What's your best product marketing 30-60-90 day plan to make a big impact at a new company?

Congrats on the new role! Very excited for you. I agree that it is good to have a 30-60-90 day plan and to make sure you can show progress and positive impact early yo make a good impression. That said, I would suggest you give yourself some time during the first 30 days to absorb as much as you can about the company, the interpersonal dynamics, the challenges and opportunities so you can then define and priorities in month 2 and deliver something of value in month 3 on the top 3 opportunities you identified in month 1 and worked on month 2 and 3.

First 100 days in a job quite important. The First 100 days are your opportunity to ask questions, make some bold moves, build trusted relationships, and set the tone. I would focus on the following things: Build a solid understanding of your industry and target market: As a PMM, you need to bring unique perspectives to the table. PMMs are fortunate that they get to interact with customers, sales, analysts, product managers and gain insights about competitors. In the first 30-60 days, I will focus on understanding things like market opportunity, competitive differentiation, why people bu...

I break up my 30-60-90 day plan into 4 phases of success for Product Marketing – it also includes focus for after your first 90 days, all outlined below.   You may not get to everything in each phase, or you may move through things faster – I use this as a guide and checklist to keep myself accountable. Following this has helped me identify what wins I can crush every 30 days. You can tailor it to your needs at your company and the level you are entering at. The key is to actively listen in interviews and cross-functional meetings and if anyone is working on something that syncs with your...

Time for some radical transparency.  I'm in the midst of this right now. Tomorrow (July 7th) is my 30-day milestone at Cisco Meraki. It's been an awesome first four weeks, and I'm really looking forward to what's next. (Shameless pitch - we're hiring, too!) The size of the company and team adds a layer of complexity here, but in general, this is your best chance to really focus on learning your customer, product, and market here. It's hard to go back and do this again, especially in growth mode, so don't throw this away! Also, don't limit yourself to 90 days. I like framing this as a ...

I actually did a presentation on this about a month ago, which you can watch here. I don't split it out into 30-60-90 day increments, but within that period, these are the things I'd suggest doing: 1. Get to know your product - get demo certified, the same as your AEs 2. Start building key relationships internally - have lots of 1:1s 3. Create battlecards for your top 2-3 competitors 4. Put your positioning on paper 5. Define a product launch process 6. Set up your internal communication channels 7. Perform a content audit and find the gaps that need filling 8. Gather the tools, t...

Tiering and t-shirt sizing a launch should be based on "how impactful is this to my customer and the company?" If it's a brand new product suite, a new offering in the market either for the company or the space, or a material investment/improvement from what exists today--that's a Tier 1, full-court press (whatever that means for your company!)  Moderate improvements, new SKUs, bigger features that are exciting but not totally new and different for the company are the market are more medium-Tier launches. Smaller features and incremental updates can be covered in release marketing only, m...

The first 90 days is such an exciting and sometimes overwhelming time in a person's career.  The best way to set up for success in 90 days is as follows:  Day 1 - 30: Learn, learn, learn The first task I complete (and subsequently ask my newbies to complete) is an end-to-end product audit. The goal of this exercise is for newbies to learn the product and marketing flows inside out, from the perspective of one of our customers (ie. not looking up internal docs of what the flows are meant to be). While on this journey we want our newbies to use their fresh set of eyes to scrutinize the fl...

The tactics behind a product launch all boil down to three strategic questions:  1. Why does this matter for the business? 2. - 3. Why does this matter for your customers? 4. Why now? These are deceptively simple, but think about all of the answers that you need to have.  Having the answers to these two questions will determine This will determine the resources that you put into a launch, how you promote it, and who you promote it

I don't know about you, but I think there's so often a tendency to jump right in and start delivering. I encourage everyone that starts working on my team to spend their first 30 days learning! If you can work with your boss, try to buy yourself some time just to soak up knowledge and develop a point of view. The key things I try to get to know as much as possible when starting a new job are: the product (spend time using it, get certified if that's an option), customers/prospects (listen to Gong calls, shadow sales calls), the business (dig into your dashboards -- what's your average deal ...

