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Virtual Event
Developing Your Product Marketing Career

Developing Your Product Marketing Career

Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 • 12pm–1pm PT ·

Are you looking to intentionally grow, shape, and accelerate your Product Marketing career? Join 200+ PMMs to learn directly from leaders who’ve successfully navigated career pivots, moved up the ladder, and built standout portfolios that hiring managers love. Get practical insight into what separates good PMMs from great ones from sharpening foundational skills to owning cross-functional influence, building executive visibility, and positioning yourself for your next big role. You’ll walk away with clear frameworks, real examples, and actionable strategies to develop your PMM craft, communicate your impact, and chart a career path that matches your ambition.

  • Date: Thursday, January 22nd, 12 - 1 pm PT (3 – 4 pm ET)

  • Location: Online (link will be sent to registrants prior to the event)

  • Cost: This event is free. However, there are limited seats.

Top Questions

  • What makes a great PMM different from a good PMM?

    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    A great PMM creates a tight feedback loop with product teams and demonstrates ownership of product metrics and outcomes. While a good PMM handles the basics of product launches, messaging consistency, and sales enablement, great PMMs differentiate themselves by bringing strategic value to the product development process. They consistently gather customer feedback and translate it back to product teams, helping them understand customer pain points better. This often leads to being invited to part ...Read More

    319 Views

  • How to position your skills from being a Content Marketer/Copywriter working in the B2B SaaS space to pivot into Product Marketing

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    FMCG experience remains valuable for product marketing roles if candidates demonstrate the right mindset. I don't think FMCG experience has lost its value at all. Based on our earlier conversation about the various disciplines that can feed into product marketing, it's more about the mindsets than the specific industry. The key questions are: Do you understand the customer? Do you understand the product? It's less about which industry you come from and more about whether you bring the right appr ...Read More

    309 Views
    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    FMCG marketing skills are highly relevant to tech product marketing, especially for PLG motions. There's a common saying in Silicon Valley that a product manager's job is to make sure the product lands on the shelf, while a product marketer's job is to make sure it flies off the shelf - which is a very FMCG way of thinking. Many skills from FMCG marketing translate directly to tech product marketing: value proposition articulation, creating compelling offers, and packaging products effectively. ...Read More

    428 Views

  • What's the best piece of career advice you've received?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    Know your customer and know your space deeply. My first product marketing manager gave me this advice that has stayed with me throughout my career. As a product marketer, it's easy to get caught up in cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management, but nothing is more important than truly understanding your customers and the market space you operate in. This deep knowledge is essential for two reasons: First, customer empathy and intimacy with their problems enables effective storytel ...Read More

    302 Views

  • How can someone pivot into product marketing with no prior marketing experience?

    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    Express interest in product marketing and take on side projects to build experience.

    Within your current company, express your interest in pivoting to product marketing and ask if you can take on side projects to help the product marketing team. This allows you to start gaining relevant experience. Product marketers are often looking for help with small projects, so this is a great way to dip your toes into the field while demonstrating your capabilities.
    296 Views
    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    Make the transition within your current company where you're already a known quantity. The most tangible piece of advice I can give is to make this transition within your existing company where you're already a known commodity. Don't try to make that kind of pivot while simultaneously changing companies - it's going to be much harder to jump ship and make that transition. Make sure you've built a great, solid reputation in your current company, and then make the move internally. This approach is ...Read More

    333 Views
    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    Limit how many variables you change at once - if you can't stay at your company, stay in your domain. When trying to make a career change, consider how many variables you're changing simultaneously. Do you want to change your discipline, your company, and the domain you're operating in all at once? It's very difficult to manage more than one variable change at a time. If you can't make the transition within your current company, the next best approach is to stay within the same domain where you' ...Read More

    613 Views

  • How do you balance insights when your customers and users are different personas?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    Focus on creating value for users first, which becomes a selling point for monetized customers. In cases where one persona is the user and another is the monetized customer (like Google, where searchers use the product but advertisers provide revenue), my approach is to recognize that without users, no advertiser would be interested. You have to continue creating a great experience for your users so that you attract millions of them, which then becomes a compelling value proposition for advertis ...Read More

    615 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    Prioritize the buyer while developing tailored messaging for other stakeholders. When your company serves multiple personas, you need to shape your messaging accordingly. Between Square and Motive, I worked at a small B2B2B startup where our primary customers were platforms that wanted to integrate with us, but we only generated revenue when their customers adopted our service. I organized my team to have PMMs focusing on partner-facing messaging about the value of our platform, while also devel ...Read More

    281 Views

  • Is there value in deliberately changing roles to gain diverse experience before returning to product marketing?

