Once you've established deep expertise and credibility in the field, the
transition to leading a Product Marketing team will depend largely on finding
the right opportunity. This can happen with your
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Influencing the Product Roadmap
What type of opportunities should current product marketers seek out in order to best position themselves to lead the product marketing function at a company?
7 answers
Chief Marketing Officer at Instacart • December 8
See my answer here in terms of what can help you personally grow as a PMM. In
terms of moving up the ranks, the journey is probably similar to other marketing
roles where beyond a certain level, you n
Head of Global Inbound Marketing at Asana • October 15
Every product marketing org is different, but there are typically three big
areas that may or may not be included in a product marketing org including,
inbound (working more closely with Product), out
Director, Product and Solutions Marketing at Hopin • June 1
Product Marketing has so many different specialties that it’s almost impossible
to be a master of all of them. My advice is to pick a product marketing swimlane
and develop a strategy or project that
Head of Product at Prove • September 7
Product Marketing is an evolving role and can mean slightly different things at
different companies, from sales enablement to competitive analysis and
everything in between. Hence, I would suggest thi
Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • March 25
Growing your career in PMM can mean many things from mastering each aspect of
product marketing to going deep in a particular discipline (e.g., pricing,
competitive, etc.). If growing your career me
11 answers
Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2
There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM
plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of
labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.
Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot | Formerly Early hire @ Automattic (WordPress.com, WordPress VIP) • April 7
One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common
understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally.
Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at
Vice President Product Marketing / GTM at Wrike • April 8
I'll answer this from the aspect of a GTM plan for pricing and packaging
changes. The top 3 areas to identify and mitigate risk around include: 1) RISK:
Did you get the Price/Packaging right? Do
Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs) at Amazon • April 21
Great question. There could be many reasons why a GTM plan is deemed risky.
Perhaps because a lot is hinging on a product launch, or a risky marketing
campaign and the riskiest of all - you as a PMM a
Head of Product Marketing - Security, Developer Services & Hyperforce at Salesforce • April 5
Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early in
the process Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its
an ongoing partnership where PMM needs t
Director of Product Marketing at Matterport • May 3
This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a
surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time
comes, then you’ll be successful in solving tho
Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • July 13
Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s
a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and
executing the strategy in the market. Her
Group Manager, Product Marketing at Lyra Health • August 3
Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan.
To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust
post-launch. Making sure there is prod
Head of Solutions Marketing at Iterable • January 11
The biggest risk I typically see in GTM strategies is that it doesnt work.
Somewhere, something was missed, or the messaging, product, etc. doesnt resonate
with prospects and customers. ' I have foun
Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 23
The most risky operationalizations in a GTM strategy to me are spray and pray
(homogenous) campaigns, broad (not segmented nor sophisticated/suppressed, not
segmented (targeted) and not timely (satura
Product Marketing Lead - Spend Management at Brex | Formerly Klaviyo, Square, Intuit, PepsiCo, Heineken, Mondelez • March 23
Cross-functional collaboration, alignment, and execution are the most
challenging aspects of operationalizing a GTM plan. Challenge: X-functional
collaboration Solution: PMMs must ensure that a cross
9 answers
Group Product Marketing Manager - (CIAM / API Products) at Wiz • April 29
With so much at stake, a lot can go wrong when trying to influence the product
roadmap. When tensions run high, PMMs might risk their most important
relationship by: Not providing Sufficient Quantit
Group Product Marketing Manager at Codecademy • June 21
The biggest mistakes to avoid when influencing the product roadmap: Being too
prescriptive with the idea/solution, rather than presenting the problem space
and enlisting your product, design, and eng
VP of Marketing at Blueocean.ai • July 8
Not knowing the product: I've known PMMs who had never...used...the product. For
real. This is job #1 - get familiar with the product, build and do demos with
customers, spend time with the product
Associate Director Product Marketing, Creator Promotion at Spotify • August 26
Two mistakes I've seen are: (1) Not getting on the same page as to the goals for
the product. If you don't have a shared undersatnding with your PM / your
product team as to what you are building and
VP of Marketing at BenchSci • October 12
A wise mentor once told me, there is a very big difference between being
respected and being liked. You don't need your PM to like you, you need them to
respect you. With that being said, remember th
Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Pendo.io • December 15
The big one is thinking they are smarter or better equiped to make roadmap
decsions than the product team. Don't do that. Don't make it your crusade to get
something on the roadmap. You have to give y
VP of Product Marketing at Howl | Formerly Google • May 24
Product Marketers should be user/customer-centric, insights-driven, and
data-driven. Understanding what users/customers need with breadth (at scale,
representative of your target audience) and depth (
Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • October 25
First - Not knowing the product. It doesn’t matter how many customers you talk
to, how many insights you can glean from user analytics, or how many sales deals
you can unlock with your ideas- you wi
Director of Product Marketing at OkCupid • March 22
It’s so important to understand the lift of the project you’re petitioning to
add to the roadmap when approaching the team. If you’re not sure, speak with the
stakeholders beforehand. When I first beg
Particularly interested in technical products, but also curious for nontechnical.
