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.
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Consumer Product Marketing
Do you see value in having both roles, e.g. Integrated team works more closely with the creative team on seasonal/holiday/brand campaigns whereas Product Marketing works more closely with the Product team on product launches, user research/insights, positioning strategy, etc. I have found it challenging for Product Marketing to own all of this, and often see different skill sets from marketers who are great at creative brand campaigns vs. PMMs who are skilled at positioning a new product and bringing it to market.
7 answers
Senior Director, Product Marketing, LinkedIn • August 25
Head Of Marketing, Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • June 17
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, I am a fan of having these
teams ladder up to the same marketing leader but for they also to be split into
separate smaller teams/pods for ownership and skill alignment.
Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform, Google • December 18
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 much to execute on both capabilities simultaneously, it's
also exciting and a benefit of being at a small company!
Director, Product Marketing, Amplitude • January 26
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 result, PMMs will more
often then not need to stretch into what it specific assets and content needs to
be created - whether that's videos, ebooks, blog posts, etc. And quite frankly,
your partners in marketing will thank you if you come to them with ideas and
they you can brainstorm the best path forward.
When I am hiring PMMs the core positioning and messaging skills matter the most,
but I also want to know that they can stretch to think and how should this be
brough to market.
Head of Product Marketing, Ethos Life | Formerly Meta, Microsoft • February 18
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 area, which has the benefit of
upleveling how the brand shows up to consumers and ensuring you're telling the
right brand narrative, versus a product specific narrative. They also have more
specialized skillsets, such as working closely with creative teams (or being
creatives themselves), are accountable to brand/campaign goals rather than
product goals (e.g. driving Q4 sales vs. driving adoption of X feature) and are
great thought partners for how a product will show up to consumers.
It's been a while since we've had an integrated marketing function at Momentive,
but here's how I'd envision this working:
Product marketing owns:
- Buyer persona research, development, and enablement
- Product messaging/positioning
- Go-to-market strategy (e.g. by persona, industry)
- Product/feature launches
- Bottom-of-the-funnel product content/collateral
- Competitive intelligence
- Analyst relations
Customer marketing owns:
- Customer advocacy: customer stories, customer participation in thought
leadership, review site management, communities, advisory boards
- Customer marketing: scaled customer onboarding & engagement programs,
cross-sell and up-sell customer campaigns - could include email nurtures,
customer webinars, etc.
Brand marketing owns:
- Brand messaging and narrative, as well as brand guidelines
- The visual manifestation of the brand (logo, colors, fonts, imagery/animation
style, iconography, etc.)
- Content strategy, and Top-of-the-funnel thought leadership content
- Creative production for full-funnel campaigns (ads,
- Brand health measurement & tracking
Once the company scales to where there is a) a full portfolio of products and/or
brands and b) there is significant investment in full-funnel campaigns across
those products/brands, then integrated marketing becomes a necessary function.
Integrated marketing owns:
- Full-funnel marketing strategy & execution management for large-scale
campaigns (these could be brand campaigns or Tier 1 launches).
VP, Product Marketing, DigitalOcean • February 7
I have seen this done differently in different organizations. There is no right
or wrong way. However, I firmly believe that the Product Marketer should own the
narrative for their product.
* If it is a customer story - what value prop are we trying to highlight?
* If it is an ad campaign, what audience are we going after and what is the
right messaging and CTA?
* If it is an email campaign to existing customers, what outcome are we trying
to drive, and what messaging are we using?
PMM, as the person closest to product and audience knowledge, needs to own these
pieces. If that is in place, then whether PMM is directly working on the
campaign or simply enabling an integrated marketing team is just a matter of
logistics.
4 answers
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Instacart • June 2
Brand plays a critical role in Product Marketing and vice versa. In broad
strokes, campaigns are either Product or Brand-led, and if one is leading, to be
effective the other must be supporting. If we’re launching a new app, our focus
is sharing the value proposition and highlighting key features, but the campaign
is delivered in our Brand’s voice and within the umbrella of our broader Brand
promise. If we’re launching a campaign to drive greater awareness of our Brand
within a category, we’ll put our story and message front and center, but we’ll
use key RTBs of our Product to underscore relevance. In this way Product and
Brand are never too far apart and we’re best positioned to win hearts and minds.
Head Of Marketing, Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • June 17
Brand is such an important part of product marketing. Developing a strong brand,
voice, and tone for your product or company lends itself to everything you do
from launching new features to tradeshows. Brand is all about how your company
or product is perceived in the market - how it stacks up against competitors and
how it informs what people believe to be true about the functionality of your
product. Product marketing can be 100x more effective at an organization if
brand is a focus - features/products lean on brand and vice versa - when the two
work well in tandem it can really set organizations apart.
At Momentive, Brand and Product Marketing are closely aligned, and collaborate
on many initiatives. Here are some examples:
* Brand<>Product messaging: For brand messaging, PMM will consult on things
like the category, brand-level value propositions, and connecting the brand
narrative to product messaging. For product messaging, the brand team
(specifically content strategy) will consult on elements like short
descriptions, headlines, etc. to make sure any documented customer-facing
messaging reflects the brand voice/tone.
