Deep dive • Updated 05/02/2026
How Do You Prove PMM’s Value When You Don’t Own the Number?
Featuring contributors from
What you'll learn:
• How to choose PMM metrics based on the outcome you’re trying to influence: pipeline, revenue, adoption, retention, win rate, sales effectiveness, or market expansion
• How to connect PMM-owned work to leading indicators, lagging outcomes, and qualitative proof
• How to socialize PMM impact before, during, and after the work so leaders see the value clearly
Start with the business goal: Tie PMM measurement to outcomes executives already care about, like pipeline, revenue, win rate, adoption, retention, or market expansion.
Show the chain of evidence: Connect PMM-owned work to leading indicators, lagging outcomes, and qualitative proof instead of relying on activity metrics alone.
Socialize metrics early and often: Align on KPIs before the work starts, track progress during execution, and use retros, dashboards, customer insight, and sales feedback to show impact after.
Anthropic Startup Marketing Lead | Formerly Lyft, Atlassian • 5y
Product Marketing OKRs are really important to keeping teams focused on driving the most impact for the company. At a Product Marketing OKR level, it often depends on what the company goals are for that particular time period. If the company is going after a new market or focusing on customer retention, that's going to influence what a PMM's KR will be. Second, I think it's importnt to set a KR that you have direct influence or impact on. Sometimes, PMMs at Lyft share KRs with PMs, but ideally, there is a sub-KR that indicates whether a PMM's investment of resources is succeeding at supporting the overall KR. Most notably, what a PMM can influence directly is product/feature adoption, sales enablement success (for B2B), and active user growth. I advise my team to use 'absolute' KRs sparingly and only if there is no other option. For example 'Launch new marketing website by Q3' would be an absolute KR. I would suggest to think about 'why' we're launching a new marketing website and what that will do for the product or company. You may revise the KR to say 'Launch a marketing website that results in a 10% increase in self-service signups by the end of Q4'. In this example, we've pushed out the measurement to Q4 and determined directly in the KR how this work will move the business forward.
6875 Views
Verkada Vice President Product Marketing • 5mo
Accountability for revenue is shared across multiple teams, with each playing a crucial role in the customer journey. When looking at any individual product we have, like our intercom product for example, there are multiple people who own the revenue number, and everyone has a piece in it. Product marketing might run a campaign that generates a lead, but then we pass the ball to sales who may or may not close it - or they might sell much more than we anticipated. It's very difficult to do precise attribution on revenue or determine exactly who's accountable for what specific portion. At the end of the day, it's truly the sum of the parts working together that drives business results.
493 Views
Iterable Chief Marketing Officer • 4y
There are 3 that I primarily look at that PMM influences (not directly drives): * Pipeline / Bookings (Demand gen / monetization efforts) * Win rates (Sales enablement and content) * Product adoption (Growth efforts) There are metrics that we can directly tie to PMM but that I find to be less meaningful, like engagement rates on content that we've created or product launch metrics which are more a moment in time. I think that it's totally fine that we don't directly drive the major metrics I mention above, but showing how PMM involvement / partnership can positively shift and impact each of those metrics is what's key.
4081 Views
Twilio Vice President Marketing • 5y
I encourage my team to be the ‘mini CMO’ for the products they cover. That means the single biggest metric to measure is pipeline (with a focus on pipeline generation). Depending on the specific in-quarter activities we have going on around sales enablement, we can see a dedicated focus on sales enablement and education show up in our sales-sourced pipeline in the trailing quarter. My advice here is to track a few things: Attributed pipeline = how are all your content activities showing up in your pipeline efforts, eBooks, webinars, etc. Sales-Sourced Pipeline = Did you focus on a specific and deliberate effort around sales enablement that you can tie to an increase in sales sourced pipeline around a specific product or use case?
