Building a Product Marketing Team

What are the aspects of operationalizing a Go-To-Market plan that might prove to be most risky?

11 answers

Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2

There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.

73 Saves

Sara Rosso

Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot | Formerly Early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • April 7

One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally. Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at

111 Saves

Chris Mills

Vice President Product Marketing / GTM at Wrike • April 8

I'll answer this from the aspect of a GTM plan for pricing and packaging changes. The top 3 areas to identify and mitigate risk around include: 1) RISK: Did you get the Price/Packaging right? Do

73 Saves

Amey Kanade

Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs) at Amazon • April 21

Great question. There could be many reasons why a GTM plan is deemed risky. Perhaps because a lot is hinging on a product launch, or a risky marketing campaign and the riskiest of all - you as a PMM a

51 Saves

Harish Peri

Head of Product Marketing - Security, Developer Services & Hyperforce at Salesforce • April 5

Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early in the process Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its an ongoing partnership where PMM needs t

24 Saves

Quinn Hubbard

Director of Product Marketing at Matterport • May 3

This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time comes, then you’ll be successful in solving tho

18 Saves

Dave Steer

Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • July 13

Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and executing the strategy in the market. Her

12 Saves

Arianna Schatzki-Mcclain

Group Manager, Product Marketing at Lyra Health • August 3

Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan. To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust post-launch. Making sure there is prod

6 Saves

Michele Nieberding 🚀

Head of Solutions Marketing at Iterable • January 11

The biggest risk I typically see in GTM strategies is that it doesnt work. Somewhere, something was missed, or the messaging, product, etc. doesnt resonate with prospects and customers. ' I have foun

9 Saves

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23

The most risky operationalizations in a GTM strategy to me are spray and pray (homogenous) campaigns, broad (not segmented nor sophisticated/suppressed, not segmented (targeted) and not timely (satura

3 Saves

Jesse Lopez

Product Marketing Lead - Spend Management at Brex | Formerly Klaviyo, Square, Intuit, PepsiCo, Heineken, Mondelez • March 23

Cross-functional collaboration, alignment, and execution are the most challenging aspects of operationalizing a GTM plan. Challenge: X-functional collaboration Solution: PMMs must ensure that a cross

6 Saves

Product Marketing

How does the product marketing team's placement in the org chart (under marketing, product, etc.) effect your ability to influence the roadmap?

8 answers

Alexa Scordato

PMO at TikTok • August 13

If product marketing is embedded within product, what that usually tells me is that marketing is a secondary function to product. If you're operating within a product-led organization, the cadence of

50 Saves

Rehan Mirza

Chief Growth Officer at Verifiable • March 26

Our PMM team currently rolls up under the Marketing practice, which rolls up into the Customer Org (Customer Success/Support, People Science, Marketing). This means Sales reports up through another or

53 Saves

April Rassa

Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2

The PMM team at HackerOne reports in Marketing. PM's purpose in the universe is to build the right product by translating customer needs into products they can't live without. PMMs role is to transla

33 Saves

Abhiroop Basu

Product Manager at Square • January 12

You would assume that being in the product organization would allow a PMM more influence. However, I’ve actually found the opposite to be the case. For a brief period of time at Zendesk, Product Mar

52 Saves

Eileen Buenviaje Reyes

VP, Product and Growth Marketing at 1Password | Formerly Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, LinkedIn • February 11

There are pros and cons to any PMM reporting structure, with no perfect solution. My experience has mostly been with a PMM team that reports into a marketing leader and doesn’t report into product. In

55 Saves

Rayleen Hsu

Head of Consumer Product Marketing at Nextdoor • March 3

From my experience, it's less about product marketing's placement in the org chart and more about product marketing's relationship with product and cross functional teams. I've been in orgs where PMM

7 Saves

Daniel Waas

Vice President Product Marketing at AppFolio • April 6

I have led product marketing teams that reported into marketing and others that reported into product. I've been reorganized from one to the other twice. I don't find it makes all that much of a diffe

5 Saves

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • March 21

If the product marketing team is placed within the marketing department, they may be more focused on the promotion and positioning of products rather than on the development of the product itself. In

2 Saves

Product Marketing

What key metrics do product marketing managers need to meet in order to get promoted?

