Product Marketing 30/60/90 Day Plan

One thing I'd add that's very tactical to the great stuff that David has already laid out: Find your allies. 

Talk to everyone within the org that you can and assemble a shortlist of people who have good understandings of things like the customers, the tech etc...

Befriend a good sales rep, the best sales reps in complex sales cycles are often product marketers in disguise. If they've been there for a bit they have a ton of knowledge that has never ever been documented or made sense of and they can accelerate your understanding immensely. 

I suggest combining pieces from my answers to these questions. 

1. What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Marketer at a company establishing the function?  
2. How do you think about your first 30/60/90 day goals when coming in as the Head of Product Marketing in a startup that didn't have product marketing before? 

Congrats on the new role! Very excited for you. I agree that it is good to have a 30-60-90 day plan and to make sure you can show progress and positive impact early yo make a good impression. That said, I would suggest you give yourself some time during the first 30 days to absorb as much as you can about the company, the interpersonal dynamics, the challenges and opportunities so you can then define and priorities in month 2 and deliver something of value in month 3 on the top 3 opportunities you identified in month 1 and worked on month 2 and 3.

The first PMM must provide a ton of value for the company. Generally speaking, it's value measured by impact on revenue. They also need to get along with other stakeholders (sales, product, CS, marketing). Lastly, they need to have execuitve sponsorship. That's the trifecta all PMMs should strive for.

Make sure every early hire you go for has a clear "mission" - what are you going to get from that person. What problem are you going to target them at. Once you start to get past hiring to solve specific problems - refer to my other answer about how you think about coverage of market / product intersections, that's where you start to get scale.

That's an interesting question. I see the PMM role as the GTM strategy which includes a success launch. And I see PMMs as the owner of product messaging. Not sure I can help here.

Now if you're looking to move beyond those tasks and elevate your role then that's different question with a different answer.

Build relationships with your stakeholders in Product Management, Sales and other Marketing teams (Content, Digital, DG, Integrated, etc.). Ask them to invite you to meetings and listen intently to identify areas where they need help, and volunteer to help with with those areas - e.g. market trends analysis, customer segmentation, competitive analysis, content creation, sales enablement collateral, etc. In short, take the initiative to rise above your title and rank and prove to your stakeholders that you have what it takes to deliver meaningful impact on the business.

My advice is to work on building relationship with the Product org. Proactively find ways you can bring them value - whether it be through market or competitive insights, product teardowns, industry knowledge, customer insights, etc. Find out what information they wish they had more of, and figure out how you can bring that to them. 

This partnership is so important for PMMs - and will help break down the metaphorical wall that stands between product and marketing, that products are tossed over to be shipped. This relationship should be bi-lateral. 

Yes, at VMware this is called Sales Kickoff. It usually consists of sales, technical pre-sales, professsional services and customer success gathering for a few days to discuss the company's strategic priorities, solution areas, product positioning, roadmaps and relationship building. It is split out by the functions above to dive deep into each phase of the customer lifecycle. 

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

- Retros on strategic projects, especially those with cross-functional teams so you can identify previous learnings and opps for improvement, and quickly get up to speed on legacy experiences 

- Centralization of customer feedback; can you do some quick analysis and theming of it to start to form an objective opinion on customer experiences based on data 

- Pricing history; what has happened in the world of monetization before you to understand if there's revenue opportunities on the table as early wins 

Definitely product management, to understand the blurry demarcation company to company between those 2 positions such as customer exposure, pricing/competitive analysis and salesforce training. Sales management and CRO, sales ops, marketing functional owners (digital, automation, ops) and customer support even to name a few. PMM can be purely tactical or it can be very strategic, depends on company culture relative to PM and the individuals in the seats. 

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 add value to the team. From there, it is often helpful to draft a set of goals that reflect the output of that conversation and get your PM's buy-in. Once you have established those goals, they can help in your day-to-day prioritization of work, and enable you to prove impact against those benchmarks over time.

Since Prodduct Marketing is in charge of messaging (internal / and guidance for external) has a really good value with Product Management for translating the usability, functionality and benefits of any product. Product Manager should be more focus on release products, and Product Marketing focus on translate that products into the correct message (how it works? or how that product should be used?). 

Btw Product Marketing should understand users/consumers needs for transmitting them to Product Managers and the products can be improved or develop new ones.

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 with haiku.

Sales guy got too drunk

Who can save our key meeting?

Product marketing

Six cups of coffee

A CIO sips daily

Persona research

]

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 developing features to meet their specific needs. Product Marketers can provide perspective on the broader market and the needs/use cases for segments that a company hasn’t yet targeted. Product Marketers are testing different messages and value-props in-market every day and those learnings can help guide a Product Teams' future roadmap.