan stages of the product lifecycle. In an ideal world, PMs, PMMs and Tech Leads collaborate on launch objectives (financial, product, marketing, risk), which make up the shared launch KPIs. Data Science or Analytics partners can use this as a guide to creating measurement and reporting plans...

Great call to have commonly shared KPIs with the product team - this is the best way to ensure mutual success. When it comes to product launches, it depends a bit on what you're launching. If your company has a "core" product and you're launching a new SKU or a product with a separate revenue stream, a great shared goal is attach rate: percentage of customers that have purchased the product. You'll want to look at the overall attach rate as well as the attach rate for new deals (out of all the deals that close after the product is launched, what percentage buy it).  For all other new ...

Broadly, alignment with Product should happen in an OKR or goals planning process at some regular interval. That's the real moment to align with you product partners on what problems you're trying to solve and what success means for a number of initiatives.  More specifically, I push that Product Marketing co-owns Product goals (to ensure alignment) and that they're the responsible party for product adoption metrics. What % of the audience has tried XYZ product is a strong measure of adoption and engagement.  Product launch KPIs should ladder into an adoption target (as stated above),...

At a high level, I think it's essential for all teams involved to understand the ultimate goal of whatever product or feature they are launching - meaning what is the problem you are trying to solve and for whom? In terms of process I have found the most success from establishing formal kickoffs, consistent check-ins along the way, and retrospectives post-launch. It's all about having several touchpoints between teams and making sure people are on the same page.

This idea of cross-functional KPIs is core to what makes PMM the most interesting and the most challenging function to quantify. But, you can do it! Two things I believe strongly: *  Cross-functional (or shared) KPIs are the most powerful KPIs any business or team can measure, because they're qualitative and quantitative and they force alignment across teams. *  Product Marketing exists to amplify the impact of other teams. If you don't have shared metrics, you're probably amplifying only yourself, and missing the chance to deliver on your true objectives. The best example o...

Great question! A lot of collaboration can come from shared KPIs, so it's great to align where possible. I'll divide this into two groups, on-going and launches. On-going KPIs: * These should largely be goals you can both impact over time. Things like adoption, revenue (particularly if there's a freemium, or PLG motion at your company), retention, NPS.  * For example, with adoption there are product changes that can likely be made as well as dedicated marketing done to drive success. At Iterable, we were working to drive adoption of one of our AI products and did just this...

Super important question 🙌 Cross-functional collaboration happens much easier when teams have shared KPIs, OKRs, or North Stars. To be honest, those goal-setting frameworks really work when they are adapted across all of the organization. This means that everyone is motivated to solve the company’s challenges, instead of working in silos on their individual projects.  For this setup to work, it’s important to understand the Objectives of other teams. Here is how it can work with setting up common OKRs between PMs <> PMMs: 1) Setting up strategic company-wide OKRs It’s important ...

It may be a controversial pov, but my perspective is that the analyst community is getting disrupted by DTC user review sites like G2, TrustRadius, and the others. Customer voice is just as powerful as it's ever been, but now, there are increasingly more and more ways to access that customer voice in context of making purchasing decisions. In 7 years of building Gainsight, I think the only value we had from working with analysts was sponsoring a thought leadership paper with Forrester. It was expensive (~$100K) but allowed us to leverage the brand equity of a trusted brand in the market to...

Analysts will not endorse any vendor directly. Your goal with AR is to help shape their POV about the market, especially if this is a new category and ultimately get well positioned on MQs and Wave reports. Shaping their POV means showing analysts how customers are getting value from this new type of solution and what critical capabilities that are required to be successful. Do this by building a personal relationship with the analysts, sharing insights, connecting them with your customers, and keeping them updated about your roadmap and product innovation. 

I recommend creating a more high-level analyst stategy that outlines your actual need for analyst partnerships. Once you and your stakeholders are aligned on the need, you need to carefully select analyst partners who will drive the desired results. Do your research. Ask for references. Be critical of their proposals and scope of work. Get involved in the research. Ask questions. Good luck!

This is a great question, and one that I ask most of the candidates I interview at some point in the process. The kinds of materials I like to see are dependent on the job they’re being hired for, but generally speaking pitch decks, sales one-pagers, competitive battlecards, messaging docs, launch strategies, buyer personas - these are all helpful bodies of work to share with your PMM hiring manager. If you’re brand new to Product Marketing or even Marketing in general, don’t feel shy about making that known to your hiring manager when sending work samples. Lots of candidates transition to...