* Product naming: as part of any product/feature naming process, you need to
ensure brand fit. For example, at Momentive, we use very descriptive names
for our solutions, like "Ad Testing" and "Brand Tracking", so if product
marketing were to suggest a new heavily branded product name like "Satisfacto
Plus" (making this up), we'd quickly realize it doesn't fit with the brand &
naming hierarchy already established.
* Product visuals: PMM and brand collaborate on how we design product imagery
across marketing assets (web, email, collateral, etc). For example: do we
abstract the product or show actual screenshots? Show it in a desktop/mobile
frame? Bold color borders? etc. In this case, visual consistency is key to
convey the brand look/feel with bottom-of-the-funnel product assets.
* Thought leadership: PMM gets heavily involved in thought leadership across
channels, whether it's partnering with demand gen on events/webinars or
content strategy on guides/resources. Ultimately, thought leadership at the
top of the funnel exists to build credibility for the brand, so should be
reinforcing brand messaging. As you move through the funnel, thought
leadership starts to lean more product-focused, but brand voice/tone are
still critical for a consistent brand experience.
* ALL content/collateral: PMM needs to consider brand guidelines for any
content they own outright. This goes for collateral, one-pagers, pitch decks,
etc. One thing we did at Momentive to streamline this was work with Brand to
create templates in Google Slides for things like collateral, white papers,
customer-facing decks, etc. So all we had to do was start with the branded
template - no need for brand approval or custom design work for every asset!
VP, Product Marketing, DigitalOcean • February 7
A brand is not a logo. It is not a catchy tagline. It is not a color or font
scheme. It is not the visual imagery. It is not the writing style guideline. It
is the sum total of all the experiences an organization provides to its
customers and prospects.
I have worked in organizations where the company's most prominent "brand surface
area" is its educational content (even though it is not in the education
business). I have also worked on product teams where the product is the users'
most significant brand interaction point. Similarly, website, email
communications, support experiences, events (both in-person and virtual), etc.,
are all opportunities to create positive brand impressions with the target
audience. Since Product Marketers care about all of these for their products,
they should also care about the overall brand impression left behind by these
interactions.
15 answers
VP of Product Marketing, Oyster® • October 8
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 launches. Lastly, I made sure to socialize this
charter around the org to ensure awareness and buy-in that this was the
direction we were heading as a team.
This is a very different scope from what PMM was doing when I joined — I often
talk about it as charting a course from PMM 1.0 to PMM 2.0 with the expectation
that getting to the full potential of PMM 2.0 will take quarters if not years.
Thus when it comes to prioritization, I’m always asking myself “where do I see a
combination of ripe business context, willing partners/stakeholders, and PMM
team capacity for us to tackle an initiative that will take us more in the
direction of PMM 2.0?” This requires hard prioritization conversations with
stakeholder teams where we say no to some requests that come in in order to
create the space for the bigger, more strategic efforts that pay long-term
dividends. But without those tough conversations, the team wouldn’t ever get to
PMM 2.0.
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.
Head of Product Marketing, Cloud, Coinbase | Formerly Lyft, Atlassian • May 26
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.
From there, it's an exercise of documenting the asks and prioritizing what will
make the most impact in terms of supporting company goals and return on
investment. Alignment with leadership and communicating these priorities
internally is a great way to keep your team focused on the most impactful work.
Director, Product and Solutions Marketing, Hopin • June 2
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 mind for
them and where they need support. I like to create a table of all these
requests, the stakeholders who have requested them, and understand the effort
level of each request. More often than not, you’ll start to see overlapping
requests or challenges across multiple teams. That’s where I like to focus
first, to help make the biggest impact with the limited time or resources I
have.
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Instacart • June 2
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 it’s important in the early days
that you never bite off more than you can chew and no one is under the
impression that you’ll work on more than you feasibly can.
Perhaps you’re coming in during planning, then you’re focused on helping
identify key insights that can help shape the roadmap. If you’re coming in
mid-stream, then you dive in to try to strengthen the most immediate and high
stakes launches. Often it’s a mix of both. Wherever you’re coming into the
cycle, choose these initiatives intentionally and ensure key partners agree with
your prioritization.
From there, it’s about flawless execution and communicating internally as
projects reach milestones and meet objectives.
Director of Product Marketing, Sourcegraph • June 5
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/needs product marketing is uniquely fit
to support and create a plan. This will help you understand the urgency and
importance of the various opportunities.
Document your thoughts and share them broadly to confirm you're tackling the
right things and in the right order of priority. Having a shared/common
understanding of priorities will make it easier to justify why you are/aren't
working on something.
More importantly, give yourself time to build out the function. If you
reactively tackle every request that comes your way, you won't be able to build
the foundation that you need to be successful or spend time hiring the right
team.
Director of Product Marketing, Mastercard • June 12
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 persona is, the main problems we are
solivng for and what are key messages should be. I also use this messaging map
to help structure out how we should talk about our features by grouping like
features and ideas together
This map creates the foundation requirements I need to help starting to
1) Build collateral with your marketing and sales teams
2) Create a cohesive narrative across the company to help keep everyone aligned.
