Can you differentiate between a Product Marketing Manager and Senior PMM?

At a high level I would expect somebody in a PMM role to have a few years of relevant experience and be able to act as the internal product / domain expert for the marketing team in their area(s) of responsibility. They should know or be able to learn the core technologies, problem space, and target market/buyers very well. They should be able to interface with the product team, develop messaging, and lead a cross-functional go-to-market motion with a moderate amount of guidance or partnership from their direct manager or a Sr. PMM on the team.

At the Senior PMM level, I expect a higher level of influence and autonomy, with an eye toward mastering the role and eventually managing/teaching more junior PMMs. They are making strategic decisions and influencing product roadmaps based on thoughtful market analyses with light guidance. They are capable of tackling complex GTM motions, including high profile launches, and may act as the public face of the product for external audiences. They have full command of performance metrics and use them to decide what to do next. Internally, they are influencing strategic decision-making at the Sr. Director+ level, and potentially beginning to influence the PMM team by creating or improving processes and frameworks for the team to leverage.

Personally, I really enjoy having a breadth of experience on the team, which provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to assigning work and creates clear growth paths and mentorship opportunities as the team evolves.

At SurveyMonkey, we maintain a career ladder framework for each job level within PMM that includes both job-specific skills and company-level competencies like communication skills, accountability, and living our values. Having a clear framework is a great way to assess and grow the talent on your team, and I recommend partnering with your People team to develop one if you haven’t already!

I typically assess my Product Marketers' impact and seniority based on a few dimensions. Some of them are function agnostic, others are pmm specific, like:

• Positioning & Messaging

• Presentation & Communication Skills

• Cross-Functional Partnership

• Launch & Execution

• Research & Data

Main difference between a mgr and sr mgr to me is the ability to think more holistically, find issues or challenges that apply to a broader scope, outside of their core function, and find solutions that also will help more broadly.