What is your advice for creating and/or improving the product marketing process when joining a small but growing team with no or little structure and an inexperienced management team?

You can't change/improve what you don't fully understand. When you join a smaller team where product marketing didn't formally exist before, it is important to recognize that product marketing always existed, but was probably executed as a team sport. It may have been carried by the product manager, the CEO, the CMO, or a content marketing lead.  I would always begin by learning what worked and didn't work with product-marketing related efforts (which likely was not seen a product marketing work ...Read More

Whenever I join a new team, my first objective is to earn trust – both within my department and with cross-functional partners. Without trust, advice from “the new guy” about how things should be done is usually unwelcome. To do that, start by identifying problems you can solve to make everyone’s life easier. Not things you observe that are suboptimal compared to your last job, but things that are driving people at your new company crazy already. There’s always something, and if you can solve th ...Read More

If you are at a smaller company with little or no structure, it’s a great opportunity for you to build the foundation from scratch. It can be a daunting task, but inaction will likely create more headaches for you down the line. Here are few things I would consider: Education: Help the teams understand your role and the value of the PMM function. Feedback: Proactively solicit feedback from your key stakeholders. Understand their challenges, needs, and perspectives on what can be improved. Chance ...Read More

I expect that this small and less experienced team is also more reactionary and tactical rather than proactive and strategic. That’s OK to a degree when in fire-fighting and startup mode, but product marketing can help improve this with your overall launch and GTM process. Start by aligning with leadership on the major objectives for the year as a company , sales, or product team. Then map out how product marketing will help drive these goals through adoption, market perception, etc. Finally det ...Read More

See my answers on gaining buy-in from resistant functions and 30/60/90 day priorities. The most important thing to do, especially in an environment with a less experienced management team, is to educate everyone internally about what product marketing is, what your impact will look like, and how it should be measured. In less structured environments, it can be helpful to manage through metrics. That is, pick a differentiated metric that is not necessarily owned by another function as market pene ...Read More

1- Don't focus on a singular, perfect process. You may need to vary your processes depending on the intent (eg. simple feature release v. next flagship product GTM launch). 2- Get input from your stakeholders to know where process is breaking down (eg. is there too much swirl in the creative review and approval process?). You can solve for that with more in-market testing and optimization to remove the subjectivity, if so. 3- Look at all of your inititiaves collectively. Were you mostly working ...Read More

Say no to protect your yes. When you join a small team, or if you are the only PMM at a company, there is going to be a mountain of work for you to do. You can either get buried in the work or you can be strategic about what your focus is. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize! How can you do that? Learn about the goals and prioritizes of all of your stakeholders (most commonly Sales, CS, Product, Marketing) and understand common threads and pain points of the organization. What will make the most ...Read More

I would focus on three areas: tooling, process documentation, and communication. Tooling: one of the biggest game-changers can be getting out of spreadsheets and getting into a proper project management tool (e.g. my team loves Asana). This can help you plot out tasks and timing, assign owners, and even facilitate review/communication around assets. Also developing templates (GTM doc, creative brief, etc) can be really helpful for sharing info in a consistent and efficient way Process: as soon a ...Read More