12 answers
VP, Product at Barracuda Networks • August 2
IME this should sit in engineering, but it's generally not a bad idea for the
copy writer to solicit PMM feedback. PMM needs to be hyper focused on strategic
tasks. This is a good example of a tactica
VP of Marketing at Spekit • August 14
If your company has the resources, I would advocate for there to be an in-app
copy writer that sits under design. By putting them with design, they will have
the shortest path to where the product is
Senior Team Lead, Retail Product Marketing at Shopify • August 17
We like keeping this with the PMM or a Product Manager/Owner, as the person
writing this copy needs to be super familiar with the product and user
experience. They need to be power users, IMO. Occasio
Global Director, Business Strategy and Comms at TripActions • September 19
It depends on how big your company is! At large companies, there’s often a
Content Strategy or Product Writing person or team that sits under Design. The
PMM should ensure the in-product copy aligns
Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Handshake • October 29
For my company, it's currently shared between product, product marketing and
design, but that's mostly a factor of being a startup and in the process of
building out each of those functions. I think a
Executive Vice President Products at Snow Software | Formerly Rackspace, Dell • March 1
In-app copy typically falls under Product Marketing. If it is something you do
not own today, my advice would be to work with the Design/PM team who is
currently owning this to understand how you can
Senior Director, Blockchain Go To Market at VMware | Formerly Accenture, United States Air Force • March 28
In my opinion, PMM has a better vantage of customer needs and command of
customer voice to produce best in app copy, product naming nomenclature and
in-product guidance. This responsibility can be sha
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Fivetran • April 13
In-app copy does fit with Product Marketing - and Product! So technically, our
PM team owns the in-product experience but PMM has full access to the tool. We
have a slack channel for all in-app messag
Head of Product Marketing at Cortex • April 27
A few answers here, based on use case! Naming inside the product (like
features, tabs, or experiences) would be handled by PMM during the launch
process. PM is likely to have ideated an internally-r
Director, Product Marketing at Gong • June 9
This is always a gray area :) At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product
writing team, except for naming "Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we
established a list of criteria that qualifie
Vice President, Product Marketing at Clearbit | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft • October 18
The copy in the product itself is owned by our Product Design team. However, we
have a Customer Engagement / Customer Lifecycle Marketing team that owns copy
for in-app messages like tooltips, banners
Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • March 21
In quickly growing companies, I've found there are a few "hot potatoes" that get
passed around as the quarters pass by and employees come and go. One of those
jobs that get shared is in-app copy (or t
8 answers
PMO at TikTok • August 13
If product marketing is embedded within product, what that usually tells me is
that marketing is a secondary function to product. If you're operating within a
product-led organization, the cadence of
Chief Growth Officer at Verifiable • March 26
Our PMM team currently rolls up under the Marketing practice, which rolls up
into the Customer Org (Customer Success/Support, People Science, Marketing).