First - anyone inviting you to interview will see from your resume whether you’ve done product marketing. If you haven’t and you still get invited to interview, then there’s no need to worry about being new to PMM. Instead keep in mind there are likely a few key areas your interviewer will want to assess. Take your past work and reframe it to demonstrate your ability to grow into your role, while proving you’re showing up Day 1 with skills to contribute: 1. Identifying Insights: Share a way in which you helped a business or team identify something they did not know before 2. Positio...

Try to align your portfolio with the job description: * If the job description focuses on messaging and positioning, share an example of a messaging framework or landing page that you put together. * If the job description focuses on launching products, share an example of an Asana board or spreadsheet you'd use to coordinate a cross-functional launch. * If the job description focuses on writing, share a blog post, case study, or e-mail you've crafted. If your portfolio doesn't align with the job description or you want to stand out, create something new for the company you're...

Not sure I completely answer the question. Typically when I ask candidates to give a presentation, it's less about the specific products they're presenting, but rather HOW they present it. Can the candidate articulate how they effectively approached their GTM strategy, from ideation to execution and beyond. Can they effectively launch a product/feature and properly engage the right cross-functional partners to make that launch a success? Are they outcome-oriented and think about the metrics they're trying to drive with a given launch? Those are just a few things that I would be looking for ...

Welcome to the PMM world! ;) My approach to this would be:  * Take a closer look at the particular job responsibilities. If the job responsibilities are heavy on content creation, I'd include samples of the content you've created in your marketing portfolio.  * In addition, include a variety of different content pieces too. This will help the hiring team know your diverse skills as well as give them ideas on what they can do -- making you a standout winner.  * You can also look at the company's website to understand their current content mix, voice, etc. And see if you ca...

First, welcome to PMM. It would depend on what kind of PMM they are looking to hire. I would do three buckets. (1) a thought leadership piece or website/landing page (2) a launch plan or GTM plan (3) examples of enablement like slides etc. They want to see if you have done core PMM activities: messaging, launch, and strategy. 

Maybe I'm unique but I've been in Product Marketing for a long time and I've never been asked to present a "marketing portfolio". I have, on the other hand, been asked to present on specific topics or share specific experiences on many occasions. If someone is asking you to present a "marketing portfolio" and you are new to product marketing, I would ask the person asking you to provide more detail on what they are looking for.  If you don't have a portfolio, then I would tell them that you are very interested in the role and I would ask them whether or not they can think of a specific ex...

I would be super metrics-dr :iven here. Maybe show a few functions you've owned (or contributed to), from top of the funnel to middle and bottom of the funnel, with the corresponding programs and the metrics you've optimized for each. For ex: - Owned awareness plan - running exec programs and targeted PR, I could increase the share of voice of my company by x% - Built strategic narrative - creating company messaging and enabling field, resulting in y% in sales velocity and z% competitive win rates - etc. Hope it makes sense! 

Think creatively about marketing-adjacent work you've done, and put together a series of case studies that you can share with the hiring team. Examples can include:  * Identifying customer insights and defining a scalable solution or creating a piece of collateral, e.g. identified a trend in X vertical, and built a vertical playbook to help customers in that vertical grow  * Website work that shows how you structure problems and present information * Presentations you've created that could be customer facing  * Work you've done to help a nonprofit or organization grow  * Example...

There's a lot of potential variability here depending on company, exact role, industry, and more. That said, here are a few ideas of what you can show: * Cross-functional Initiative: If you've directly led a cross-functional initiatve that drovesome key business results, showcase them! For example, a sales deck that you created that drove win rates in that vertical. Talk through how you worked with Sales to create the deck and enabled the team doing so. * Launch campagin: This is similar to above, but showcase a launch campaign that you worked on and the results it had on ...

The product marketing portfolio could be: * Messaging: key messaging on the products you worked on * GTM: links to your part launches (landing pages) * GTM: launch brief which you can share * Content: links to case studies you have prepared * Sales enablement: sales presentations, personas, sales emails You can also share articles explaining your work approach. For example, I talked about incorporating user empathy and it explained how I actually did it. You can see it [here](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/398284).  

