What advice would you give a junior product marketing manager who is the first product marketing hire?

Know your ARR/Pipegen numbers and analytics tools: Get comfortable with building reports and dashboards. Know how to run reports and play around with that data. You will start uncovering interesting things - ex: we are weak in a certain market segment or we tend to have higher win rate for certain industries or deal cycles are longer for certain regions - Each of these insights can lead you to move from being tactical to being strategic. Learn, experiment and gain new skills: So, am I suggesting ...Read More

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 stakeholder ...Read More

Does not matter if you are a junior PMM or a seasoned PMM leader - owning/coordinating launches and copywriting will always be part of your job in one way or another so embrace those, be the best at it, and use the experience to hone your craft. But you also don’t want to be pigeonholed into JUST being a project manager or copywriter - that’s when you need to make sure that you are working on a variety of projects in your role, and there are multiple ways to make that happen. Have an open discus ...Read More

Having consulted for PMM teams, and built/run one from scratch, it's safe to say the areas of responsibility for any PMM is on an ever-evolving continuum. However, I see a difference between a junior PMM vs a first PMM hire... in that the first PMM hire should NOT be junior. That's not a knock on the junior role. In fact, I'm urging early stage Founders/CEOs/VP Marketing to have some semblance of a career path for PMM if your natural inclination is to maximize value from a high performing yet lo ...Read More

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 ...Read More

Being a launch project manager is part of the job – PMMs own product launches, the creation, strategy and management of it. Being a strong copywriter for releases is also part of the job. We write a lot of content or partner with writers and clean up their content so we can use these for our product launches. If you don’t like writing, then being a PMM may not be for you, it’s a core skill set and PMM leaders pass on candidates that tell us they don't like to write. Both these skills are needed ...Read More

Three things to consider if you're a junior PMM as the first PMM hire: Start small: Build the PMM foundation by breaking apart tasks into small wins. Don't try to boil the ocean. There will be more to do than anyone can do alone, so focus on the basics. Under-promise and over-deliver: Build an achievable plan. Given the high number of PMM projects that you could tackle, it's easier to over-promise. Set yourself up for success from the start. Communicate early and often: Don't assume everyone kno ...Read More

As the first product marketing hire, it’s essential to balance the immediate needs of the business with your desire to grow into a more strategic role. If right now the business requires you to act as a launch manager or write copy for new releases, that’s part of your responsibility, and doing that well is crucial to your success. However, it doesn’t mean you have to stay in that scope forever. My advice would be to: 1. Own the short-term needs, but keep an eye on the long-term In the early sta ...Read More

If you are a junior product marketing manager who is the first product marketing hire, you may be facing some unique challenges and opportunities. To succeed in this role, here are some pieces of advice to keep in mind: Deeply understand the product and market: Take the time to thoroughly understand the product that you are marketing and the market it is targeting. This will help you position and promote the product effectively and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise to others. You should b ...Read More