What's the product marketing career path towards senior management (VP, CMO..etc)?

I don’t think there is a typical career path to get to VP or CMO. That said, many CMOs for tech companies have product marketing experience, so it's a good place to start if your ultimate goal is to be a CMO. From my perspective, the VPs and CMOs that I admire most have often worked in a range of roles across Marketing (and sometimes even Sales), so they have a wide range of experiences and skills to draw upon. They are strong managers who are able to build high performing teams because good peo ...Read More

The path towards senior management is anything but a straight line. The best product marketers I've encountered worked in something other than product marketing early in their careers. These roles include sales, demand gen, or engineering.  Personally, I career transitioned a lot in my 20s and pursued whatever interested me. I started by studying IT (Database systems) and was an engineer, wrote speeches in the government, became a product manager in the Pentagon, and then became a product market ...Read More

Typically you start as an individual contributor PMM, then move into a director of PMM role. In midsize and larger companies, you would move into a VP of PMM role next. From there, you would usually move into a VP of Marketing role. It's fairly rare to jump straight into a CMO role from VP PMM, but it can happen, particularly in smaller companies. But it's a lot to ask of someone who has never owned brand, comms, creative and demand generation before and most organizations will start you out at ...Read More

I believe as a PMM you should have an awesome read on the business. As a PMM you should have responsbility of the product and/or product portfolio - this will give you insight into comms, creative, demand gen, sales enablement and other functions in the organization. This clarity or control can be leveraged in getting a seat on the strategy table. Try searching for a seat on the table, not a title - this will give you industry wide leadership, will help you earn trust, and will make you seasoned ...Read More