Consumer Product Marketing

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, 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. 

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!

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. 

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).

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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. 

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?"

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.

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. 

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.

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)

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/ 

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?

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.

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. 

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

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

- 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

* 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.