When do you know you’re ready for your first PMM hire? How do you think about setting that hire up for success?

You know you are ready when you’ve got at least one FT PM and your biz needs someone to stand up / drive any/all of the following:

1. Market Strategy & Customer Insights. Analyzing market data, honing competitive intelligence, and drawing on prospect & customer insights to define PMF (product market fit) and inform product roadmap decisions, including, industry and market trends analysis, competitive research, target segmentation, and prospect and customer insights

2. Positioning, messaging, packaging, pricing. Developing a customer-facing strategy to uniquely differentiate your offer in the marketplace, including persona development, shopper journey and lifecycle insights, packaging and pricing strategy, value props, messaging and positioning, and Social proof like testimonials, claims, and case studies.

3. Go-to-Market Strategy. Providing GTM strategy including creating the GTM strategy, channel strategy, funnel strategy, and creating sales training and enablement

4. Learning and Amplification. Systematize feedback from customers and front-line teams (or to start to collect it for the first time!) to improve and refine go-to-market strategy, including customer insights and data analysis, thoughts on for new products or feature enhancements, and recommendations for new marketing strategies or GTM campaigns.

It’s important to prove out the value of product marketing in the organization, and also your value as the product marketing leader, before you even think about hiring. This is especially true in organizations that have never had the function before and may not fully understand the scope of PMM. Once you demonstrate your value to the organization, justifying that first hire will go much smoother. It also shows you aren’t afraid to do the work, to get your hands dirty. Lastly, it gives you a chance to really learn the ropes at your company first so you have a better sense of what you need from the role — what type of PMM hire, their focus areas, and get a sense of how you’d structure the team once you get even more headcount (with less friction for your first). 

Once you’ve demonstrated product marketing’s value (i.e. your value), leadership and your cross-functional partners in product, sales, etc. will be hungry for more. You’ll know you’re ready for your first hire when you have too much work on your plate to do it well. You can make a clear case for why you need additional headcount, which will be easier to do when everyone just wants more! Make sure you articulate what the increased capability on your team will enable for the business. 

As for setting them up for success, I love a 30-60-90, that they co-create with you so they feel a sense of ownership and investment in the plan. I’ve seen many great frameworks on Sharebird already on this! And especially with your first hire, be upfront and transparent that things will change as the company evolves and the team grows. Good luck!

I don't think it's ever too early for your first PMM hire as they can help identify the product-market fit, positioning, and messaging. To make sure you have set up for success, make sure you have some people staffed (either full time or contract) where they can share work and delegate the strategy. Often times, this means having copywriters/content people, paid ads support, and product managers that are managing the product releases/roadmap.