How do you measure success? (KPIs?)

Quantitative validation comes from marketing metrics, and sales metrics indicate where to look to get qualitative validation. I start my day looking at Marketing dashboards to review the top-to-mid-funnel marketing metrics like response rate, conversion rate, and pipeline generated, always by persona type. I’m speaking through the lens of sales-led growth rather than product-led, as PLG PMMs can usually tie their success to traditional product metrics related to user growth, adoption, and conversion. PMMs at sales-led growth companies have a more challenging time demonstrating value due to the foundational nature of their work. If you own a messaging house, the easiest way to prove out value is A/B Testing your new messaging against legacy messaging to show it creates a lift - you can do this on places like your homepage, content marketing, and digital advertising - lead acquisition can be your leading indicator and pipeline created can be a lagging indicator, depending on the length of your sales cycle. To the extent that I can influence them, I also look at sales metrics like revenue generated and impact on the sales cycle, but it's more art than science. Sales often dismisses pipeline as a vanity metric for marketing. Still, at the end of the day, marketing doesn't have much control over whether pipeline converts to revenue. If you have enough sample size, you can use closed won revenue as a directional indicator of whether specific marketing messages or programs are working. Still, it takes a lot of data to be confident. Instead, I use our opportunity win rate as a starting point for qualitative validation. If we're winning deals, I need to confirm that messaging contributes to the success or if reps have uncovered a new point of value we didn't identify in research. If we're losing deals, I need to determine if reps are adopting our messaging and it's failing, using it incorrectly, or still selling the old way in order to understand how to adjust our strategy.

Measuring KPIs is an important way to tie your output to outcomes. My approach is to ensure PMM focuses on the metrics we can influence, getting buy in from cross-functional partners, and tying this to a specific time horizon, such as quarters or 1/2 year.

For example:

• If the primary marketing, company, product, etc. goal is to grow new customers, KPIs should align to this. In a B2B role, this could be something like increase pipeline by X% QoQ, or drive X Marketing Qualified Leads.

• On the flip side, your goal is to increase revenue per customer, which would be tied to increasing product usage, such as driving % increase in MAU, or % in time spent on specific features.

• Avoid committing to KPIs that don't connect to outcomes, such as produce X number of webinars, blog posts, emails, etc. While those are outputs, this type of KPI doesn't actually connect to the specific outcomes you want to get out of these outputs.

• Another KPI to avoid is anything that is outside the control of PMM, such as specific feature or product launches. While the launch itself is important, the actual timing of that is usually outside PMM control and this could result in a missed KPI.

  • An better approach is to connect the KPI measurement to the things that can be controlled, such as readiness for launch. This could include sales enablement, beta customer acquisition, waitlist sign-ups, messaging and positioning, and post-launch targets for user adoption.