At Zapier I approached this by starting with a mission statement to describe why our team exists and the work we aim to uniquely do for the company: “PMM exists to maximize Zapier’s market opportunities by (1) clarifying where we win and (2) driving GTM strategy for product success.” I then defined responsibilities that align to (1) like TAM, market segmentation, personas, positioning, competitive analysis, etc. and separately to (2) like working with Product validate market opportunities, designing and executing betas that ensure product/market fit, and of course planning and executing lau...

This can definitely be a challenge whether you're the first or tenth PMM at a company. I'm a fan of working backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for the product team or from the sales team. From there, I like to ladder needs/deliverables up to team goals and business goals (impact). Then I'll stackrank them based on perceived effort of the deliverable.  Essentially, I'm creating an 2X2 grid based on business impact and perceived effort to complete the task.

First, I listen. It's important to understand in depth why these needs/deliverables are being asked of Product Marketing. What is the underlying problem? How can Product Marketing solve this?  Then, I assess company goals and revenue by product. The Product Marketing function is meant to support the company goals and I find that using this as a guidepost for prioritization is key. Assessing revenue by product helps as another factor in prioritization, but isn't the only factor as some companies may prioritize growth of a new product rather than optimizing their existing successful one. ...

As mentioned before, product marketing is one of the most cross-functional roles of any in most companies. And as such, you’ll be getting requests for projects and deliverables from every angle. The first thing I try to understand is: what responsibilities fall under me vs. another team (ie: is there a separate pricing team? Enablement team? Market research team?) Once my purview is clear, I put together a Product Marketing Charter (my PMM mission, PMM pillars, responsibilities under each pillar) to share with my stakeholders, to help structure our conversations around what is top of min...

Only a few weeks into my current role, I’m living this one in real-time! For myself, I’ve created the following approach: Listen → Set Expectations → Execute → Close the Loop. For prioritizing needs/deliverables, I spend as much time as possible listening and understanding what is most pressing for the business immediately (and then mid and longer term). The key here is to determine where the business needs product marketing the most. When you’re the first PMM, it can be incredibly natural for everyone to welcome you on to their project -- there will be so much product marketing to do! So i...

I generally use a modified version of the Eisenhower Matrix (I just learned the name). On the spectrum of "not urgent to urgent" and "not important to important," you should prioritize the deliverables/needs that are both urgent and important. When you're the first product marketer, it's easy to fall into the trap of just prioritizing the urgent needs without evaluating the relative importance.  When you're building out a new function, spend time meeting with the teams you'll be working with to understand their pain points and needs. Then, layer in your understanding of which pain points...

I'm going to talk about my experience at really early stage companies, at this point, everyone is doing everything, so the priority is to create some strcuture to help every get aligned on the same goals. When I’ve been the first Product Marketer, or only one establishing the PMM function the first thing I do is meet with sales, product and the rest of marketing to identify the gaps. Generally is there's that piece missing between Product and marketing/sales to message what has been built, and so forth. To solve for this I start building out a a messaging map to help define what our core pe...

As stated above, PMM wears so many hats it's important to recognize what is needed at any stage of a company. When first coming into an organization as the first PMM I think the most important thing to do is establish what does and doesn't exist. I think this is the right order of things that should happen first but if you come into an organization and feel that some of these things are already in a good place you can skip to the next step. That being said, when you are new to a company you have a fresh and unbiased perspective that only lasts for a few months - use those fresh eyes to your...

Every company and every growth stage is different so the evaluative framework you utilize needs some flexibility. I recommend that your framework is developed in tandem with your partner stakeholders early on and is communicated often. A reliable framework includes a clear organizing principal, inputs, outputs/ impact, measurements, and timelines. As a first product marketer, I'd also advocate including a line item for dependencies and cross functional asks. Once you start building momentum in an organization, the asks come in quickly and from multiple directions. Your framework will allow ...

I don't have a set framework as such, but this is the approach I'd take: * Meet with stakeholders across the business to understand what's working, where the gaps are that PMM might be able to fill, and ask what they think is the highest priority. Ask lots of questions to understand what the underlying need/problem is, as the 'solution' people ask for might not always be the best way to solve the problem or might be better solved by another team. This is also a great opportunity to start educating others on what PMM does and how they should expect to work with you, if it...

I'm still trying to master this one, but here's what I'm doing at Klue (I'm in my first month at the company).  Create your PMM Charter With the input of your boss and other leaders in the company, you'll first want to define what PMM looks like at your org. This helps set the guardrails for what product marketing is repsonsible for at your org and what your main objectives are. This will take into consideration what the top priorities are for company leadership.   Set out on a priority finding mission In your first month or so, you have the opportunity to have a ton of 1:1 conversation...

