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What courses or other education should one pursue when changing from Growth Marketing in the tech industry to Product Marketing for either a tech or non-tech B2C company?

Mike Polner
Mike Polner
Discord Head of MarketingDecember 13

I think Growth Marketing in tech is actually super applicable to Product Marketing on the consumer side. Most of the PMMs I've hired have actually come from growth / performance marketing backgrounds. I don't have any clear recommendations on courses or education apart from just taking on hard projects at work (sometimes outside your core scope if you have that flexibility) that move you closer to the product experience.

Overall, the bar that I find Growth marketers sometimes need to be mindful of is the product user experience and being able to clearly articulate the short and long-term tradeoffs of decisions. 

For example, yes, making everything FREE! will convert better and drive meaningful short-term lift, but what are the long-term implications on product and brand reputation? Do people associate the product just with deals and discounts? When economics right-size and you stop discounting, will everybody just churn? 

I think if you're a Growth or Performance marketer and you have the grasp of the short-term levers to pull to drive growth but can see the big picture, ping me on LinkedIn - we're always looking for great talent! :D

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Brandon McGraw
Brandon McGraw
DoorDash Senior Director, Head of Product MarketingApril 1

I'd consider, where possible, looking for opportunities within your company to hone the skills and make the transition over courses and education. I'd focus on three things:

  1. Build Relationships: Growth roles generally put you in the position of being responsible for a key business KPI. Find opportunities within your current role to build relationships with the other stakeholders driving that success, particularly those in Product Management. When considering someone who's making the switch, I look at their track record of working with people outside of their day-to-day and especially value those that have demonstrated working with PM.
  2. Demonstrate Insights Experience: Reach out to teams in UXR and research and/or leverage your own desk research. Bake those insights into the projects you work on in your day-to-day to demonstrate that you both know how to identify and action insights in your work.
  3. Seek Opportunities to Contribute: Get to know the roadmap of products coming and find opportunities within your scope to test and learn tactics that will contribute to a new launch. If you're working on customer acquisition and the team is launching a net-new feature, look for opportunities where your channels and experience could help them learn more about their product-market fit within a constrained testing budget.
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Madison Leonard
Madison Leonard
Marketing & GTM ConsultantFebruary 15

Titles mean different things to different companies - so I would concentrate less on that and more on the day-to-day you're responsible for. 

If you're already in charge of things like product growth, activation, retention, etc then you can easily transition to B2C product marketing. 

As for non-tech product marketing, that's a different story altogether! Product marketing for a physical product will have much different metrics than for a software product. 

At the end of the day, in true PMM fashion, it's all about the narrative. But in this case, the product is you! Align yourself to metrics that would benefit the business you're interviewing at and you'll be golden! 

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