How do you communicate product marketing achievements upwards and build visibility?

We match internal promotion based on the level of the product announcement. Small updates are little features that mostly existing customers are excited about. Medium updates are larger changes that potentially open up a small new audience or unlock new revenue potential. Large updates are major product changes or brand new products that require significantly adjusting our go to market strategy.  Small updates: Monthly email to sales, slack message to successMedium updates: ^ + dedicated email t ...Read More

I love this question. I’ll step away from PMM for a minute and say - regardless of what function you’re in at a company, you should be championing yourself and your team constantly. People who ‘get ahead’ in business not only create value, they make sure others know that they create value. What makes PMM hard is that you don’t own a number -- there’s no clear attribution. You can’t say “at the end of Q2 we grew revenue by X% YoY” in the way a sales or DG team can. So you need to constantly be ta ...Read More

Internal comms is sometimes undervalued, but in my opinion, it is one of the most important parts of a PMM's role, especially because product marketing is one of the very few roles that are extremely cross-functional and sits between multiple teams. Here are few ways I've seen it work best: For major XF projects, have regular update emails so that you can make sure you are bringing everyone along the journey and it does not feel like you are working in a black box. Internal newsletters (whatever ...Read More

Internal newsletters, revenue org all-hands, relevant slack channels, and team-specific meetings. Of course, not every activity is shared through every channel. Depending on the "size" of the project or deliverable, we choose which channels to broadcast through. Thankfully we have a well-organized enablement team that manages these channel logistics, so we're able to efficiently streamline internal comms.On a personal level, it's critical that I provide key executives and other team leads with v ...Read More

Why do you want to communicate updates and activities? If the goal is to communicate just the work the team has been doing, then I don't think that you should be communicating this to a large audience. This may be a good weekly summary email to your manager (Also, why would your manager need it?, the manager should already know it and it should be in your 1:1 doc), anyway, my point is communicating just WHAT you or your team is working on is waste of time for you and the reader. I would rather c ...Read More

I think this depends largely on the size of an update - and the audience.  For our largest releases, they are communicated early and often - to drum up excitement. Through company all hands, sales trainings, slack channels, etc.  For mid-sized and smaller updates, we'll leverage the internal channels that make the most sense for the internal audience. If its sales, we'll update via our bi-weekly newsletter, slack channels, internal knoweldgebase docs on what to know, as one example. Each interna ...Read More

Communicating product marketing updates and activities effectively to the rest of the company is crucial for ensuring alignment and support across different departments. There are a few different ways: Slack, obviously! We have a channel for everything, so once we wrap up a project/launch/event - we share updates on the right channels. We also do a monthly recap of all marketing activities to all the key stakeholders. The key here is being concise and metrics-centric. You lose the audience quick ...Read More

Internal comms are so key given the highly xfn role of PMM. I’ve also found them crucial given that some of the outcomes PMMs drive are less tangible than some functions like Demand Gen.  The best channels to communicate updates depend on size of company, tier of update, and goal of the comms. For a moderately scaled org and tier 2 update, here is an example by stage of product dev. Kickoff. Host a kick off call for everyone that will be involved in the GTM (e.g. channel partners, product, sales ...Read More

Great question. At Zendesk, we do a lot of monthly/quarterly syncs with product leadership, sales leadership, marketing leadership, etc to discuss top programs and communicate achievements. Quarterly business reviews are another great way to share top wins and learnings. We also leverage supplemental channels like Slack, company/team all hands and our GTM newsletter. This can vary by company. To determine what works best for you and your team, you’ll need to figure out a way to speak the same la ...Read More

Marketing your accomplishments is critical! It is epecially important to align leadership expectations with reality since product marketing roles and responsiblities can vary greatly from business to business or even across products/BUs.  My team and I address this in a few ways. First, we share quarterly email updates with a broad distribution list. These emails include our topline priorities, related initiatives, shoutouts to our key stakeholders (since most of what we do is collaborative), le ...Read More

One of the key challenges with communicating product marketing achievements is often times there are less concrete KPIs. For example, demand gen is looking at MQLs and sales is looking at quota attainment. For that reason, communicating PMM success can sometimes come off as "fluffy". I believe there are some organic ways to drive transparency and visibility into your team for example presenting at All Hands on recent releases, in sales team meetings on new collateral created or sales plays, and ...Read More

It depends on the size of your company. This will become more challenging as the size of the company scales. At a company with less than 200 employees it is pretty easy to maintain relationships with executive leadership to keep them in the loop via regular meetings, Slack, and internal newsletters. No matter what the size of your company is, make sure you are spending enough time educating others on your value, contributions, and successes. Don't try to hide your failures, though. Nobody is per ...Read More

One of the most underrated ways PMMs build upward visibility is through analyst relations. Not because executives read Gartner reports (though they do), but because the AR process forces you to produce the clearest possible articulation of your market position, execution track record, and product vision. After 30+ Magic Quadrant cycles across Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and UiPath, the most consistent pattern I have seen is this: the PMMs who get noticed internally are the ones running AR as ...Read More

Tying your work to tangible outcomes, specifically those related to product growth and revenue, and socializing it has worked well for me. Here's my approach: Have a revenue-first mindset. Businesses exist to make money. One of the first questions I ask myself about any launch is "how can we leverage this to drive revenue?" Before getting strategic or tactical, I explore the different angles we could position or message the launch to drive revenue. Releases small, medium, and large have the pote ...Read More