I start with my phases of success for a PMM in my first 100 days here. Through this process I create my priorities and ensure I have executive alignment on them. I always get feedback from my leadership team. I find that people often want the same thing but are saying it differently – identify this when it happens to bring alignment back on your priorities. Before any cross-functional meeting to get alignment or approval, make sure you’ve already shown your ideas to one or more people to get their advanced feedback and buyin. Some people, especially leaders have other context you don’t hav...

Chances are you will inherit a number of projects in queue Day 1. Do your best to deliver on those projects to drive results out of the gate. This will instantly help you build credibility with colleagues. That said, start thinking about a learning agenda for each of your org's big areas. At Chime we have built LAs for banking, credit, liquidity and insurance. The PMMs on my team work lock step with PM, UX, etc. to translate Chime's goals into a series of powerful initiatives twice a year. From there they set up a series of experiments and /or new feature - product launches. They work toget...

So I have done a lot of work with Profit Well, they have some great frameworks and suggestions for building Pricing and packaging. The ideal scenario for me is to find out what I am building towards, what is our goal. Is it a land grab, are we just trying to get as many people as possible or are we building towards revenue and that is the biggest driver. From there you should be able to find the framework that either brings in more registrations or optimizes for revenue in order to make sure you are hitting company goals. But if you haven't checked out profit well, I highly suggest them!

If you want the highest company valuation possible, you need a recurring stream based on a value-based and/or usage-based pricing model. Investors and Wall Street value recurring revenue streams at a much higher multiple than one-time transactional revenue because they are predictable revenue streams with higher profit margins that build longer customer lifetime value. This is why many companies are moving to subscriptions. There are 4 key levers in determining your recurring pricing strategy for a B2B product: * Market Segment: who are your target markets and what are their shared pr...

Pricing is hard, especially when the product price has to extract the maximum customer willingness to pay and still leaves some customer value. There is plenty of resources on the web you can find and I don’t want to recommend anything here. From my experience, here are a few things that will be helpful when pricing your B2B product. Good research from interviews and surveys from existing / potential customers, supplemented by consulting firms’ pricing models is a great start. Trade-offs between long-term commit vs discount are a must. Keep the pricing window open for sales leaders to build...

Figuring out the willingness-to-pay (WTP) by conducting research for your product with your target market/buyers is an effective approach. I've mentioned more details in a previous response. There are lots of good articles on WTP research (including HBR). Also checkout the Profitwell/PriceIntelligently blog for some good articles on pricing. 

Your question is about: The go-to-resource to conduct B2B pricing power for a product.  There really isn't any go-to-resource, its a set of things to consider such as: 1. Brand Power: Is the product the category leader? Do customers trust the brand? In this case the brand is likely to have more pricing power than competitors.  2. Net Dollar Retention Rate: Numbers of NDR above 130 generally indicate that customers increase usage of the product and spend more with the company.  3. Discounting Rates: Depending on the customer segment, say Mid-Market, a discounting rate <15% is very health...

Generally speaking, developer platforms bring about more customer usage and higher customer retention, so from a pricing standpoint, I tend to not get too deep on how to price dev tools–because the long term approach of healthy revenue generating customers is more valuable than a short term lift in charging for access to the platform. If you’re really getting serious on pricing, I’d suggest you look to a research firm to do some discrete choice modeling for you. 

It's funny, I've been working on a deck looking at exactly this question. It's fascinating how much it varies from company to company. We're moving to a place where the distinctions between product marketing and brand marketing are becoming increasingly blurry. Think of it as simply different problems to solve, that map to different parts of the funnel.   Some product launches need broad awareness and call for high-funnel, or what we often call brand marketing. Whereas some launches are updates to features within existing, already known products, in which case they need more low-funnel, i...

For companies of a certain DNA (Bay Area, technology), brand marketing is not a priority compared to being able to measure the performance of your own marketing, with a philosophy of investigating what works and what doesn't. That's because the company likely has a demand problem, not a brand problem. So if product marketing wants to support demand generation and growth, then the product marketer needs to have an analytical foundation or analytical acumen.   Brand marketing comes into play with a product marketer's natural audience intuition. How is the brand received by the audience? How...