3259 Views
MyFitnessPal VP Product Marketing | Formerly LinkedIn, Credit Karma, Handshake • 1y
Building on defining a successful product launch, measurement is a key factor in figuring out whether the launch is successful and what potential pivots you may need to make. The success of a product launch is typically measured by how well it meets business objectives, customer needs, and market expectations. As an example, for a new mobile app launch, KPIs could include daily active users (DAU), app downloads, retention rate at 7, 30, and 90 days, and user ratings in app stores. KPIs vary depending on the business goals but often include: * New Customer Growth: How many customers are using the product within a set period. Track metrics like the number of sign-ups and activations. * Revenue Growth: Measure things like immediate sales (if applicable), subscription growth, or increases in average order value. * Engagement: Track things like DAU, WAU, or MAU, depending on your business. Partner with analytics teams to understand how your launch affects these key metrics. * Churn Rate: If the product affects current users (e.g., an upgrade), monitor how many users drop off or unsubscribe. * Market Growth: Track how your company is performing relative to competitors. You could look at how you rank and how you’re moving on Apple and Play stores, as an example. * Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Do a pre/post survey to understand customer satisfaction post-launch and understand if they would recommend the product. You could also run an in-product 1 question survey to gauge how people like the new feature.
721 Views
ServiceNow VP, Product Marketing - CRM • 2y
There's no perfect way to do this. People hate when I say this but when it comes to messaging, I'm much more into qualitative feedback vs. quantitative. If you similarly hate me, feel free to move on. If not, here are a few qualitative measures I use: * Can your sales team remember it and pitch it on calls? If you use call recording software with your team, take a listen. If your sales team is pitching it, it's working. If not, it's not. * Do a webinar or event and ask for feedback after. Incentivize response with free swag. Session scores call tell you a lot about how your messaging landed. * Is more work "falling out of it"? What I mean by this is whether other people are building on top of it. ARe they thinking about it could be used for their segment and iterating on it. The best messaging becomes an organic force at your company.
4532 Views
Zuora VP Product Marketing • 10mo
We measure product marketing's impact on sales success through pipeline contribution, win rate improvements, and analyzing sales call effectiveness. First and foremost, we focus on pipeline - are we contributing in ways that drive meaningful pipeline for our reps and the business? We're specifically responsible for optimizing website elements like demos and interactive content that drive people to request more information. We measure our impact by testing and iterating on messaging and interactive elements that encourage prospects to take action. The second area we look at is win rate, especially tied to product launches or initiatives. We establish a benchmark for win rate and then measure if our assets, training, or audience qualification efforts contribute to an improvement in win rate for the sales team. The third area is analyzing Gong calls to see if reps are getting tripped up by certain questions. Our product marketing efforts are effective if reps feel confident, dialed in, and know how to answer questions about the product. We spend time looking through calls to identify where people get stuck, then address those gaps through better information, different content types, or giving reps opportunities to practice their pitch and responses to key objections.
594 Views
Box Vice President Product Marketing | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Unity, Oracle • 3y
The short answer is socialize constantly - it's an "always on" function for internal alignment and awareness. Ideally, any PMM KPIs will clearly map to both top-level company goals (revenue, net retention, product usage) and a shared understanding of "who does what"/"how a bill becomes a law" for your company's GTM motion. If your business is a fast-twitch, bottoms-up, Product Led Growth motion - it needs to be really clear what the PMM team is doing to drive triggers for acquisition, activation and maturity. In this case, the feedback will come in quickly as to what's working and what's not and thus the PMM team can use those KPIs to strategize with product and the rest of GTM. For slow-twitch, traditional enterprise sales motions, PMM needs to have clear KPIs for the awareness and consideration phase (messaging informing campaigns that drive opportunity creation, first and third-party content that drive "see a demo," "talk to sales" and other hand-raising activity) as well as for the long haul of sales cycles that can take months or quarters. This is where you need to be plugged into the pipeline and how account teams can move opportunities to close with content, programs, campaigns and events. Designing ways to programmatically move opptys to close will not only socialize your KPIs but also make you a valuable partner to the rest of the GTM org who might have limited, out-dated views of what PMM does.
533 Views
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