How do you measure the impact of product marketing in your company?

Ultimately, the ROI for product marketing is revenue growth. But there are some in-process KPIs that you can set to measure the impact of product marketing. For example:

1. Content contribution can be measured with number of MQLs converted to SQLs from digital channels. Also, with increased website traffic within a time frame due to SEO/SEM initiatives.
2. Sales enablement contribution can be measured by reduction in the average time it takes to close a deal
3. Product launches can be measured by adoption of new features within a time frame
4. GTM messaging can be measured with reduction in customer acquisition costs

There are 3 that I primarily look at that PMM influences (not directly drives):

• Pipeline / Bookings (Demand gen / monetization efforts)
• Win rates (Sales enablement and content)
• Product adoption (Growth efforts)

There are metrics that we can directly tie to PMM but that I find to be less meaningful, like engagement rates on content that we've created or product launch metrics which are more a moment in time. 

I think that it's totally fine that we don't directly drive the major metrics I mention above, but showing how PMM involvement / partnership can positively shift and impact each of those metrics is what's key.

This partly depends on the role that PMM is expected to play, and we know that this can differ pretty dramatically from company to company, even within the same space. At Meta, we have a clear mandate - probably the clearest I've ever seen - to truly lead as GTM "captains". Leadership relies on us to lead the business, defining goals and strategies, driving cross-functional execution and shouldering accountability for all GTM execution. In an environment like this, the business goals are our goals, though of course we cascade those down across the team quarter to quarter, breaking them into more manageable, shorter-term goals that individuals can own. Will some of those goals be shared with other teams? Possibly.

I recognize that this PMM-as-"GM" model is uniuqe. In addition to core adoption metrics that PMMs commonly take on, I've found value in setting goals like:

•  % of observed sales calls where prescribed messaging is used
• survey's of cross-functional teams to rate quality of PMM leadership (How clear is the mission? How connected to changes in the business do you feel? How fast are decisions made? Is product getting actionable insights?)
• Launch coverage sentiment

These are less satisfying in some ways than something like cost per lead, but they reflect the value PMM adds. 

Most of our PMMs are in Pods - where a PM and PMM focus on a certain area of the business. Each pod shares a North Star Metric - most of which are revenue based and come down from our overall business goals. While of course we aren't 100% responsible for that goal - that is, sales has to sell it! - it helps us stay focused and measure our impact. For folks that don't have a specific revenue goal, primarily because it might be hard to measure or change quarter to quarter, we still have North Star Metrics - it might just be for that quarter. For example, we pick a key campaign and make the outcome of that campaign our North Star Metric - again because it ladders up to some bigger company goal.

We then every quarter have a roadmap and retro review. At the retro, we go through every campaign that the PMMs have had a heavy hand in (e.g., built the materials, presented at the webinar, etc) and pull toghether our impact on revenue across events, content, and demand generation. Again, we don't take full credit as other folks had to set up the campaigns and execute - but it is helpful for us to point to the revenue we influenced. We have a great analytics team and self-service analytics so we can build our own dashboards in Looker to report out. 

This one gets a lawerly response - it depends!

I like to use the following:

• attach rate as a metric for product adoption

• reactivations for product engagement

• product sign-ups for conversion

• upsell and expansion revenue

• NPS for sentiment

For example, for a new organization that is trying to find product market fit - if you can attribute product sign-ups to a PMM activity like website optimization or launch program, you'll have a clear and measurable way to show ROI towards a larger company initiative.

Great question! Measurement for PMM has been a long debated topic and vary greatly company to company, but here's a framework for thinking through it.

Key Considerations:

1. PMM should align itself to company objectives. If a company is focused on driving renewals, PMM should be focused on driving renewals.

2. PMM shares ownership of metrics with other teams. For example:

   1. Product and PMM share adoption and launch metrics

   2. Sales and PMM share revenue and sales efficiency metrics

   3. Marketing and PMM share campaign results

3. PMM should revisit its goals and objectives based on company stage/maturity. The earlier the company, the more frequently PMM measurement should be revised. (This might be controversial!)

With that said, here are a few examples of leading and lagging indicators, by business objective, which you can use to measure PMM. Use leading indicators to track progress during execution. Use lagging indicators to measure impact on a quarterly basis.

• Brand Awareness

  • Leading Indicators:

    • Share of voice (mentions compared to others)

    • Social media engagement (followers, likes, comments)

    • Website traffic growth

  • Lagging indicators

    • Message pull-through (typically done through customer surveys)

    • Analyst mentions & reports

    • Conversion rates from site traffic to MQLs

• GTM and Sales Performance

  • Leading Indicators:

    • # of meetings booked

    • Time to opportunity

    • Sales enablement asset utilization

  • Lagging Indicators:

    • Revenue growth

    • Upsell/cross-sell performance

    • Average deal cycle length

    • Sales conversion rates

    • Win rate improvements in competitive deals

• Product Launch Success

  • Leading Indicators:

    • Launch announcement engagement rate (e.g., email click through, demo video views)

    • % of users who engage w/ new feature within 30 days

    • Time to "aha moment" (for PLG co's)

  • Lagging Indicators

    • Demo requests (SLG) / product sign ups (PLG)

    • Feature adoption after 1 quarter

• Campaign & Marketing Performance

  • Leading Indicators:

    • Campaign engagement rate (e.g., email click through, demo video views, etc.)

    • Web traffic growth

    • # of MQLs after launch

  • Lagging Indicators

    • MQL-SQL conversion rate

    • SQL-opportunity conversion rate

    • Campaign cost vs. attributed revenue

Don't get lost in measurement - sometimes surveying people can be more telling!

• Set up rules in Gong calls to see if your sales team is using key messaging and if it's resonating

• Certify or test the sales team on your messaging

• Get feedback from sales and product teams

• Interview customers to get direct customer feedback

• Ask your Customer Advisory Boards (CAB)

You're a strategic leader focused on leading cross-functional teams towards a single goal - building a healthy business. Focus on revenue and bookings growth for your product. Yes, it's uncomfortable because you rely on the rest of the org and don't control every factor that rolls up to that number. But they say the PMM is the CMO of the product - be accountable to a number like a CMO.