Just a feedback on the last comment, as I reacquaint myself to the "new" bay area. I have noticed more emphasis on demand gen skills amongst many startups. If there are stakeholders in the company already like product management and technical marketing who are also good at writing, messaging, positioning - then this might work. However, a good product marketer who has enough knowledge of demand gen mechanism is probably a better fit versus demand gen being forced into product marketing. Easier to pick up demand gen skills versus the opposite - in my view. It offers a career growth path for ...

First, you can not decouple analytical skills from brand marketing skills. They are not mutually exclusive. You are right that there is more emphasis on analytical skills in job description for product marketers. Primarily because analytical skills are easier to evaluate. They are also critical because analytical mindset helps you have a solid foundation for your marketing strategy (including brand marketing). However, these strategies come to life with creativity. You can not undermine creative skills and just focus on analytics skills while hiring. Examples of brand marketing playing a r...

100% agree with Suyog. Nothing we do exists in a vacuum and all of the positioning and messaging we bring to market should be looked at from a brand lens to ensure consistency. Ultimately, the consumer is not going to differentiate what’s brand marketing and what’s product marketing. It’s all the same to them!

I definitely appreciate this tension -- and in a perfect world you find the right mix of both on the team. Analytical skills will benefit our understanding of market sizing and opportunity, pricing and packaging decisions and so on. The "brand" or creative skillset would aid in storytelling around messaging, content efforts, etc. I think it depends on your role within the PMM org. A Head of PMM, ideally, would be able to balance both analytical and creative capability, and hire to his/her weaknesses. But an appreciation for the power of brand marketing is a superpower in product marketing...

Analytical skills tend to be the preferred skill set of a product marketer because they are "running the business". Product Marketers own a product's P&L and must have the business acumen to drive revenue. Important the ones trying to size and segment the marketplace. Additionally, they'll probably be on the front lines trying to determine what segment, region, or geo to invest their budget.  Brand marketing's closest overlap is with the Marketing Programs PMM function. They will ensure that the outbound messaging of the product ladders up to company's overall messaging. Additionally, the...

You've hit upon one of the reasons why marketing in tech is a neverending challenge (and the fun part IMO). I think the best marketers have both strong analytical skills and grasp how to build long-lasting brands based on an emotional connection with their customer. If your goal is to one day lead marketing more broadly, you absolutely need to demonstrate that you can build a brand beyond the product marketing itself.  I think a strong brand requires a consistent identity and tone that emphasizes: 1. Specificity (what) 2. Resonance (why) 3. Emotional connection (how) But the foundat...

Brand is more than just a logo or color palette or tag line. Brand is the combination of customer touchpoints that create meaning and belonging for that customer...Brand attracts the customer in the first place, for sure, but brand shows up in how the product delivers on its promise, how customer support handled your issues, how easy it was to purchase. Imagine if you had expectations of a Nordstrom experience, but then got Wal-Mart. It's not that Wal-Mart is bad, but the misalignm of expectations and experience creates dissonance for the customer that can damage the relationship. Now, if y...

Understanding how Brand Marketing works is critical to succeed in Product Marketing as these two teams work closely together to bring any Marketing and Product work to life. Brand Marketing thinks about creating a long-term, strategic plan to continuously boost a brand's recognition and reputation. It involves creating and maintaining brand-consumer OR brand-customer relationships and marketing brand attributes—the traits that people think of when they picture a particular brand. I see this as the overarching umbrella of any company -- and often categories and/or products within each com...

Brand is promoting the company, while product is selling and promoting individual products/product lines. I've found that brand work is typically much more creative, whereas product work is about sales. The two functions should be in close contact with each other--my brand marketers are my best help in my job today.

Agree with Steve (Hi, Steve! 👋) and would like to add that there should be a push-pull relationship. Some good conversations to have with your brand marketers are around how brand and category positioning should show up within product marketing, and how product differentiation should show up in brand identity.  It's a good place in the business to apply some consumer marketing conventions...  "Our Brand is where these buyers find this category of product with these special characteristics to get these high value benefits." 

I think the two are very tightly correlated -- both are storytellers by nature, but telling stories at different parts of the funnel. A simple way to think about it is that brand is principally responsible for the "why" while product marketing owns the "who," "what," and the "how". Since people make buying decisions emotionally, brand is responsible for emotionally convicting the market and using the appropriate levers (in partnership with demand) to pull the newly converted into our audience and funnel. Product Marketing helps brand understand who the target audiences are and what they car...

