Do you feel it is necessary to dip your toe in these other orgs/roles (ex. Demand Gen, Product) being a product marketer to fully comprehend your work and excel?

I think it's crucial to work closely with other teams at the company on projects that really matter to their success. For example: PMM + Demand Gen - website redesign PMM + PM - roadmap planning, product launches, or pricing & packaging PMM + Sales - sales enablement, competitive positioning PMM + Success - customer-facing product roadmap presentation, customer adoption tips and tricks PMM can help all these other functions win, and I think it's absolutely essential to seek out such projects ...Read More

Empathy is incredibly important for stakeholder management. The more you understand what your stakeholders need, can talk to them in their language, take feedback and get better at predicting and proactively providing the information they need the more trust you will earn from them. I don't think that means you need to know how to do their job, they are the expert and your trust in their ability to do it and to be the expert on that job is one half of the relationship. But really listen to them ...Read More

A RESOUNDING YES! (And by dippin your toes, I mean understanding their function and collaborating - not try to run their show. Let the subject matter experts do their thing, but make sure you are integrated in their planning and ensure these teams are working together.) I believe in order to truly be effective and impactful as a Product Marketer, you have to not only have an understanding of other key functions that you work with but partner closely with these functions. By understanding other k ...Read More

As a Product Marketer, you get things done through other people. Also, you won’t have formal authority over most of the people working with you. In this scenario, your ability to connect with and influence people (especially peers) is crucial to succeed in the role.Given this situation, I believe having a sense of how other teams work is key to increase your influence across the organization. To do this properly, there are three things you should learn about each area you collaborate with: what ...Read More

Nothing in a career path is ever truly "necessary," but is there significant value to tap for many PMMs by living a day in the shoes of your cross-functional partners? Absolutely! We had a demand gen person leave the company and I was asked to play double-duty for a couple quarters. There's a ton you learn from having to actually do the job vs. just work with someone else to do the job. That learning helps you: Empathize more with the challenges your partners deal with on a day to day (e.g. what ...Read More