3) Set up the foundation of how you want to structure the PMM team as it aligns
to the product and features that your company offers. This will help you build
out additional PMM roles and define responsibilities as your company grows.
Head Of Marketing, Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • June 17
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 advantage! Write down all
of your thoughts and learnings so you can look back at them later.
1. Interview internal stakeholders
2. Interview end-users
3. Competitive analysis
4. Align on and/or tweak the positioning
5. Sales enablement
6. Design GTM plans
Senior Director Product Marketing, Homebase • October 12
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 you better yield management
and help you organize and prioritize where you dedicate your efforts.
Director, Product Marketing, Intercom • October 24
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's a new function. Identifying
some small 'quick wins' can help establish your credibility and build
relationships with those stakeholders.
* Understand the business strategy and goals. This will help you know what
you're working towards, and then you can prioritise needs based on whether
they will help towards those goals.
* Get to know your customers and your market. As well as understanding the pain
points internally, it's also helpful to understand your current position in
the market, how your product is perceived, how you stack up against
competitors, what your customers say about you and so on. This should help
you identify the highest priority areas - especially where these align with
internal needs (for example, if your sales team is complaining you are losing
deals to a specific competitor, and then you also find that the market
doesn't know how you're differentiated, that may be a sign that you need to
strengthen your messaging and enablement against that competitor)
* Think about what you want you and your team to be focused on. It's easy for
PMM to end up as a 'catch all' and end up doing a ton of things that aren't
really product marketing, especially if the marketing team overall is small.
That might be what the business needs at that time, and that's ok, but
knowing where you want to get to will help you advocate for more resources
and moving that work out of the team in the longer term.
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Klue • January 3
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
conversations as a new employee. During these conversations, I ask everyone if
they have any priorities or asks for product marketing. I use all of this to
create a master list of all the internal priorities/projects that people would
"like" my team to focus on.
I also like to do a content audit, focusing on all of the collateral that's
leveraged throughout the sales cycle. I'll map the existing assets to the sales
process and try to uncover gaps, or things that need updating.
After all of the steps above, you'll likely have a sizeable list of competing
projects that you need to prioritize. Some factors to include in how you weight
each project:
* What impact can this have on revenue and how soon?
* Is it tied to an existing deadline, like an upcoming product launch?
* Who is requesting it? Is the CEO asking for this, or is it a one-off request
from a sales rep?
* Does it fall within your charter, or is it outside the scope of product
marketing at your org?
* Where does it fit into your strategic objectives for that year, quarter,
etc.
I would map this all out in a spreadsheet or project board and circulate it
between a few key stakeholders in the company, ie. your boss, Head of Product,
Head of Sales, Head of CS, the CEO, etc. You could even send them the raw list
and ask them to rank it in terms of priority.
Using this feedback I'd create your final, prioritized project list. They key is
to then make it available to everyone in your company so everyone can see where
things fall and why.
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 have.
This is key to getting successful alignment.
Also look here on how to build internal consensus on what you want to deliver.
VP, Product Marketing, LendingClub • July 27
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 together to 1- knowledge map existing
insights and data to inform the LA and 2- outline what is still left to learn.
They then sequence the work. Having a formidable LA for each "vertical" really
helps everyone with a single point of truth document. New opportunties,
partnerships, scope will inevitably crop up. Having really solid LAs will help
you more easily re-negotiate the work within each agenda and have thoughtful
conversations with your partners ala, "Is [blank] now higher leverage than
[blank] or do we stay the course, look for additional resourcing and capacity or
backlog something else to make it happen?"
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
As a first PMM hire it's important to prioritize needs and deliverables based on
the overall goals and objectives of the company. Do “discovery” similar to how
you would approach a product launch – get up to speed on the business, the
competitive landscape, the customer, and the product. This will help you
understand the biggest opportunity areas and align your efforts with the
company’s goals to maximize impact.
In addition to listening & learning from your stakeholders its also important to
educate your partners on the role of PMM, PMM’s superpowers, and the metrics you
are accountable for. This will provide your peers with context on how to partner
with you and give you a chance to share back the projects you’ll be prioritizing
and gather feedback on that plan to ensure you are working on the most impactful
things.
Director of Product Marketing & Customer Marketing, Mode Analytics • January 18
As a first (and oftentimes only) product marketer at a company, prioritization
is the mother of all skills. The framework I would apply is a natural extension
of the 30/60/90 day plan outlined above. Prioritization can only come once there
is a decent amount of work done to understand the current state and needs of the
business, and your fellow cross-functional counterparts. That said, there are
some tangible and practical ways to approach prioritization.
1. Build out your team (functional) charter as a first step. How do you define
your function, the areas you will focus on, the roles and responsiblities that
fall within, how you measure success and how you collaborate with your
cross-functional peers. Use this as a map to what projects you'll take on, and
what projects you'll thoughtfully and respectfully say no to.
2. Have a clear understanding of the priorities and goals of the business
overall, and specifically the wider marketing team. Your priorities should align
to these areas. If the business has decided to strategically focus on the
Enteprirse market, your prioritized deliverables should include how you will
position your product to that market.