Insights are extremely important and should always be an input into your messaging architecture or recommendation. Market and customer insights are one of the best ways to make a case for your recommendation, in fact.  So you don't get stuck in an analysis paralysis state, I'd do a quick audit to understand the current state of data and insights as it pertains to your product/market/etc. Find out: * What research is complete and available? This could be something like a survey to your database that was run in the past, research you paid for, data and analysis from things like a T...

It depends a little on what the situation is with PMM in the company you join (i.e. size and maturity, what the team is currently doing, what your role is going to be, whether you're an IC or a manager), but here's some things to think about: 30 days - this first month is all about getting the lay of the land and meeting everyone you'll be working with, building relationships and establishing your credibility! You won't get all of this done in the first 30 days but it's good to get started on these areas.  I think it's really important to listen and understand in this early stage, rather ...

The first PMM must provide a ton of value for the company. Generally speaking, it's value measured by impact on revenue. They also need to get along with other stakeholders (sales, product, CS, marketing). Lastly, they need to have execuitve sponsorship. That's the trifecta all PMMs should strive for.

There is a ramp plan that I like & have used many times, both for myself and members of the team. Like most things that are awesome, it takes the form of a very simple looking table. 3 Columns: * People: Meet with stakeholders and the team I will be working with, understanding their needs & determine how to best work with each person * Product: Learn the product, value prop, messaging, pitch and know how to do a killer demo * Business: Understand the buyer journey, key metrics, market and all the "math camp" things 4 Rows: * 30 Day: List of activities I will do in my firs...

There are a lot of messaging frameworks out there to choose from, but I take a bottom up approach: I start with the differentiators and proof points and then build my elevator pitch, value prop statements and long descriptions from those foundational components. I also use the rule of 3 for my differentiators and proof points. If you find yourself with a laundry list of differentiators or proof points, start looking for similiarities among those components to create larger "buckets" so that your audience has an easier time remembering your message.

Here is what has worked for me in the past. This pace below is relevant for smaller teams/orgs. You can pace this out for larger teams/orgs as needed. 30 DAYS Goal: Establish credibility and define your goal and priorities Key tasks: * Build relationships with key stakeholders and understand expectations * If you are a manager, get to know your team (obviously!) * Understand the business - products, market opportunity, business metrics * Define your draft year 1 goal, strategy and priorities and get sign-off from stakeholders  * Deliver any critical (and time sensitive) initiati...

These are all interrelated. Messaging: Includes value propositions, your story, and pitch. Also includes things like naming, alternatives, and taglines. Value Proposition: These are the top benefits you want to focus on for your product based on customer and competitive unput Pitch & Story: These should be the same. Your pitch about the world before your product, the current approach, why it’s bad, the business consequences, and the new world with your product should tell a story. This story should hit on your main messaging points and value propositions. Hope that helps!

Whenever you are starting a new role, it's critical to understand what's important to your manager and what the objectives are for your new organization so you can align yourself well to them. Every company has a different onboarding plan, and for PMMs I think it's critical to get the lay of the land through meet and greets with the people you'll work with to hear first hand what is on their mind, so you can start to understand how you will work together. I also work with my manager to define what I can deliver as soon as possible to show impact to the organization.  This is not PMM spec...

Painted door tests are your friend here (google it). You could create two or three landing pages with different message variants, each of which leads to a "request access" form. Depending on what your campaign is for, your message testing could be as simple as running it by product managers or account managers. Or you could grab a few web visitors through a Qualaroo survey and interview them. You could grab people and buy them a coffee at a conference. Basically, there's no big trick to this - you just have to do it. If you're getting feedback on your messaging from your target audience or ...

Copied over from a similar question: There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs...

Ideally, it's a combination of the GM, product management and product marketing. The GM would set the overall business goals for the year or quarter including revenue. The PM often drives the product launch adoption and revenue goals for that product. PMM often builds the plan with the metrics to help back into those goals.  The important thing is that if you see a gap, make sure that someone is owning all of these goals, otherwise, it will be meaningless to have launch metrics. 

