When thinking about adding new talent to your team, how do you structure focus areas like Customer lifecycle stage, Persona, Areas of the product and Functional expertise?

This will vary from company to company depending on what industry you’re in, the make-up of your product portfolio, what your go-to-market and sales strategy looks like (are you strictly enterprise-focused or SMB-focused? Do you sell across all segments? etc.), the overall stage of the company, and probably many other factors. When I was at Sprout, we started with a dedicated Go-to-Market team that was made up of essentially product marketing generalists who owned a large swath of responsibiliti ...Read More

This is a fun question! I'd say you want to typically start with the Product first. If you have overlap, meaning one persona often purchases multiple products (especially if they're purchasing them at once), then you could certainly consider starting with the Persona approach first and building a solutions strategy over a product-oriented one. If however, your persona typically purchases one product at a time, I recommend you start with the Product approach and then support your teams with a bet ...Read More

Ooo this is a great question. And I have a great answer - it depends! In all seriousness - I've long been a believer that there's no perfect model for a PMM team, it really comes down to the needs of the business and maturity of the organization. As a general rule of thumb, I like to have an owner for every major intersection of buyer and product. So if you have two very different buyers of the same product, it might make sense to have a PMM owner for those personas. If you have two very differe ...Read More

Perhaps similar to HoneyBook, Truework has one core platform, but the fit within different industry verticals is completely different. Different features are the key selling points, there are different buying personas, and a different sales pitch all means we want different PMMs focused on these different segments. For example, today we have one PMM focused on the mortgage industry, and we’re hiring for another to lead all things in consumer lending (e.g. personal and auto loans). While each cus ...Read More

The foundations of a strong Product Marketer are going to look and feel a lot like the foundations of a strong overall marketer: Can you connect as many of your target users as possible to the value of your product? That can happen via exciting brand experiences, growth marketing nurture campaigns, well-placed social posts, and more. On most Product Marketing teams I’ve been a part of, there are two dimensions to the organizational matrix: (1.) PMMs aligned at the top level as a function, and th ...Read More

For smaller companies and start-ups PMMs will inevitably wear lots of hats and play more of a full stack role. Once the company grows and scales the role becomes more specialized. However, if your product serves a number of different audiences & use cases (as Tremendous does) you'll want to ensure even if you're a small company that you structure your Product Marketing team by Ideal customer profile (ICP) so that PMMs can go deep and craft compelling GTM strategies for their particular segme ...Read More

We followed a somewhat similar path as Patrick and I couldn't agree more about thinking through all those aspects of the company, strategy, customer and product portfolio. As my company serves primarily SMB customers we didn't have that as a variable and grew focused on our products, of which we have 2 and whose PMMs focus is basically as Patrick aligned his, with product feedback collection also a key part. We also had a strong need to support growth via our two main channels: inbound marketing ...Read More

When thinking about team structure and new roles, we think about 3 things: What does the business need? Are there areas we need to support better? New areas coming up we'll need to support? Where are we over capacity? What does the individual want to be doing? What are their strengths?  Will this person have a clear career path? Is it clear what their next step will be? How will they be able to expand in this role? How do they fit into the wider team? How we structure our team:We've changed our ...Read More

PMMs are often tied to specific products more than lifecycle stages. In general we aim for a 3:1 PMM to PM ratio - meaning the PMM needs to have deep knowledge about each of those products, market needs, and personas. They should be the expert in a product from end to end. It’s not ideal if a PM has to go to one PMM for personas, and another for pricing. I’m a big believer in developing close relationships with PM and partnering closely with them on all parts of the customer lifecycle. That said ...Read More