What has worked well (or not) when positioning your product marketing team within a larger marketing org?

This is a great question. A fair amount has been written about where Product Marketing should exist within the broader company structure—just Google "where should Product Marketing report" and you'll find a bunch of articles on the topic. During my time at Sprout Social, we spent more than 3 years as part of the Product Team and nearly 2 reporting within Maketing, which is where we currently sit. All of this is to say, being thoughtful about how you position your product marketing team within th ...Read More

Love this question and something I had to do a ton when I first got to Eats and everybody was like - hold on, what is Product Marketing?  I talk a lot about internal marketing and say you have to Product Market, Product Marketing...This starts with a very clear and differentiated articulation of our value. For example, I made it very clear from Day 1 that PMM is the primary POC to Product within the Marketing organization and built teams, hired people, and reinforced with KPIs that story. Over t ...Read More

Product marketing's biggest challenge (no matter anywhere I go) is defining the scope and sticking to it. Anything under the sun that is not Demand Gen or SEO tends to be seen as a job for product marketing. If we don't get a handle and drive the definition of role as product marketers and clearly write down what we own, and just as important what we don't own, we will be working against the grain. You may be doing a lot of great work, but that is always relative to expectations. In a nutshell, ...Read More

I’ve found that most companies want the most capable people doing the most important work. If you prove your value as a PMM by making the team and company successful, bigger and better projects will naturally come your way.When it comes to positioning the PMM team within marketing, it ultimately comes down to influencing the head of marketing. They want nothing more than for the marketing team to produce great work and achieve its goals. Whether marketing metrics are tied to pipeline, LTV, brand ...Read More

what works? -knowing the customer/buyer better than any other mktg function -aligning each team member to one of the following: 1) buyer persona, 2) product, 3) channel. -getting feedback on goals and team structure early and often from other marketing leaders -aligning teams/people to key stakeholders: Sales, Product what doesn't work? -talking generically about messaging and positioning -saying you partner closely with other functions but not clearly outlining ownership areas -thinking everyon ...Read More

Within a large marketing team I have always positioned the Product Marketing team as the experts who are the go-to people for any product question and I make sure we indeed are. One of my personal reasons for moving into Product Marketing from Product Management was to alleviate the lack of technical know-how within our marketing team that contributed towards unclear messaging.  One of the biggest challenges that PMM's face is that they have to influence other people's work. Sales Enablement, Ma ...Read More

Define (with your team) a short, memorable mission statement. Create a short slide deck that introduce your team, its mission, what you stand for, and some of the work you're the most proud of Show that deck to every new joiner, in the marketing organization, but also sales, product, etc. Refer to that mission statement whenever you get a chance (it's your WHY): in strategy presentations, sales updates, team meetings, etc. I personally meet with every new joiner in our stakeholder group and I al ...Read More

Great question. I always tell my team that as product marketers we are the bridge between product development and the broader marketing & sales teams. We focus relationship building and collaboration in 3 areas: Product (development) team. At Square PMMs are embedded within the product teams so this is technically our home. Where we add value is bringing in the customers' voice when it comes to product strategy and roadmap. My team does a lot of work visiting customers, conducting qual/ quan ...Read More

Being clear about what PMM's role and mission is, and ensuring other marketing leaders understand what your team does and doesn't do. Have open discussions about where there might be overlap between teams, and agree on how you'll handle it. Building relationships with others across the marketing org - both leaders but also at the IC level - and communicating openly, sharing your goals and plans, developing processes together, and getting buy-in as you plan  Having a clear framework for prioritis ...Read More