3. Leave space to build the foundations. If you are the first PMM, it is likely
there are not a lot of processes or frameworks in place that set a PMM up to be
effecient in the future. Give yourself the time and space to build these out.
For example, building a launch framework and GTM templates for announcing new
features and products. Defining with product and sales teams how you will work
together. etc. If you jump into pumping out deliverables, you may end up
positioning yourself and the PMM function as a service hub, rather than a
strategic partner.
3. Capacity plan. As the only PMM, it can feel overwhelming at times to tackle
all things - at once. Set clear and firm boundaries for yourself so you are not
burning the midnight oil, and then plan your weeks, months, and quarters based
on your capacity. What low hanging fruit is there - projects that take little
time and resources that can deliver an impact - and how many of those can you
take on, while still building out the foundations. Scope out how many meatier
projects you can take on - and capacity plan with teams you may need to partner
with. Things will not always go to plan, dates may slip and scope may creep -
but starting with a plan will help provide guardrails to keep you on track to
delivering impact.
I will face this challenge very son and my thoughts are:
- which are the company objectives?
- which are the marketing and product marketing specific objectives?
- the resources in place to achieve the objectives (human, financial, tools)
- where is the product on the lifecycle?
- top three priorities
- how are sales/marketing/product teams organised?
5 answers
VP of Marketing, Titan | Formerly Lyft, Hims & Hers, American Express • October 4
What an exciting opportunity this is for you! I’m thrilled that you’ve earned
this chance. When I joined Hims & Hers, I was in this exact position where I got
to build out the Product Marketing team from scratch. It was one of the most
valuable learning experiences of my career so far.
Your list of questions is great. If you’re able to get through all of these in
the time you have allotted with the founders, that’s fantastic. You might find
that the answers to these can be substantive, though, so you may need to
prioritize the highest leverage questions that will give you the most
information in helping you decide whether you should pursue the opportunity or
not.
If there’s only one line of questioning I would encourage you to add into the
mix, it would be to get an understanding of how the founders view product
marketing and the impact it can have.
For instance, do they seem to be expressing that product marketing is a
strategic function that can add a lot of value, or is it more tactical around
launches? Do they expect product marketing to just come in at the end to
coordinate marketing materials for a GTM, or do they believe that PMMs need a
seat at the table early in product development to yield the best outcomes? What
do they think makes great product marketing? What companies do they think do it
well?
Some of these you’ll have to ask indirectly, because if asked directly you’ll
probably get an unhelpful “sell” answer that’s what you want to hear but is less
reflective of how the company actually operates.
You need to ask these types of questions because it’ll have a big impact on your
personal and professional fulfillment in this role.
Senior Vice President, Product Marketing, BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • October 5
1. What is your mandate for product marketing ?
Note: Open ended question. Really important to hear the founders vision behind
this function. Always a best practice to start with open ended questions
2. 12 months from now, how will I know that I am doing an amazing job ?
Note: This is a take on the common question - what does success look like ? I
suggest keeping a defined timeline of say 6 or 12 months. Also, the words
“amazing job” or “knocking it out of the park” is a way to demonstrate that you
want to be very successful in this role
3. Who will I be reporting to ? (options could be CMO, CPO, CRO, some GM). Why ,
in your opinion, is PMM part of this function ?
Note: PMM leaders often report to head of marketing, head of product, business
unit GMs or CROs. The nature of reporting structure can give you an idea of the
nature of teams you will be collaborating with, or the skew your work might
take. e.g. PMMs reporting to head of sales/rev-ops often spend their energies on
enablement. PMMs reporting to CPO are often end up spending more time on launch
processes. Getting the why from the founders is a great way to hear their
thoughts behing org design. Some founders may not have throught through this
deeply, so this question could become a dialogue into where PMM can sit for the
biggest impact
4. How big do you envision this function to be in the near future ? How many
heads can i go and hire ? Are all these heads approved in the system ? Where do
you see this function growing/evolving to in 18-24 months ?
Note: A lot of early PMM teams are built to serve short term needs for
launches/content/compete/enablement etc. But it is really important to have a
bigger vision that just that. These questions are a way to understand the
founders' seriousness behind that vision, and also demonstrates your interest.
These are a sequence of questions best used in a conversation.
I often start with a general question about the size/scope of the PMM team. The
approval sub-question indicates their seriousness behind that plan. Often,
founders claim to support a no of heads behind the role but havent approved
funding/headcount budgets. Worse, they believe that you will be the only one
running PMM for a few months. All of this should raise concerns about the future
of this role. Finally, I ask the growth/evolution part to indicate long term
(not medium term) thinking and get the founder to spell out their true vision
for product marketing (vs short term tactics)
President, Giant Stride Marketing Group • October 7
I wouldn't look at asking "mandatory" questions but rather asking them what
their vision is for the product marketing function and coming to a mutual
understanding of what product marketing does and doesn't do. I'd guide the
discussion with a visual and/ or data (a couple of useful links below). Agree on
a 30-60-90 day plan and success metrics.
Agreeing on positioning and messaging should be a top priority. Leave with a
process and hopefully time set up for your first discussion.
