A lot of companies struggle to see the value of product marketing. What is the best way of measuring product marketing ROI?

Map and tie yourself to the company level OKRs, mirror the ones in marketing and product or create and define your own KR’s if they don’t exist.

Every Marketing Dept has 2 focuses:

1. Customer: # of signups, downloads, purchases, engagement, interactions, industries/verticals, you define the usage metric, etc…
2. Revenue: goals for new, renewal, upsell, expansion, you define the type of revenue etc…

Product can also own similar metrics as marketing. They also care about shipping product, so you can show your ROI by launching products and tracking the marketing metrics and engagement that result from your GTM efforts. I also always look at product usage metrics and fold those into my OKRs.

You may not own these metrics, but you influence them. You should definitely own or mirror owning them with your cross-functional partners.

I also talk here about how to breakdown responsibilities and KPIs when working with demand gen.

This question shows up a lot for product marketers, in many different ways. Unlike other parts of the busienss that have numbers attached to their roles (quotas, MQLs, etc) often times PMMs share success metrics with their cross-functional counterparts, and attribution is not black and white. That said, there clear ways for PMMs to showcase their value (which might not always be quantatively measureable) AND ways to quantifiably measure success. 

I'll start with value. A fundamental way to bring value across the business as a PMM is by truly becoming a subject matter expert in your space. Learn your competitors inside and out, learn your product as if you were a power user, learn the market and trends, deeply understand customers -- (this one might be the most important) -- because the more you understand your customers, the more you can represent their voice within the walls of your organization. Their insight combined with what you know about competitors and the market will make you a very valuable asset to product teams that look for that insight as they roadmap, sales teams that need to position the product to different buyers and segments, the marketing org as they decide how to fill the pipeline and what messages resonate, where, and so on. 

I understand that some orgs want numbers - and clear metrics to define success. And ideally this is in combination with the point above. In every project you drive, define how you will measure success. If it is a product or feature launch, define how you will measure the go to market strategies you put in place, for example, announcement message open and click through rates, content views, qualified leads generated from your announcement messages, or expansion, upsell or adoption metrics tied to your channel strategies. Part of our role as PMMs is product health beyond feature and product launches. So develop strategies for product adoption and usage, and measure how effective those strategies are. Maybe you run and in-product marketing push to drive adoption of specific features - measure how that push drove adoption. Adoption metrics are often shared with your Product Manager counterparts, so work together on that strategy and shared success. Regardless of what initiative you are driving, always ask yourself how you will define success - and if it can't be quantatively - look for ways to bring in qualititative feedback - even if just from your internal stakeholders. 

Don't bother. If you work for an executive team that doesn't see the value of PMM, you need to get a new job. You've got way too much work to do to waste your time trying to demonstrate something that should be obvious to anyone with a clue. 

Mike makes a good point - in that it can be hard to help people see the value that PMM brings to the table. When I'm looking to take on a job in a new company, it's one of the first things I try to sniff out is what the company's view is on Product Marketing (e.g. do they just view product marketing as glorified content writers - which by the way, we're not... we're messaging, market, and buyer experts - not copywriters).  

In terms of showing ROI beyond that, treat Product Marketing more like a data science than an art. So, for example, what is PMM job? it's to essentially accelerate sales and help drive revenue. Really, that's a lot of our end goal for the business. So, you should know your numbers through and through. How much revenue is the product bringing in every quarter? What's the growth rate? how long is the sales cycle? How are different ads/content/assets performing that use your messaging?  

Now that you have all of those numbers (and more, that's not an exhaustive list), then it's time to put into action a plan that accelerates those numbers. How do you turn that growth from 10% to 20%. Why is the sales cycle for X product Y long, but the cycle for A product is B long? How do you shorten that window? Why do some customers hate your product, and others love your product (a clear sign of incorrect messaging/positioning/targeting)?

Then once you make changes, keep tracking the numbers - does the new ad copy with the revised messaging bring in more clicks/trials/customers? then there is your ROI. Rinse and repeat for everything else. Did the new audience your targeting result in shorter sales cycles? great, double down, there's more ROI.

Luckily for us, a lot of our work can be directly attributed to a return on the investment, but it's really up to you to make sure that you're the one tracking your numbers and the work that goes into it.