8 answers

Alexa Scordato

PMO at TikTok • August 13

Where to start? Every company has different policies for promotion criteria, but ultimately it needs to take into account 2 things: merit and business need. Business need has to come first. It means t

42 Saves

Pete Schott

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Zenput • March 23

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have become a popular way for companies to clearly define goals and measure progress against them, at the employee, team, and company level. https://en.wikipedia.org/

24 Saves

Rehan Mirza

Chief Growth Officer at Verifiable • March 26

If you're on this forum as a PMM, you know that one of the biggest challenges for the PMM org is "What the hell do we measure!?" - an age-old conundrum that PMMs always struggle with. This is especial

82 Saves

Brandon McGraw

Senior Director, Head of Product Marketing at DoorDash • March 31

This varies by company and role, but I generally think about the path to promotion on the two key vectors: ownership level and degree of autonomy. Strong performance against OKRs or KPIs is a core u

96 Saves

Francisco M. T. Bram

Vice President of Marketing at Albertsons Companies • March 24

The best way for a product marketer to get promoted is by demonstrating the impact of their work. To do this, I incentivize all my PMMs to befriend data and tie their deliverables to key business and

6 Saves

Jam Khan

Senior Vice President Product Marketing at 6sense • July 20

I'm not a fan of connecting metrics to promotions for a role like product marketing becuase there are so many other dependencies that can't be controlled. Rather I like to establish some expectations

11 Saves

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • September 7

PMMs often are measured by output, since most of what we provide are tied to other metrics. I would focus on delivering tangible assets on a regular cadence (case studies, one-pagers, pitch decks, etc

6 Saves

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • March 21

The short answer is this is going to be highly dependent and will be different given your company, product or service, stage, and marketing organization. Every company is different and the role of pro

2 Saves

Product Marketing

Should product marketing report into Product management or Marketing?

17 answers

Feng Hong

Global Product Marketing Manager at TikTok • August 2

This depends on the company and what it needs the role of product marketing to be. This boils down to: what gap is the company trying to fill? I'll use my role as an example, and for context, Full Cir

34 Saves

Mary (Shirley) Sheehan

Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe • August 2

Thoughtful answers, Feng! In my experience, resource-wise its best to be with the marketing team & budget. Tech-wise, product. If you want to pull your hair out all the time, sales :)

53 Saves

Mike Flouton

VP, Product at Barracuda Networks • August 3

This reminds me of the classic "SDR team in sales or marketing" debate. The answer is that it can work in either place and really doesn't matter as long as PMM and the rest of marketing are communicat

23 Saves

Ross Overline

Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Fivestars • August 15

While there are benefits to both, judging from my experience, I believe PMM reporting into Marketing is more effective. Reporting into makreting creates stronger ties between PMM and the revenue orga

39 Saves

Clare Hegg

Director of Product Marketing at Skopenow • August 18

It can work in many places, but I find it to be the most effective if it is either within Marketing or on its own entirely so that marketing is properly on message. I often draw a venn diagram of prod

24 Saves

Jennifer Ottovegio

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 17

I’ve not personally sat on a product team (so I’m admittedly biased.) But I would vote for it to live in marketing. Here’s why - the essential functions of these teams are different: Product Team - e

50 Saves

Savita Kini

Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • March 11

I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If PM team is strong enough to own end-t

45 Saves

Pulkit Agrawal

Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • July 4

Based on some research we did (admittendly small sample size), we found that 2/3 report to CMO / VP Marketing and only ~10% to Product. Source: A New Definition of Product Marketing At this stage

25 Saves

Devang Sachdev

Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI • July 9

Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin. Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I have had product marketers on my team, and as a

84 Saves

Alexa Scordato

PMO at TikTok • August 13

This is related to the question above with regards to marketing's ability to influence the roadmap. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's a matter of the role a CEO wants marketing to play wi

34 Saves

Dan Laufer

CEO at PipeDreams Ventures • January 14

There are good arguments for either. My team is in the marketing org so I have a bias towards that structure :) Ultimately it comes down to people and where you think PMM can have the most impact and

48 Saves

Teresa Haun

Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk • February 4

I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk an

120 Saves

Jon Rooney

Vice President Product Marketing at Unity | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • February 9

I firmly believe that Product Marketing should report into the Marketing org for one central reason: PMM is a communications-driven role requiring the ability to effectively craft and convey messages

