What is the top tactical tip you recommend to a product marketer to be successful?

My top tip for being successful in Product Marketing is getting close to the customer.

Ways to get close to the customer:

• Do your own customer interviews

• Get your hands on as much customer research as possible (product research, user research, win/loss, NPS surveys, brand health research, segmentation, etc.)

• Shadow customer-facing teams like Sales, Success, and Support

• Get access to tools like Gong for analytics on customer conversations

• Attend events & conferences, and simply talk to people

• Run customer surveys (for feedback on product, messaging, etc)

• Read industry reports, join industry newsletters, attend industry webinars with customer speakers

How getting close to the customer will help you be a better PMM:

• You'll know what they need to be successful in their jobs

• You'll better understand your customers' pain points

• You'll better understand how/why customers use your product (and competing products)

• This translates to great messaging, thought leadership, product content, etc.

7 tips to go back to when looking to be successful:

• Learn what success means. Success for product marketing could mean different things in different companies, but also at different times within the same company! Make sure that for every initiative, you are clear on what success means. In most cases you should look for a quantifiable success metric to achieve the next point.

• Measure. Knowing what success means, you can define a plan, execute and measure your result(s). This can be a continuous cycle.

• Challenge the status quo. It’s not because things have always been done a certain way there a different approach wouldn’t provide a better result. When possible, experience new approaches.

• Embrace change. Change is often scary, but most successful employees, including product marketers, will embrace change.

• Listen. You won’t be able to support other teams such as product and sales if you don’t first listen to them.

• Prioritize. Product marketing teams will always be too small, you will always have more on your plate than you can take. Prioritize often, learn to say no. 

• Be proactive. Best product marketers can anticipate market trends, sales needs, and growing competition to face. By being proactive, you are increasing your chances of being ready for what’s coming.

Focus, focus, focus. PMM can be drawn to far too many projects and areas. That is too many meetings and stakeholders to manage. If it spreads too thin, it will be hard to deliver meaningful impact.

How do you choose? Consider 2 variables - you can build a list and classify each with this:

• Business priority - how much is aligned with the current business priority (right now, this Q)

• Business partner - how good and effective is your partnership with the relevant team (CS, Sales, Marketing, Product) - you need them to be successful, prioritize the ones that know and want to work with you.