I love this question because I came from brand marketing before. I like to think about it as the distinction between the promise and the proof. The partnership between these two teams is essential. Brand is the promise you make to your customers about your core ethos and what they can expect from you. It sets the tone for the relationship and is the thing that you often fall back on when times get tough. The brand team owns this promise, but like any promise it has to be believable. Your product is the proof. Product Marketing owns showing how the promise of the brand is relevant in uniq...

Brand marketing and product marketing perform very different roles in a company’s overall brand strategy, but when done well, they work together seamlessly to create a brand experience customers can trust. Let’s start with a basic analogy we use when helping a company create or improve its brand: a brand is like a person. It has a personality. It has strengths and weaknesses. It has goals. It has a voice. Now, this person also makes things. But you can see right away that it’s one thing to talk about the person herself, and another entirely to talk about what she makes. You can also see t...

On the Consumer side (where I sit) we have Brand Marketers and Product Marketers. Product Marketers need to deeply understand the value prop, positioning and user needs of the product. A big part of the PMM role is Inbound - leveraging research and insights to influence product strategy. When a PMM has Outbound work they need to do, we work very closely with our Brand counterparts to ensure our campaigns are consistent with the overall Brand message, and don’t conflict in terms of timing and channel.

I think there is a ton of value in having these teams work closely but separated into specific pods. As you noted, there are different skillsets here and they can be even more effective when given the space to own their domain expertise. That being said I think when PMM and Brand get too far from each other the end results suffer. I often think of PMM & Brand like a zipper in that they are stronger together and work in tandem. It's essential that brand messaging aligns with the product experience and that launches are appropriately timed and presented in the market. For all of these reasons...

At my current company, these roles are different and lean on the different skills that you mention! That said, at smaller organizations, or even smaller marketing organizations, you may not have the luxury of having different individuals occupy each role.  If you are in a spot where you aren't able to add dedicated headcount to partner with product or creative separately, I'd suggest having a conversation about priorities with your leadership and using that to guide not only the talent you bring on, but the allocation of time on activities for those individuals. While it may feel like too ...

I see those as different skills sets and usually different teams but I don't think there are strict lines in between them. Product Marketers should own the story, the core positioning and messaging, the surrounding context / thought leadership and GTM strategy. Ideally there are counterparts in integrated marketing, campaigns or growth marketing to help make that come to life.  But I think there's also what is ideal on paper and what is practical in real life. More often then not those integrated brand / campaign teams are swamped and not only serving the needs of product marketing. As a r...

Yes, great question! As a PMM, I've always worked closely with a separate integrated/brand marketing function. The PMM sits closer to product/eng, is more initimately familiar with the product, owns inbound product marketing (including user insights, strategy, competitive benchmarking, roadmap prioritization etc.). When it comes to outbound marketing, PMM sets GTM strategy and works with a variety of GTM stakeholders, including comms and integrated marketing, to bring a launch or campaign to life. The integrated marketing team usually works with a group of PMMs covering an entire product ar...

30 days: Balance being an absolute sponge and learning by doing. Be a sponge by reading every doc you can get your hands on (enablement materials, case studies, team quarterly/annual plans, research studies, etc.), talking to as many prospects and customers as possible, and scheduling 1:1s with both stakeholders and company leadership. Learn by doing by getting involved in low-risk, low-hanging fruit activities where a PMM touch is needed but perhaps don’t require a ton of context. 60 days: Hopefully you’ve gained enough context by 30 days to start to get an idea of what the big challenges...

I'll "yes and" Gregg's answer and say that this will really vary by company size and complexity. I was at a startup where my 30-day goals included creating buyer personas and enabling the sales team to talk to the decision-makers. So it was more like a 10-20-30 day goals as described below.   At SAP, the organization is so sprawling and complex that the my goals were actually 60-120-180. I've been with the company for almost a year and I'm still getting introduced to some of the far-flung enablement teams spread across the globe.   The key is to set some measurable goals against appro...

Now this is a fun challenge. Assuming you did your homework during the interview process, you should have a good idea of what you're getting into. That doesn't mean you won't find some skeletons lurking behind close doors. Rather you should understand how the team views product marketing, what kind of executive support you can expect, and their expectations of you.  With that mind, here are a few key things I would want to accomplish after 90 days. * Everyone knows what product marketing does and what we're responsible for. That means internal evangelism and roadshows. You will need...

