How do you showcase to interviewers your work in messaging and positioning, without actually showing documented work?

To showcase your work without actually showing your work, you can instead show your process. Any messaging work will have a before and after, even if the prior state was an unlaunched product. Describe what you were given. What was the new product/feature or existing messaging? What was your process for determining the new messaging? Were there any disagreements or misalignments about your new messaging? How did you get alignment to launch your new messaging through sales and marketing assets? W ...Read More

There is a process to messaging and I think many folks are overly focused on the last step which is the final translation to words. I actually think this piece is the simplest of all the steps so I don't spend a lot of time looking at documented work when I interview product marketers. What's really important to me is understanding how a candidate thinks about and navigates the process itself. How does someone internalize the needs of the customer and market dynamics. In many ways, this is more ...Read More

I think it’s hard to showcase messaging in an interview unless you’re specifically bringing up documented work. At HubSpot, we like to give candidates an exercise before an interview that typically ties into positioning and messaging. Oftentimes this exercise will tie back to a recently released product or feature, and we’ll ask the candidate how they would position the product and bring that positioning to life through a launch campaign. This approach has actually worked really well and taught ...Read More

Make sure you talk about the process! That includes:  What was the existing state when you started (i.e. messaging didn't exist, it did exist but it was falling flat / was outdated, etc.)?  How did you go about developing the messaging (i.e. what inputs did you use)?  How did you test and/or validate it with customers / prospects? How did you socialize it and get buy-in internally? How did you roll it out?  How was it received in the market? (Can be anecdotal if needed, but of course ideal to ha ...Read More

This is such a good question There are many ways to demonstrate success of messaging/positioning work Talk through the process - Explain your approach to developing messaging and positioning. Talk about the customer interviews you did, the drafts you wrote, the messaging pillars you discarded and why, the frameworks you followed, the internal sales validation you did, the product deep dives you sat through, the brainstorming sessions and workshops you led, the customer testing you observed and t ...Read More

This is a great one! It's also something few people do well in an interview setting. It's a bit challenging to do verbally, but if you think it through in advance, you can be prepared when the opportunity presents itself. The first thing - the success of your positioning in an interview setting is best shown through anecdotes and specific details. Just like in real life, it's very hard to say "my positioning increased our pipeline by 15%." That's a complex calculus, and not easily justifiable. I ...Read More

When I am looking for messaging and positioning validation from outside the org, I find that people engage more with a story than with a static framework. And as far as stories go, everyone much prefers pictures to reading dense Powerpoint slides! To that end, putting together a solid "marketecture" is a great place to start. This allows you to paint the picture of not just your product, features and functions, but you can also start assigning value and differentiated messaging to each of them. ...Read More

I think the best way to talk about messaging and positioning in your interview process is less focused on the output of that work, and more focused on the 'how' behind how you go about driving that work.  What framework do you use?  How do you identify your key value propositions and the parts of your product that ladder up to those propositions?  How have you identified your core audience(s), and how to position your offering for them?  How do you validate that your messaging resonates with you ...Read More

Hopefully, there's at least 1 public example of the messaging and positioning (like the company website and/or product tour). You can show the website as it exists today, while talking through the research process to understand why the prior messaging didn't resonate with the audience, steps you took to refine and test the new messaging, and before/after metrics like traffic, conversion, time-on-site, scroll depth, and other engagements on the site as a way to show quantitative success metrics. ...Read More

It’s tough to describe how you approach messaging and positioning without showcasing past work. I’d try to show real examples, even things you may feel are smaller projects. For example, web pages you’ve put together, datasheets, customer stories, videos, sales enablement material are all great options. While interviewing it’s generally assumed that the company you’re interviewing with isn’t going to share internal only docs that you send them for references, but if you’re worried about it, you ...Read More

Love this question!  Obviously, always protect your employer’s confidential information. However, if you have done your work correctly, your messaging will inform all of the material and content you’ve developed. It would be reflected on your website, on your datasheets, on other public-facing content (press releases, blogs, etc.) But far more important than showing what you have produced is proving the impact that it had. Showing success metrics for messaging is one of the most difficult challe ...Read More

The success is positioning is about proving that your work made your employer known for something in the market.  One of the most common ways PMMs do this is by showing how they get the company a top quadrant or wave leader spot with Gartner of Forrester respectively. Nowadays, G2 reviews and or even reviews by influential developers can help - as long as they buttress your product's differentiators.  You can also demonstrate by showing how your work let do growth in a certain business segment. ...Read More