At Heap we are fortunate to have a CMO in Lynn Girotto who has a firm grasp and strong working knowledge of all aspects of marketing. Often times you run into CMOs who only know brand, or only DG (or for that matter, only PMM), and the results can be disastrous. She has structured our marketing team into three distinct pillars: Product Marketing, Demand Gen, and Corporate Marketing. The roles and responsibilities are quite clear, but keeping communication open is essential even within our own marketing function.
PMM owns GTM strategy, positioning & messaging, content strategy, product launch, and sales enablement. As the driver of GTM strategy, we are leveraged for our deep understanding of our personas to provide guidance to Demand Gen on everything from campaign themes, to email nurture, and website design. I am also comfortable passing our messaging platforms, which provide core approved content, over to the Demand Gen team where they can craft campaign emails and web copy, tuning the core content as needed for their target audience or channel.
Similarly I have a tight collaboration with Corporate Marketing, which owns content marketing, external communications, and analyst relations. By mapping out the customer journey, PMM can craft a compelling content strategy, and thus align with the content marketing efforts of the Corporate Marketing team. And just like with Demand Gen, external communications and thought leadership are based on our core positioning and messaging, but adapted and extended as necessary. Last but not least, analyst briefings and inquiries are a team effort across Corporate Marketing, Product Marketing, and Product Management, with PMM generally owning the decks and demos.
With a strong product marketing foundation in place - e.g. persona definitions , journey maps , and messaging platforms - in combination with a system of trust, PMM's generally small footprint can scale effectively and our critical resources can be pulled in for content validation and approval on only the most critical pieces.