Gartner eBook on product marketing priorities:
https://www.gartner.com/en/industries/high-tech/tech-marketers
Pragmatic Product Management/ Product Marketing framework (roles and
responsibilities - although IMHO some of these are in the wrong places):
https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/framework/
Product Marketing Alliance survey data
https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/the-state-of-product-marketing-leadership-report-2022/
Head of Product Marketing and Documentation, Coro | Formerly Lytx, Cisco, Snyk, Lightrun, Comeet • November 12
This feels to me like a loaded question and I'd love to hear more background in
order to answer better. Are you "interviewing" leadership before joining the
company or are you asking about how to approach them on a day-to-day while
building the function or something else? The answer is different at every
stage.
* How are products currently released and who's involved?
* What does pricing/packaging optimize for and how was it developed?
* What's the company's ICP and why?
* Who's the target persona and has this/will this evolve?
* What type of marketer was the company's 1st marketing hire and why?
* What's the founders' ideal ratio of PMM:PM?
9 answers
Head of Consumer Marketing, Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 13
Great question! I think about this one a lot...First off, it’s important to
callout that there is no perfect org structure :)
In general, you have to identify what you’re optimizing towards and what
structure will give you the highest chance to get there. For Eats PMM, we’ve
always kept a fairly tight PMM to PM relationship, so we map PMMs directly to
their Product counterparts.
Product is broken down by audience - ie., Consumer, Restaurant, Delivery Person
so we have leads within each audience and typically, sub-groups within that
focus on either Growth (getting users from 0 → 1 trip), “Experience” (Ordering +
Receiving Food) or Engagement + Loyalty.
Product Marketing Lead, Atlassian • January 17
This all comes down to how is the rest of the business organized. If you're
organizing in a way that's incongrous to everyone else in the org, you will not
be setup for success. With smaller nimble teams it's likely just based on
bandwith and who has room to take things on. With larger teams, or as a team is
being built out, it's best to align with your core cross-functional partners
such as Product. There is usually overlap with PMMs working with 2-3 PMs. I've
organized teams by product area in the past which aligned well to how Product
was organized.
Director, Product Marketing, Intercom • November 8
In general, PMM roles at Intercom are more of the 'full stack' variety - i.e we
cover the whole journey from feeding into the roadmap to launch, including
competitive research, buyer/persona/market research, GTM strategy, positioning
and messaging, enablement, launch planning etc.
Our team sits in marketing and reports into a Senior Director of PMM. Our team
structure has shifted several times in the time I've been here, based on changes
to the company strategy, product team structure and where we most need to focus
resources,. Currently, we're split into 3 'groups' based primarily around
product areas and segment:
* Solutions (a Group PMM + 3 PMMs): Each PMM is focused on one of (or part of)
the 3 solutions/audiences we position Intercom for specific solution. Each
PMM owns positioning, messaging and GTM for their solutions, and partner with
the relevant product managers for their solutions and product areas.
* Platform and Core (that's my group - me plus 3 PMMs) - we look after
overarching/high level positioning and messaging, and cross-solution features
such as the Messenger, data platform, and our partner ecosystem (incl. apps
and integrations). We often partner with solution PMMs on things like
launches for platform features. We also partner closely with the platform
group in R&D, as well as the Business Development team on partnerships.
* Pricing and packaging (a principal PMM) - fairly self explanatory, owns
pricing and packaging strategy/decisions, as well as buyer personas and
research
Head of Product Marketing, Platform & Commerce, Atlassian • December 23
The structure of the PMM team is usually a function of the size of the company
and it’s GTM model. The “typical” SaaS PMM team has a set of Core PMMs that are
focused on product, and usually a sister PMM team in the form of
Industry/Solutions Marketing that is focused on solutions for specific verticals
or segments.
At Atlassian, since we have a flywheel model, PMMs have a lot more focus on
activities that deal with acquisition (self-serve), cross-sell, and upsell. So
while our PMM teams are organized by product (e.g. Jira, Confluence, etc.)
individual PMMs on a product team can focus on core product vs. monetization vs.
enablement vs. upsell to drive the overall KPIs for the business.
Product Marketing, Fiddler AI • March 17
The PMM team structure depends on the size of the company, how technical the
product is, and the GTM model.
* Company Size: As the company grows and scales, PMM tends to fall under the
Marketing org and they may segmented by Core Product PMMs where they focus on
the overall messaging and positioning, Industry/Solution PMMs that focus use
cases for those specific industries ,and solution areas, and there may be
PMMs that will focus solely on sales enablement, competitive intelligence, or
pricing. For smaller companies, PMM teams will play a more 'full stack' PMM
role. For example, AWS has different PMM roles (Adoption, Engagement,
Advocacy) to adopt net-new customers, increase usage within existing
customers, and increase customer proofpoints.
* Product Technicality: PMM may roll into PM org if the product is very
technical and PMMs may serve as front-end PMs but still work very closely
with the Marketing team. In my past experience, this doesn't change the role
but gives the PMM team better insight and knowledge on the product to enable
the marketing and sales teams.