This means Sales reports up through another or
Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • April 2
The PMM team at HackerOne reports in Marketing. PM's purpose in the universe is
to build the right product by translating customer needs into products they
can't live without. PMMs role is to transla
Product Manager at Square • January 12
You would assume that being in the product organization would allow a PMM more
influence. However, I’ve actually found the opposite to be the case. For a
brief period of time at Zendesk, Product Mar
VP, Product and Growth Marketing at 1Password | Formerly Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, LinkedIn • February 11
There are pros and cons to any PMM reporting structure, with no perfect
solution. My experience has mostly been with a PMM team that reports into a
marketing leader and doesn’t report into product. In
Head of Consumer Product Marketing at Nextdoor • March 3
From my experience, it's less about product marketing's placement in the org
chart and more about product marketing's relationship with product and cross
functional teams. I've been in orgs where PMM
Vice President Product Marketing at AppFolio • April 6
I have led product marketing teams that reported into marketing and others that
reported into product. I've been reorganized from one to the other twice. I
don't find it makes all that much of a diffe
17 answers
Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe • August 2
Thoughtful answers, Feng! In my experience, resource-wise its best to be with
the marketing team & budget. Tech-wise, product. If you want to pull your hair
out all the time, sales :)
VP, Product at Barracuda Networks • August 2
This reminds me of the classic "SDR team in sales or marketing" debate. The
answer is that it can work in either place and really doesn't matter as long as
PMM and the rest of marketing are communicat
Director of Product Marketing at Skopenow • August 18
It can work in many places, but I find it to be the most effective if it is
either within Marketing or on its own entirely so that marketing is properly on
message. I often draw a venn diagram of prod
Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • March 11
I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons
for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If
PM team is strong enough to own end-t
Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • July 4
Based on some research we did (admittendly small sample size), we found that 2/3
report to CMO / VP Marketing and only ~10% to Product. Source: A New Definition
of Product Marketing At this stage
Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI • July 9
Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin.
Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I
have had product marketers on my team, and as a
PMO at TikTok • August 13
This is related to the question above with regards to marketing's ability to
influence the roadmap. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's a matter
of the role a CEO wants marketing to play wi
Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk • February 4
I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head
of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is
exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk an
Vice President Product Marketing at Unity | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • February 9
I firmly believe that Product Marketing should report into the Marketing org for
one central reason: PMM is a communications-driven role requiring the ability to
effectively craft and convey messages
Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 4
The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to
enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at
Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The
Senior Director of Product Management at GitHub • June 13
I've reported into both in my career and the best I can come up with is "it
depends". As an overall philosophy, I would generally prefer to report into
marketing, because it creates the right level of
CEO at Product School • July 15
A Product Marketing Manager’s position varies depending on the company. However,
you will find yourself from time to time working very closely together with the
PM and count yourselves as part of the
Product Marketing Manager at Metric • March 10
I believe it should always report to Marketing as the role directly links with
messaging, personas, and understanding customers and all these things come into
marketing. This is exactly how we are des
11 answers
VP of Marketing at Spekit • January 17
Hopefully I don't make this answer overly complex. I think the more important
question here is what are you actively working on? Because product marketing can
cover such a wide variety of activities
General Partner at Unusual Ventures • January 22
Definitely echo the fact that Product marketing KPIs need to keep evolving with
the focus that the organization currently has. When I was at Amplitude, we came
up with some strong *impact* metrics t
Chief Marketing Officer at Crayon • December 20
Agreed with the other answers about aligning impact with focus areas for the
business as a whole. Though I also like to have some consistent metrics to be
able to see some longer term trends. There's
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Highspot • January 24
Full disclosure - I work for Highspot - but we do use our own platforrm and one
of the benefits of it is that we can see usage and buyer enagement analytics for
all of the content we create. It's a qu
Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • February 4
Curious to know if there are any metrics that the Product Marketing function is
accountable for any metrics?I know there is such a wide variety of jobs that
Product Marketers do, but for example, if t
Chief Growth Officer at Verifiable • March 26
Recently PMM has been very involved with top-of-funnel marketing and campaigns,
so a lot of the typical metrics you might suspect in a campaign are ways we
measure success for these (Leads, MQLs, MQL&
Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8
While there is no "one size fits all" metric that works for product marketing,
my recommendation is to try to align your goals with either sales, demand gen,
or product depending on what you're workin
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5
Sales win rate, more specifically competitive win rateMake sure that you're reps
are populating a "primary competitor" field in your CRM so you can track this
effectively. You'll then be able to trac
7 answers
Chief Marketing Officer at Instacart • December 8
I start by developing a Go-To-Market strategy that identifies the business
objective of the launch campaign and articulates the in-focus audience. Once I
know what I need to accomplish and who I'm t
Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • July 28
Identifying and prioritizing channels to reach your target audience is key to
any product launch. Typically, my channel goal is to surround the audience with
a repeated, salient, and consistent messag
VP, Product Marketing at Chargebee • January 20
In my answer to the “not all launches are created equal” question, I laid out
some options for communications channels to pursue based on the tier that you
assign a given launch. (This best applies to
Director of Product Marketing & Lifecycle Marketing at Loom • August 25
One question to start with is – is the goal to target existing customers or
attract new ones (or both)? Then figure out where that audience is and how you
can most effectively reach them. Another is
Director of Product Marketing & Demand Generation at ESO | Formerly Fortive • October 18
Successfully launching a product these days is an undertaking that requires
careful consideration and planning. A lot of factors go into deciding which
channels to use for your launch campaign, but th
Vice President, Industry and Product Marketing at RingCentral • October 18
Audience. Know your audience. It's cliche. I'm still going to say it again -
KNOW your audience. What/who influences them? Where do they get their
information? What does the buying journey look like?
Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • January 24
Try applying elements of the “t-shirt sizing” product methodology within your
tiering process. For background, t-shirt sizing helps you map effort to impact.
Typically, a team assigns points or t-shir
14 answers
Chief Marketing Officer at Instacart • December 8
As you establish a relationship with your Product Manager, it is important to
align on expectations. You should understand their needs and pain points and
share with them your vision for how PMM can a
Founder at BrainKraft • April 11
In a word - results. Your product managers should have a goal defined for the
product you're supporting. It may not be the most realistic goal, but there
should be a goal you can anchor to. Take that
Product Marketing Director at Eightfold • October 25
I say: "You don't have to deal with the sales people anymore. Just send them to
me." Tears in their eyes... [There is a 300 character minimum, but my answer was
already complete so I'll fill this out
Product marketer at WIZZCAD • September 13
Product Marketing Manager is kind of the role project management for marketing &
internal communications. the PM & PMM are the two core role of
product-market/customer bi-directionel communi
Head Of Marketing at Immutable • November 12
Analytics, Attribution and Awareness (of the consumer) AnalyticsProduct Managers
are constantly looking at key metrics and data to inform roadmap and resource
allocation decisions. To speak the quant
Senior User Acquisition Manager at Hopper | Formerly Skillz, Telus Health, • February 3
One of the best ways Product Marketers can provide value is through market and
consumer insights. Often times Product Management teams are laser-focused on
understanding existing customers and develop
Sr. Director and Head of Product Marketing at Gem • May 6
It’s a good question, but also a loaded one! Product management needs to prove
their value to the company too, right?The dynamic you’re describing is common
though, unfortunately. I’ve lived it many t
Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • January 11
Remind them that in your title 'product' is first, you are a Product Marketer.
You see yourself as part of their org and are an active participant in all their
meetings. You are team members who alw
Chief Analytics Officer at MarketingStat - Survey insights. Your value • November 1
Prove that the Product Strategy delivers what it promises. Some multinational
companies build the Product Strategy on three elements: - Product technical
performance, what the product does at work. W
Product Marketing Lead at Google | Formerly DocuSign • December 6
I'd reframe the question a bit from proving value to adding value. Proving value
is a little defensive, vs adding value puts the onus on PMM to show up every day
with a task to be done. I think about
Director of Product Marketing & Customer Marketing at Mode Analytics • January 18
This is a great question - especially because I think this relationship between
product and marketing (product marketing) is one that often takes time. Trust
needs to be built and that often comes fro
15 answers
VP of Product Marketing at 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 opportuniti
Head of Product Marketing, Cloud at Coinbase | Formerly Lyft, Atlassian • May 25
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,
Director, Product and Solutions Marketing at Hopin • June 1
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 f
Senior Director, Product Marketing at Instacart • June 1
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/d
Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8
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 deliverable
Director of Product Marketing at Mastercard • June 15
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 go
Head Of Marketing at Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • June 16
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 t
Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • October 26
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, an
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5
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, yo
Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • January 11
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 leaders
VP, Product Marketing at LendingClub • July 26
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 collea
Global Head of Product Marketing, Spotify for Artists at Spotify | Formerly Uber • December 20
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 – g
Director of Product Marketing & Customer Marketing at Mode Analytics • January 19
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.