48 Saves

Natalie Louie

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The

51 Saves

Julian Dunn

Senior Director of Product Management at GitHub • June 13

I've reported into both in my career and the best I can come up with is "it depends". As an overall philosophy, I would generally prefer to report into marketing, because it creates the right level of

31 Saves

Carlos González de Villaumbrosia

CEO at Product School • July 15

A Product Marketing Manager’s position varies depending on the company. However, you will find yourself from time to time working very closely together with the PM and count yourselves as part of the

19 Saves

Nayab Nazir

Product Marketing Manager at Metric • March 10

I believe it should always report to Marketing as the role directly links with messaging, personas, and understanding customers and all these things come into marketing. This is exactly how we are des

1 Save

Product Marketing

What has worked well (or has not worked) as far as positioning your product marketing team within a larger marketing org?

9 answers

Carrie Zhang

Product Lead at Square • November 16

Great question. I always tell my team that as product marketers we are the bridge between product development and the broader marketing & sales teams. We focus relationship building and collaborat

143 Saves

Patrick Cuttica

Product Marketing Lead at Square | Formerly Sprout Social • October 15

This is a great question. A fair amount has been written about where Product Marketing should exist within the broader company structure—just Google "where should Product Marketing report" and you'll

82 Saves

Shabih Syed

Product Lead, Ecosystem Discovery at Square | Formerly Mparticle • December 9

Within a large marketing team I have always positioned the Product Marketing team as the experts who are the go-to people for any product question and I make sure we indeed are. One of my personal rea

36 Saves

Mike Polner

Head of Marketing at Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 12

Love this question and something I had to do a ton when I first got to Eats and everybody was like - hold on, what is Product Marketing? I talk a lot about internal marketing and say you have to Pro

95 Saves

Harsha Kalapala

Vice President Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • April 15

Product marketing's biggest challenge (no matter anywhere I go) is defining the scope and sticking to it. Anything under the sun that is not Demand Gen or SEO tends to be seen as a job for product mar

41 Saves

Jeff Beckham

Sr. Director and Head of Product Marketing at Gem • May 6

I’ve found that most companies want the most capable people doing the most important work. If you prove your value as a PMM by making the team and company successful, bigger and better projects will n

30 Saves

Jasmine Jaume

Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • October 25

Being clear about what PMM's role and mission is, and ensuring other marketing leaders understand what your team does and doesn't do. Have open discussions about where there might be overlap between

15 Saves

Daniel J. Murphy

Marketing Strategy Consultant at • June 8

Great question. Yes, been there & struggled there before. Think ultimately the more you can make product marketing a group of strategic thinkers and enablement gurus to marketing, the more clout y

6 Saves

Louis Debatte-Monroy

Director of Product Marketing at Backbase • March 1

Define (with your team) a short, memorable mission statement. Create a short slide deck that introduce your team, its mission, what you stand for, and some of the work you're the most proud of Show t

2 Saves

Product Marketing

When building a team, how would you ideally split responsibilities? By product line? By PMM function (CI, enablement, GTM, etc)?

6 answers

Suyog Deshpande

Sr. Director | Head Of Product & Partner Marketing at Samsara • June 30

DO IT ALL -> FUNCTIONAL -> BY PRODUCT -> GRID It depends on the size of your team and the maturity of the company. Typically what I have seen is that - With 1-2 PMMs - it's "do it all" a

14 Saves

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • September 6

A bit of both. My ideal PMM sqad has a set of core product marketing folks that are organized by product line. In addition to core product marketing, my team owns customer marketing, lifecycle marketi

6 Saves

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • November 8

In my own experience as an individual contributor as well as a leader of a pmm team, I've consistently had better results when pmm is divided by product line rather than function. This allows for grea

7 Saves

Kristen Kanka

Head of Product Marketing, Enterprise Solutions at Morningstar | Formerly CaptureX, Medline Industries • January 26

I love this question – and I am going to take a different approach to my answer here. One of the things I think product marketers can struggle with is responsibility versus authority. To be effective

6 Saves

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

My ideal PMM team is split on both dimensions. There are vertical PMMs who are aligned by product/segment/audience. Then there are ‘horizontal’ PMMs who lead launches, CI, enablement, campaigns, etc.

8 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

PMM Org design really depends on a few different variables. You want to consider: the maturity of your product You GTM strategy How your cross-functional teams are structured What the biggest company

10 Saves

Product Marketing

How do you build a business case to quickly grow a product marketing team? What metrics do you look at to make sure you're driving ROI for the business overall?