* GTM Model: This point correlates to the size of the company. If you are in a
larger company where there are multiple product lines or portfolio of
products, the PMM team may focus on a set of products or a specific
portfolio. This will cover breadth but not depth into the product so you'd
rely more on the PMs. However, it helps with messaging and positioning of a
core set of products rather than specific products. For example, at one point
IBM had PMM roles as Portfolio Marketing Managers that focus on specific
messaging, positioning and GTM for specific portfolio of products.
VP of Product Marketing, Oyster® • September 28
Our team is structured by audience type and discipline. We have one part of the
team focused on our end users and prospects, another part of the team is focused
on our partners, and a third on market research and market strategy. That said,
I strongly believe it's important for PMM teams at hypergrowth companies to be
nimble in terms of their structure and be willing to redefine roles and
responsibilities as company strategy and the needs of the business shift over
time.
Product Marketing Lead, Google | Formerly DocuSign • January 25
At DocuSign, there are product marketers across our main product categories, as
well as industry and audience teams. Every company I've ever worked at has
grouped their teams differently, so I tend to consider new roles based on
mapping skills to company needs. If the largest TAM is in a vertical that is
specialized, perhaps you'll need an industry PMM. If the biggest gap in company
need is relative to product launch materials, maybe you need someone focused on
building a great bill of materials. Etc.
Vice President Product Marketing, Salesforce • August 9
I've done it in so many different ways! Few quick pointers:
* The most important thing is to ensure every team member has a good swim lane
and growth path.
* Take your revenue goal and slice that evenly across the team to see what
makes the most sense — product line, segment, or objective.
* If you have a big product organization, try aligning your team with leaders.
This will help you ensure PM-PMM alignment for a stronger product strategy.
* If you have several SKUs/product lines, it might be worthwhile to have a
person or a team dedicated to overall messaging and narrative to ensure
consistency.
* Depending on how PMMs are defined in your organization, you can create teams
for every aspect of the customer journey.
Sendbird is an in-app conversations platform, where we help improve customer
retention and conversion through chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs. Our
team is structured as follows:
* GTM excellence
* Market intelligence
* Customer marketing
Within GTM, there are 3 solutions and a PMM owns each of the solutions. Each
solution may include up to 3 products or major areas of functionality. Each
solution also has a key performance indicator (KPI) or customer metric it's
meant to drive.
6 answers
VP of Marketing (previously Head of Product Marketing), Thanx • July 6
- It's all about being able to tell a story about how your previous experience
tracks to what you want to do
- B2B and B2C are converging a bit so I think the skills are definitely
transferrable. It might be hard to move from the far end of the spectrum all the
way to the other far end
- What determines fit for a position isn’t just about B2B vs. B2C. It is also
about:
- How well defined the product is
- What stage of life the company is in
- How well supported the role will be
- Whether or it is a big brand vs. nascent brand
- All of the above contribute to the kind of product marketing you are doing as
much if not more than B2B vs. B2C
Key differences:
- B2B - You definitely have to work with challenging stakeholders
- B2C - See lots of PMMs in brand management, eye towards brand side. Both
relevant and applicable…
For candidates, its all about where are you aiming. What excites you is as
important.
Head of Consumer Marketing, Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 13
I touched on this a bit above - I started my career in B2B and learned really
valuable lessons before moving more deeply into B2C.
I think Marketing is evolving so quickly that you can learn extremely valuable
skills in either the B2B or the B2C world that are applicable across both, so
wouldn't say strictly focusing on just one for the next 10-years is absolutely
the right (or wrong choice.) It's more the growth mindset and defining and
understanding what your career goals and ambitions are.
When hiring somebody, it's extremely context specific. For a Consumer Growth PMM
for example, having done some serious lead generation on the B2B side and having
an extremely deep knowledge of funnels and growth levers would absolutely be
applicable as long as you also clear the bar on the consumer basics - product
and user intuition.
Conversely, if we're looking for a Restaurant Experience PMM who's primary
responsibility will be defining the overarching narrative and differentiating
our business, I wouldn't exclude a consumer focused marketer who has had success
building brands and launching integrated campaigns.
Head of Product Marketing, Ethos Life | Formerly Meta, Microsoft • February 17
I've thought about this a lot as I've worked across both B2B and B2C and
wondered if it makes sense to specialize and how transferrable skills are. This
is also something I've asked many leaders and mentors. The overwhelming advice
I've gotten is to focus on being a good marketer and not focus on B2B vs. B2C -
instead, think about the types of problems you're interested in solving, the day
to day work that most engages and challenges you, and how much you'll learn in a
certain job. Additionally, marketing leadership roles often span both B2B and
B2C, so having a good knowledge of both can be an advantage.
When looking at candidates, I think strategic thinking and willingness to learn
are the top traits I prioritize - whether the candidate comes from a B2B vs. B2C
(or even non-PMM) background is secondary.
Director of Product Marketing & Development, hims & hers • June 13
There are multiple factors you could use to determine where to build a deeper
focus but I don’t necessarily think that you have to make such a firm pick.
