What are the top 3 potholes to AVOID when establishing or building out the Product Marketing function at a company?

I can't think of three good ones right now, so I'll give you two of my favourite:

1. Saying yes to everything
   When you come in as the first PMM, people are going to be throwing projects at you left and right. It's easy to say yes to everything, after all, who wants to say "no" in their first month on the job. But it's important to set the precedent that everything can't be your top priority right away. At Klue, I'm hopping on calls with as many people as I can and asking them for their top priorities/asks for PMM. At the same time, I'm very transparent that I'm building a project board of every priority that I'm going to be sharing internally. Then, with my boss and some other leaders across the org, I'll work to prioritize the list so everyone can see what's going to be worked on, when, and why. 
2. Dissapearing into a hole
   A solo PMM is naturally a very autonomous role, so it can be easy to slink away into a dark hole while you work on a big project. Don't. Everything we do as PMMs should be collaborative, especially when you're new to an org. You should be getting feedback and iterating often. If you keep projects to yourself for too long, you run the risk of wasting huge amounts of time on something that doesn't work. And people will notice.

• Do not hire more people until you have a clear charter for the team
• Make sure you align with other cross-functional teams as you build your org design so that your team has clear partners across different functional - otherwise, this almost always fails
• For smaller, newer PMM teams, avoid hiring people that have a very niche focus. You will benefit more from building and growing a full-stack PMM team

Top three things to avoid when establishing or scaling PMM:

1. Working in a silo. PMM is a highly cross functional role, so make sure you are in continual communication with xfn partners and that you are in lock step on priorities and plans. Err on the side of overcommunicating and providing as much transparency and visibility as possible to establish trust. 

2. Too much ambiguity for roles and responsibilities. A bit of gray area is totally fine – and it is also good to be nimble and evolve the PMM role as you go along. That said, because PMM is done differently at every organization, it is important to take time to do an intake with xfn partners, understand their needs, and craft the PMM role to deliver against top company priorities and pain points that PMM can help solve. Once you’ve defined this, take this on a 1:1 roadshow to gather feedback, get buy in, and get to work!

3. Saying yes to everything. Align with your boss on a prioritization framework and resulting prios. Then, as new requests come in, provide a way to let xfn partners know where their request falls in terms of prios and what is above and below the cutline – and why! I’ve found that transparency is key, as is the rationalization around the prioritization framework. While you don't want to say yes to everything, many times it is more about “not quite yet” vs no entirely. 

1) Don't get edged out of product roadmap planning. Product marketing and the product team have to be in lock-step to align on goals and timelines.

2) Don't ignore your design team. Working closely on how to deliver messaging and educate throughout the user experience.

3) Don't get discouraged! I've never heard of an org that did not benefit from a product marketing function, so stick with it.