How do you create and reenforce a culture for you product marketing team as you scale it and what does yours look like?

Culture is something we think about a lot - think it's a bit of a requisite to do so when it's in your company's name. We have a saying here which is "Culture comes first, whether you're conscious of it or not" - so in my mind it's clear you absolutely NEED to be actively cultivating it and maintaining it. There's a lot we do to cultivate and maintain culture at the company-level (Culture Amp), at the Org-level (Customer org), and the practice-level (Marketing overall). While I'll speak to some ...Read More

Love it! Excellent question. Here is the team culture I like to create, which frankly is applicable to any function. But, at the end, I will provide some cultural traits that are specific to product marketing. General cultural traits: Happy Trusting  Collaborative Caring Humble  How do you do the above? Remember the saying "be the change you want to see"? Well do that and everyone else will follow. 😃 This works at scale too, you will often find that some of the largest companies exhibit the cult ...Read More

I don’t know that this is really any different than creating and reenforcing a culture for any team, really. I think a great place to look for inspiration is your company's overall value system and culture.  For example, at Sprout Social, a few of our core values are to: Celebrate chnage Solve hard problems  Seek simplicity Promote open, authentic communication These are values that are obviously core to being an effective and successful product marketer as well. Also, I kind of think about the ...Read More

The first thing you need to do is understand the growth stage of your company. There are typically 3 critical growth stages for companies:1) Scale to $100M ARR2) Scale to $1B ARR3) Scale from $1B+ ARRThe organizational and cultural needs of Product Marketing differs at each of these different stages of growth.In Stage 1, Product Marketing is needed to partner with C-level teams to build company positioning, messaging, strategic/category narrative, and translate key use cases into critical assets ...Read More

Product Marketing teams sit at the nexus of so many other functions in the organization. While this makes for a pivotal and strategic role, it can also create an atmosphere of pressure, and the feeling that you're always behind.  A big part of creating a culture is reenforcing the impact that product marketing has on the organization and making sure the wins are recognized and celebrated. As a product marketing leader clear alignment with the exec team on priorities helps determine what you can ...Read More

We start by co-creating it! It's very much a collaborative exercise across the team to determine how we want to show up as a team! Some of it comes from listening to individuals, replaying back what you've heard and key themes, and then using that to facilitate good conversations around what's next. We very much anchor our team values back to HubSpot's culture code, which embraces Humility, Empathy, Authenticity, Relatability, and Transparency. We also recognize the values we create have to be c ...Read More

For me, I have to be intentional here. Because it's so easy to get sucked in to the work and just surviving from deadline to deadline. But you have to put it to the forefront and make it a priority.  One thing I like to do is involve the team in determing the values we'll prioritize, that way we can bring it up if we ever lag and discuss what we need to do to bring them forefront again. I like to create cultures the focus on: accountability, collaboration, empowerment, expertise, transparency, d ...Read More

In my experience, most Product Marketers want to have positive impact, and do superlative work. This means my job as a manager of Product Marketers is to get really clear on the kinds of impact we need to have as a marketing org, and what the standard for excellence is on my team. If you get really clear on those two things and have a few, well-facilitated conversations around them, the rest will follow. My team (which includes Product Marketing and several other marketing functions) knows they ...Read More