There are definitely nuances between the two roles, but skills are also
transferable. Crafting messaging/positioning, translating user insights into
strategy, influencing product/technical roadmaps, and understanding market
behaviors are all skills which at the core are the same across both B2B and B2C.
It might be harder to cross over between the two if you have only been in one or
the other for an extended period of time. Not impossible, but it could be harder
to make the switch after say 15+ years only in B2B compared to if you have an
understanding of both after having done 2-3 years in B2C, then 2-3 in B2B and
then back to B2C.
If you do want to deepen your expertise in one or the other and are trying to
decide, I would recommend getting some insight into the day-to-day problems to
solve and then follow the path that interests you the most. A great way to learn
more about each role is to do a few informational interviews with people who
have been in both roles, browse job postings for responsibilities, or actually
try it out for yourself for a few years and see what you like.
When I look at candidates, I am less focused on what industries or companies
they have been at and more focused on the actual work they have done and how
that can translate to the role I am hiring for.
VP of Marketing, Titan | Formerly Lyft, Hims & Hers, American Express • October 4
There’s no singular answer to this one. It truly depends on what your goals and
ambitions are for your marketing career.
For instance, some people just really like the type of work they get to do on
B2C product marketing. The same goes for B2B product marketing. If you’re
someone who gets the most fulfillment out of one more than the other and would
find it a drag to do your best work if you couldn’t, it may make sense to go as
far as you can in that space.
In that sense, yes, it absolutely makes sense to develop a deep focus and
expertise in either B2C or B2B product marketing. The more knowledge and
experience you have, it’s more likely you’ll do better work, have more impact,
and get recognized for it.
The counterargument is that oftentimes to operate at the most senior level in
marketing organizations, you’ll need a working knowledge of both B2C and B2B
marketing. For instance, even heavily consumer-oriented products like the
meditation app Headspace had to crack B2B distribution to fuel growth.
The good news is that, yes, many of the skills are transferable. After all,
you’re still trying to understand an audience, identify their needs, position
your product accordingly, and figure out what channels will best reach them. The
exact execution may vary between B2C and B2B, but the underpinnings are shared.
It’s also worth noting that, for better or worse, hiring managers will often use
past experience as a quick heuristic to determine if you’d be a good fit. It’s a
quick heuristic, and oftentimes people need these kinds of rules of thumb to
make a complex hiring process easier to manage. That means if you’re trying to
break into B2C and only have B2B experience, you may find it harder to get those
interviews.
To hedge against this, if you want to broaden your skillset, look for
opportunities to work on the other area within your current company. See if
someone more senior in that craft can help guide you on that project so you’re
absorbing as much as possible. This will help you increase your marketability
and storytelling whenever you do want to make the leap.
A long answer short: Do the work that best motivates you, and lean into learning
opportunities as they arise.
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
Yes the skill sets are very transferable from B2B to B2C! As mentioned above the
fundamentals are very much the same its the execution that can look quite
different. B2B and B2C are both are incredible experiences so when I'm
evaluating candidates I'm looking for a product marketer that is customer
obsessed, results and data driven, and comfortable leading complex go-to-market
strategies.
2 answers
Head of Product Marketing, Nextdoor • January 14
* Be a Product Marketer: Understand the marketplace, trends, and competitors.
* Use the product: Use the product, sign up for emails, check out their SEO and
social presence, and interview current users to form a point of view on the
product and opportunities (e.g. opportunities in the onboarding process, use
cases, etc.). For an interview with a company, I interviewed a handful of
their customers to understand use cases, pain points, and their target
audience. From these insights, I developed recommendations and brought an
informed point of view to the interview. Also, I demonstrated I was
interested in the customer, the product, and willing to roll up my sleeves to
get insights.
* Bonus Points: Conduct an analysis (competitor, messaging, segments, etc.) to
provide value and demonstrate your skills, and show your interest.
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
PMMs are storytellers so just as you would approach a marketing narrative, tell
your personal story in a crisp and compelling way. Prior to the interview,
reflect on a few projects you want to highlight that showcase the breadth of PMM
competencies and be prepared to weave those stories into your answers. Some
examples include: a complex go-to-market strategy you drove, a time you
influenced the product roadmap, a challenging customer problem you solved. In
addition to preparing your story it's important to experience the product to put
yourself in the customer's shoes. This will provide you with the knowledge to
speak to product pain points and offer suggestions on ways to enhance the
product or the marketing to improve adoption.
3 answers
Senior Director, Head of Product Marketing, DoorDash • April 1
Business customers are all consumers at the core, but there are really important
distinctions.
For one, businesses have totally different buying patterns and a myriad of
channels to reach them through. When you're working for a traditional consumer
technology company you're most often relying on scaled channels to reach people.
Scaled is usually a part of the mix on B2B, so I'd look for opportunities to
show command of those channels.
For another, consumers are fickle. A business is usually looking to solve a
problem and the core customer may be buried beneath a stakeholder that won't be
your day-to-day user. This means that the core sell-through process may be
longer, but there's an emphasis on hard work at the very beginning. Consumers by
contrast have a variety of options and, in the case of free services, have a
really low switching cost. Your role in building a relationship doesn't stop
with first-use, so I'd look for opportunities to flex your re-engagement skills
on the B2B side to show that you're used to operating in this environment.