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    Gaining diverse experiences is valuable, especially if you aspire to become a CMO. I think gaining diverse experiences is smart, both for your own exploration and for career advancement. You need to answer the question of where you ultimately want to be - do you want to be a CMO or a VP of Product Marketing? If your goal is to become a CMO, then you should definitely get as many different marketing experiences as possible. If your goal is to become a VP of Product Marketing, then your path might ...Read More

    320 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    Diverse experiences make you a better partner even if your goal is to be a VP of Product Marketing. Even if your ultimate goal is to become a VP of Product Marketing, product marketing is always a place you can return to after gaining different perspectives. You should dive deeper into different areas to gain varied perspectives and understanding, which will make you a better partner across the organization. Getting more diverse experiences never hurts your ability to be effective in product mar ...Read More

    330 Views

  • What is the ideal percentage of product marketing focused on positioning and messaging versus other activities?

    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    The focus on positioning and messaging depends on the product's lifecycle stage. It's difficult to give a specific percentage because it depends on what phase your product is in. If you're bringing a brand new product to market, you should be spending a significant amount of your time understanding customers, testing different value propositions, and developing positioning. For a mature product, you're probably spending less time on positioning and more on optimizing and thinking about additiona ...Read More

    321 Views

  • Where is the product marketing role heading in 2024?

    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    AI is dramatically improving research efficiency and enabling PMMs to build technical demos. While I don't think we should automate everything or have all content produced by AI (the storytelling element of product marketing should remain human), the productivity gains in research have been massive. The deep research functionality in AI models like Gemini or ChatGPT has transformed how we learn about new concepts, domains, competitors, or customers. What previously might have taken days of resea ...Read More

    327 Views
    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    AI adoption is transforming how product marketers work and gather insights. For my team, we're going through a significant transition in getting everyone tooled up with AI. We're using tools like Gemini and learning how to implement them in marketing. While our engineering teams are ahead of us, we're working to adopt these new tools across marketing. It's been transformative for gathering customer insights - for example, building connections from Claude into Chorus or Salesforce allows us to ex ...Read More

    293 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    AI is automating workflows and providing more frequent competitive intelligence. My team is focusing on using AI to automate workflows that traditionally took a long time, particularly around competitive intelligence. We're building agents that summarize win-loss reasons and provide tangible insights that can be refreshed much more frequently. This allows us to leverage these insights with product teams on a more regular basis, creating a tighter feedback loop between market response and product ...Read More

    305 Views

  • Is staying at one company for a long time beneficial or limiting for a product marketing career?

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    The right duration depends on company size and available opportunities. You need to be pragmatic about the size of the company you're in and what opportunities are available. At a large company like Intuit, where I worked for several years, you can build a very long career and continue to grow by moving between different roles. However, in smaller tech startups, you're going to run out of runway at some point. You have to balance avoiding job-hopping too frequently with not overstaying when grow ...Read More

    320 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    Staying at one company can be beneficial if you're still learning and increasing your impact. I don't regret my eight and a half years at Square - it was a career-defining opportunity. When people ask me how to transition into a new role, I often advise that the easiest way is to do that new role within your current company. If you're trying to break into a new field but are interviewing with companies that don't know your capabilities, it's much harder to make that change. At Square, I optimize ...Read More

    321 Views

  • Besides company growth, what helped accelerate your product marketing career?