One of the best pieces of advice I got before joining Hopin, was to take the necessary time I needed to be a "sponge" and let things soak in, before going straight into "solve-mode". Of course, that's easier said than done :)  When joining any startup as the first product marketer, you'll be getting requests from every angle from week 1(and sometimes before you even start!) - and that's especially true with PMM, because it is such a cross-functional role. This is what I've found to be helpful:  30 days: understand both the tangible and intangible working cultures of the company. How a...

Product Marketing’s superpower is being the “Voice of the Product to Customers and the Voice of Customers to Product.” When establishing PMM as a new function, the best place to start is listening. First 30 days: Listen and truly get to know your Customers and the Product.  On the Customer side, what this looks like practically is spending as much time in the early days reviewing Help/Support tickets, reading through research reports, sitting in on focus groups/interviews -- anything you can to get close to the Customer. Even if you’re a Customer yourself, you’ve got to fully understand t...

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.  * A...

PMM wears so many hats it's important to recognize what is needed at any stage of a company. When first coming into an organization as the first PMM I think the most important thing to do is establish what does and doesn't exist - and where the biggest holes that can be plugged are. This can be accomplished by interviewing the top stakeholders at your company: Sales, Product, Support to understand what is working and where the pain points are. From that, you can build a list and prioritize it accordingly. Using something like an Eisenhower Matrix exercise can be a great way to knock out thi...

Oy! First, good luck! I have done the "first" before. I don't think you have the luxury of 30/60/90. I think it's more like 30 days to identify the problem and tackle easy wins. Sixty days build out a basic launch framework, then a GTM strategy, align both with leadership. Then 90 days to test and what you build and revise based on market feedback. My advice is to prioritize like crazy. 

Please see my phases of success for a PMM in your first 100 days here . A KEY THING to know at the onset is, does everyone know what a PMM does and what value they bring? Ask all leaders and cross functional partners. Product Marketers are the marketing strategists, the brains of marketing, the connective glue between cross-functional partners, the ones who support a company's internal teams, the market, and target customers to achieve competitive advantage, increase users, adoption, find a path towards monetization and build customer lifetime value, we are a strategic function that align...

The first 90 days are crucial to any job, but especially for new product marketing leaders. This is the time to establish your credibility, build relationships, and layout team roles that will set your function up for success for the months to come. Here’s how I break down my priorities by month: First 30 days – Assess the current state and product roadmap Look at my response below regarding the 3 prior deliverables that I review when joining a new company. But, in general, here the goal is to understand what the immediate internal pain points are. Start with looking at what audience rese...

I think anyone who discredits brand as a function of growth is living in an early 2000s era of B2B marketing that doesn't exist anymore. The truth is that behind every logo we are trying to sell to as vendors, is a human (crazy, I know). These humans have a job to do, and are trying to self-actualize in their careers by solving business problems, getting recognized, promoted, etc. Your products can help them accelerate up Maslow's funnel, but products aren't the only thing. You can measure brand in so many different ways. Content & conference marketing sourced (literally) 80%+ of ARR at Ga...

No doubt, the ROI of a billboard is hard to measure. But when it comes to brand marketing, you need to be crisp around the metrics. In marketing you'll either need to solve for awareness, demand generation, or both. Brand typically deals with awareness and that's not a straight $ to $ metric. At Google, we conducted brand surveys for G Suite (now Google Workspace) roughly every 9 months. There we measured aided and unaided awareness as well as qualitative measures around how closely we compared around specific features sets and value statements against competitive products. Results were ta...

Great question. I'd say the core of this problem is that Marketing has to play a role over the short, medium, and long term. And often time, brand marketing efforts require persistent campaigns over a longer period of time, so the key is to establish a baseline and come up with a few metrics to showcase along the way. Your end goal is to show that rising tide (your brand perception) is lifting all boats (including the revenue engine that is your GTM team).  That baseline is often best established with a Brand Perception study. You can do a lightweight one yourself on your site, especiall...

This is always a challenge but in a lot of ways, I think it comes back to understanding that your brand isn't just what YOU say it's what the community says about you. Dave Gerhardt CBO at Drift has a ton of content around this, one thing he says that I wholeheartedly agree with is "What people say about your brand matters a lot more than what you say about yourself. Make sure they have something good to say." Meaning it's smart to invest in your community early and often and to listen to the people who are early adopters of your product to understand their experience.  This is why it's al...