I suggest combining pieces from my answers to these questions.  1. What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Marketer at a company establishing the function?   2. How do you think about your first 30/60/90 day goals when coming in as the Head of Product Marketing in a startup that didn't have product marketing before? 

As counterintuitive as this may sound, simple messaging isn’t always the way to go. It really comes down to your target buyer(s) and the set of messages that resonate with them, which may need to be simple for a line of business buyer like Marketing or HR or more complex/technical for an IT/Developer buyer. But it always comes back to understanding your target audience and their pain points, and ensuring you're tailoring your messaging for them. Also, depending on the channel/medium where your messaging is shared, it may necessitate varying altitudes. For example, Social Media is a clear c...

One thing I'd add that's very tactical to the great stuff that David has already laid out: Find your allies.  Talk to everyone within the org that you can and assemble a shortlist of people who have good understandings of things like the customers, the tech etc... Befriend a good sales rep, the best sales reps in complex sales cycles are often product marketers in disguise. If they've been there for a bit they have a ton of knowledge that has never ever been documented or made sense of and they can accelerate your understanding immensely. 

First the failure mode (for contrast): PMM does a kick ass job with product decks and slicks. There is a training session where some people seem to be paying attention, but most people are distracted by their day-to-day job of sales. Then when a sales person gets an opportunity, they ask the PMM or PM to come in and help. Or worse, the sales lead complains at the company QBR that her team is not enabled properly.    What I think is better: Start with what's in it for the sales person... Is it higher deal value to satisfy quota? Higher win rate? Then, think through how your sales people...

Here is what mine looked like roughly when I started about 9 months ago: 30 days: 1. Product onboarding and learning 2. Meet key people in PM, Sales, Marketing 3. Get introduced to tools used in the org 4. Understand the current messaging and positioning of the product(s)  5. Listen for key problems that we solve and internalise the personas and brand-level messaging 60 days: 1. Embed yourself in a customer conversation 2. Ride shotgun on monthly product updates 3. Study competitors and their market positioning 4. Review the state of sales enablement and plan for updates 5...

I'm out of time, but real quick, Patagonia and Apple are favorites of mine. They both have brands that stand for something, and they continually demonstrate their commitment to their vision in their actions. On top of that, they both have high-quality products.   I  believe that product and marketing are two sides of the same coin–you can't be a successful, sustainable business without one or the other.

First 30 days -  Meet with key staholders across the company - ensure excitement for the mission and what you're about to take on. Ask key questions about their responsibilities, what they are working on, and describe a bit on how you plan on working together with them. Product marketing is all about relationship building, in fact its key to be succesful. Ensure you're speaking with and understanding the pain points of each stakeholder you speak with, and make sure you listen. Listen in on customer calls and recordings - Its imperative you start familiarizing yourself with the products ...

Sales is definitely the biggest critic of messaging at Okta. Getting them involved early and often and treating them as a true partner in the process is fundamental. There are 3 things that I always do when it comes to messaging: 1. Partner with the best sellers of your product area. They are experts in reaching your target audience and executing your pitch. If you know they are happy with the message and actively using it, then you've gone a long way in ensuring the message resonates with the right audience. 2. Partner with the technical specialists in your product area. The...

30 days - Learn the market and competitive landscape. Visit as many customers and non-customers as possible. Read every Win/Loss report you can get your hands on. Talk to as many sales reps as possible. Use the Steve Jobs line of questioning: "What's working here?" "What's not working here?" Warning: don't assume you're the smartest person in the room. Network and leverage as many brains in the organization as you can.  60 days - Formulate a GTM strategy. Be prepared for a lot of "We don't do it that way here". Be persistent and focused. Use facts to inform your decisions not fantasies.  ...

I think you’re asking if it’s behind a pay wall and not just a free product? If that’s the case, you need material (video!) that can act as a demo, people want to see product, not just read about it. Salespeople who can give great demos and free trials are often a really effective a launch tool.