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    Filling gaps in my resume and tackling hard, visible problems accelerated my career growth. I've approached my career by intentionally moving from one role to the next to fill holes in my resume and build a holistic skill set. For example, when I moved from packaged goods into tech, I specifically wanted to own a P&L, so I sought out a role where I could gain that experience. Beyond strategic career moves, nothing accelerates your career more than solving hard, visible problems and creating ...Read More

    301 Views
    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    Being strategic about saying yes to opportunities outside my core role accelerated my growth. While product marketers often hear advice about learning to say no because there are always more demands than you can manage, I found that being strategic about saying yes to certain opportunities really accelerated my career. There have been times when I was presented with opportunities that didn't neatly fall into the product marketing bucket, but saying yes to these challenges helped me in two ways. ...Read More

    331 Views

  • Do you look for specialists or generalists when hiring for your product marketing team?

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    I hire both inbound and outbound product marketers with different skill requirements for each. I have two flavors of product marketers on my team: inbound and outbound. For inbound roles, I look horizontally for people with solid B2B product marketing experience, though they don't necessarily need to come from FinTech even though I work in that industry. I'm primarily looking for strong PMM craft for these positions. These inbound roles work with product on messaging, positioning, pricing, and p ...Read More

    310 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    This specialized approach mirrors Square's organizational structure for product marketing.

    Square went through a similar transition, aligning outbound PMMs to the sales motion across different verticals while also having product PMMs that were aligned more closely with product teams and focused on developing messaging and positioning.
    300 Views

  • What roles are easily transferable to product marketing?

    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    Performance marketing roles can provide valuable testing experience that translates to product marketing. A big part of how I transitioned into product marketing was through testing different value propositions in the market and seeing what worked in our search ads and other channels. At Square, we had monthly and quarterly business reviews where the organization could learn about product performance. Because I wanted to get closer to the product world, I would attend these meetings and contribu ...Read More

    293 Views
    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    Demand generation is a strong foundation for transitioning to product marketing.

    I really like Amy's background in demand generation because good DG professionals understand which value propositions are resonating in the market about specific products. This provides a really strong foundation for product marketing, and I've hired people from demand generation backgrounds in the past because of this valuable perspective.
    308 Views
    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    Customer-facing roles, product management, content marketing, and communications roles transfer well to product marketing. People who have been in customer-facing roles and truly understand the audience tend to make good product marketers, even without traditional marketing training. They can be coached on storytelling and content development, but their customer empathy gives them a strong foundation. Product managers with expansive business thinking also make good product marketers. My own tran ...Read More

    290 Views

  • How did you get into product marketing?

    Kelly Kipkalov
    Kelly Kipkalov

    Carta Vice President Product Marketing • 4mo

    I started my career in consumer packaged goods (CPG) as a brand manager after graduate school. There's a myth in Silicon Valley that tech companies started the function of product marketing, but brand marketers in companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have long incorporated product marketing as part of the brand manager's role. Working in CPG helped me learn customer insight and writing - CPG companies excel at understanding what motivates their customers. This customer-backed, insigh ...Read More

    285 Views
    Amy Loh
    Amy Loh

    Motive VP | Product and Brand Marketing • 4mo

    I transitioned into product marketing from performance marketing and strategy roles. I started my career on the agency side focusing on analytics, which made me a very data-driven marketer. My first tech role was at Square on the performance marketing team, optimizing campaigns. Through that work, I started partnering directly with PMMs on launching campaigns. Later, I took a leadership role in marketing strategy and operations at Square, which required me to partner deeply across the company wi ...Read More

    278 Views
    Raman Sharma
    Raman Sharma

    Confluent Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) • 4mo

    I intentionally transitioned from product management to product marketing to gain broader go-to-market experience. I started my career as a software engineer, then moved into product management and worked in that role for several years at Microsoft. While working as a PM in a large company gave me great experience with product roadmaps and engineering teams, I felt I was missing insights into how products are taken to market - including pricing, packaging, positioning, messaging, and how the sal ...Read More

    315 Views

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Speakers (3)

  • Kelly Kipkalov

    Kelly Kipkalov

    Vice President Product Marketing · Carta

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  • Raman Sharma

    Raman Sharma

    Product Marketing Leader (Microsoft / DigitalOcean / Sourcegraph / Confluent) ·

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  • Amy Loh

    Amy Loh

    VP | Product and Brand Marketing · Motive

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