How can one know that their product marketing function is a strategically valuable program?

Are you executing on intiatives that align with your leadership team's top priorities? Is product marketing asked to join to product roadmap planning conversations? Does demand gen and content marketing rely on product marketing for insights and knowledge to executive a campaign or the content strategy? If the answer is yes to the above, then you're PMM function is strategically valuable. 

Customership. Is your team being tagged in by cross functional stakeholders to weigh in, collaborate and spar?
Are you getting asked for more support for your team to lean into big agendas in the "grooming" phase (not just GTM execution)? Are others (like PMs) advocating and helping you build the case for additional headcount YoY?
What is the relationship between the PMM and Strategy disciplines at your Company? What about Biz Dev? Are you regularly and organically connecting? If you can answer, "Yes" to these then that is an extremely strong signal that you are driving meaningful impact within your organization. If you answer, "Sometimes" to these then you likely have work to do with your partners to change the dynamic of your relationship. My advice is to work as far upstream as you can to inform the product - engineering roadmap. Use your power tools (eg. segmentation to inform product fit) and that will start opening up the aperture of PMM capabilities well beyond positioning, RTB and GTM execution.

There's two ways you can think about this:

Qualitatively: Use quarterly pulse surveys to do a temp check on cross-functional department needs and efficacy of existing programs. My favorite questions to ask sales teams is:

• What slide deck are you updating the most?

  • This indicates your most valuable asset that you should be paying attention to

• What material do you wish there was more of? Less of?

  • This will help identify what's being used and what's being left on the editing room floor.

Quantitatively: Anchor programs to key value metrics like:

• Reactivations

• Revenue

• Product sign-ups

  • and track performance QoQ so you understand impact.

By balancing quant and qual metrics you'll be able to gauge your strategic impact and where you should be leaning in (or out).

Data, data, data.

• Communicate your KPIs early and often. Make sure everyone knows what they are and that they're aligned.

• AB test all areas that product marketing touches to ensure you're not only reaching your KPIs but ensuring that you're getting the best possible outcome.

• Don't set it and forget it. Continue to test, come up with new ideas, and iterate on the work you've done.

• Data isn't just from testing and user metrics. Get feedback from colleagues to ensure your work is seen as valuable and create a plan for how to incorporate that feedback into future work.