4 answers

Jam Khan

Senior Vice President Product Marketing at 6sense • July 20

There are few things i'd look at based on the rhythm of the business. How fast is the business growing? How fast is the organization innovating, and how fast is the sales team growing. How many produc

13 Saves

Priya Gill

Vice President, Product Marketing at Momentive (SurveyMonkey) • August 10

There are usually two sets of core metrics that I look at to assess whether our efforts are positively influencing the right outcomes: Marketing metrics: pipeline, campaign/content performance, booki

7 Saves

Sina Falaki

Head of Industry, Segment, and Solutions Marketing at Motive | Formerly Procore • September 20

To build a solid case to quickly grow a pmm team, a product marketing team must partner with customers and the entire product, revenue, and strategy org to: Drive pipeline and top-line revenue growth

3 Saves

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

The best business case to grow the PMM team, or any team for that matter, is to highlight how the team is going to tackle the biggest challenges that the business is facing. This has always been true

10 Saves

Product Marketing

How can you allot more time to strategy and larger picture items when you're leading a smaller PMM team (less than 3 total ppl)?

Leading a smaller PMM team means you're still in the weeds many times and it can get difficult to make time for strategical thinking—topics that need to be discussed and brought up with leadership. Any tips on how to balance that?

5 answers

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • September 6

Protect your calendar! Set aside Do Not Disturb (DND) time for strategic thinking and honor that time. Try to establish a "no meeting" day at your business where you have dedicated space to GSD and th

3 Saves

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • November 8

I really appreciate this question and to be candid, it's a challenge that scales up and down, whether your moving from an IC to having your first direct report all the way up to when you run a departm

6 Saves

Rachel Cheyfitz

Head of Product Marketing and Documentation at Coro | Formerly Lytx, Cisco, Snyk, Lightrun, Comeet • November 17

The only way to do this is by closely collaborating with your direct leadership and negotiating priorities with them. Their priorities will always be based on their KPIs and/or personal goals for th

1 Save

Arianna Schatzki-Mcclain

Group Manager, Product Marketing at Lyra Health • November 30

This is a challenge at all size organizations, but certainly hard on small PMM teams. Depending on the larger picture items you are talking about, you may need a lot of time or maybe it requires less.

7 Saves

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

This is such a good question. I get it. Everything is moving fast. There just isn’t enough time to discuss strategy. But if you don’t discuss strategy, you run the risk of not doing the right thing. W

7 Saves

Product Marketing

For a Product Marketer with mostly regional product experience, what are the best transferrable skills/experiences to stress when applying to a global Product Marketing team.

Often for Global Product Marketing roles, having prior "global" experience is a stated requirement.

3 answers

Susan "Spark" Park

Head of Product Marketing, VR Work Experiences, Oculus at Meta • May 26

If you have global projects or have syndicated a regional product to the global level, I would think that experience is relevant. If you are a regional product marketing manager and do not have a pro

57 Saves

Suyog Deshpande

Sr. Director | Head Of Product & Partner Marketing at Samsara • June 30

You must have crafted regional value props. Discuss how you approached building those. The same framework can be scaled to craft global value props You must have led a regional sales enablement progr

11 Saves

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

Such a good question. Part of the reason that “global” experience is a stated requirement is because most regional marketing roles are tactical and execution oriented in nature. In fact, most SaaS com

7 Saves

Product Marketing

What are the key things (traits, skills, experience) you prioritize / look for when hiring? How can we best assess during the interview process? Are there any specific questions you like to ask or things to look out for?

3 answers

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • September 7

It depends on seniority level of hire, but typically I look for experience in a customer-centric role: marketing or customer success in SaaS (B2B a plus). Key attributes for me are: detail oriented/te

11 Saves

Kristen Kanka

Head of Product Marketing, Enterprise Solutions at Morningstar | Formerly CaptureX, Medline Industries • January 26

Storytelling is the biggest trait is look for. I want all of my product marketers to be able to tell stories that anyone can follow that inspire action. Everyone I interview is asked to provide a writ

10 Saves

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

Every PMM role is unique and comes with its own demands on skills, experience and cultural traits. However, I expect any PMM to be good at, (or have aptitude for) three core skills Ability to answer

13 Saves