What are potential career paths after Product Marketing?

I have seen product marketers move into various roles as their careers evolve. The PMM skill set is very applicable in most marketing roles. For example, a successful PMM should be able to translate insights into strategy, build power narratives that engage customers, and drive cross-functional alignment/execution. Therefore, you can apply those skills in a more data-driven way on the demand gen side, or you could use those abilities to have more ownership over product decision-making as a PM, or you could help sell more of a given product in a GTM role. I loved being a PMM because it offers you a lot of flexibility for the future.

I don't know if you'll like this answer--there is no one career path after Product Marketing. I believe career "paths" are more like jungle gyms than ladders--sometimes you go forward and up, other times you've got to move to the side, and sometimes you've got to hop from the swings to the monkey bars.

What does that actually mean?

Product Marketing in particular has so many different roles and skill sets within it: messaging, enablement, events, product launches, product adoption--the list goes on. My question for you is: what part of PMM do you enjoy most? What do you enjoy the least? Are you analytically minded and like clear metrics and KPIs, or do you prefer iterative, qualitative work? Identify the work that challenges and motivates you, and find a role that leans into those skill sets while also giving you the opportunity to learn something new. Maybe that's a PMM role, or maybe it's Growth Marketing or Product Management or Customer Success or Campaigns or...Every person is different, and every role and company is going to prioritize something different.

Oh my gosh - the possibilities are endless! The skills required for PMM are transferrable in so many ways. Like you mentioned, there's the product route that you can build on and either lead a PM or PMM team (or both!). The other obvious one is in the CMO direction - for this, you'd definitely need to expand your marketing lens into other areas of the marketing org (DG, ABM, field marketing, etc.) - you could start by trying out corporate/brand marketing or content marketing as an easy transition there. Other routes I've seen: enablement, product evangelist, go-to-market strategist, etc. Also, if you like the startup world, another less common but interesting route could be VC - a lot of times they look for people with product/pmm backgrounds at the associate level.