You have advantages as a B2B PMM in that you typically carry clear KPIs and are
directly accountable to the business in a way that may not always be the case in
a consumer role. Talk up your experience here and show evidence for how you've
learned a new audience quickly.
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Instacart • June 2
B2B and B2C Product Marketers have much in common in the way of skills, both
must assume the role of Voice of Customer and Voice of Product. Both must be
strategic thinkers with an exceptional ability to execute. Insights gathering,
GTM strategy and execution, and cross-functional collaboration are core needed
skills for PMMs in both industries. In fact, many Consumer PMMs I’ve hired over
the years were once B2B PMMs.
That said, B2B product marketers who wish to transition to B2C should spend some
time considering the following:
1. Learn the consumer marketing channel mix: Consumer marketing channels are
meaningfully different from Enterprise (e.g. think push notifications vs.
sales teams). Spend time learning how to effectively leverage these channels
to reach your new customers where they are.
2. Find ways to practice interpreting customer data at a different scale: often
the difference in audience size is millions. This change in audience size
gives you an opportunity to do more testing, but also represents new
challenges in interpreting results.
3. Prepare for engagement at a new speed: while not universally true, B2C
marketing can mean more immediate responses to your campaigns and messages,
often in the form of 280 characters. As a result, it’s important to
understand go-to-market best practices for levers like Customer Support and
how that differs from how launch reactions are managed for Enterprise
businesses.
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
As I mentioned above there are so many applicable skills across B2B and B2C —
just learning the PMM craft is key regardless of the company/audience. There are
several applicable qualities that a B2B marketer can bring to consumer PMM
including the following: messaging & positioning, relationship building & XFN
influence, data-driven decision making, and market/competitive research.
While B2B PMMs often have direct access to customers via sales PMMs in consumer
roles are required to play more of an active role in gathering customer
insights. Consumer PMMs will be responsible for developing a research roadmap
and synthesizing insights to shape product and go-to-market strategies.
Additionally, In a consumer role the audience size increases significantly
putting more importance the creative brief. Its critical to build a pointed
brief that is insights led and speaks to a user tension to inspire compelling
creative that will break through. Your channel plan will also look quite
different, skewing more digital and social media heavy. A best practice is to
map out a customer journey to ensure you are engaging the customer at key
touchpoints and building a creative and effective channel plan.
Asking as a B2B product marketer looking to transition to B2C
1 answer
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
Across PMM there is a shared core set of skills and competencies. The
fundamentals are very much the same — it's about knowing the customer, finding
the defining insight, and transforming that into product strategies and
go-to-market plans. While the fundamentals are very transferable, execution can
look quite different. For example, you’ll work more closely with product and
research teams vs sales, the channels and strategies to reach your customers
will be more digital and span the entire funnel, and you’ll likely be goaled on
product adoption at scale.
2 answers
Head of Consumer Marketing, Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 13
This is a great question. I would zoom out and think more holistically about how
to approach career advice and what I tell people looking to get into Product
Marketing overall.
I usually approach significant career transitions or moves in two-steps.
Sometimes, people see the next job and say - I’m a content marketer at a startup
- how do I get into PMM at Uber or Google? Sometimes you first have to get into
PMM, then, you have to move over to Google or Uber in PMM.
Same approach for B2B vs. B2C approaching in two steps. In general, I actually
think great PMMs are audience agnostic, and most of the frameworks / principles
are similar...Yes, there's some ramp up time, but each discipline has their own
super power.
B2B has the challenge of working indirectly through sales to get the message
out, so you really need to rely on influence and creating assets that others
will use, but I usually see a bit more of a growth/funnel focus from B2B folks.
B2C PMM typically need to bias on Product + User Experience, and telling
emotional and compelling stories. The best can bring both sides to the equation.
If you’re in B2B now and want to move over, I would start by trying to get
closer to the Product (focusing on user and customer experiences) and focus on
crafting great stories. Even if you’re not launching splashy campaigns, great
marketing is still great marketing.
Head of Product Marketing, Fan Monetization, Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 19
I can relate to this one, I actually started off my career in PMM at a B2B
company. This experience was invaluable and where I learned the core
competencies of PMM – the importance of product positioning, messaging,
influencing the product roadmap, and being an advocate for the customer. Just
being on a PMM team taught me so much about the function and how to deliver
impact to both the business and the customer.
A few tips that helped me transition over to B2C:
1) Build expertise in skills that can be transferable to any industry or
customer. The B2B company I worked at is a subscription based product and I
became fascinated by this model learning the ins & outs about subscriptions —
pricing and packing, best practices with driving growth and retention, and the
metrics that matter. This experience helped me land a role at a consumer based
company leading PMM for B2C subscriptions. This was a great way to ease the
transition into B2C and leverage the expertise I built in my previous role.
2) In B2B roles you tend to work very closely with sales vs B2C you are directly
working with Product to influence and shape the customer experience. The more
you can build strong relationships with Product the more equipped you will be to
influence the product roadmap and be successful in a B2C role.