When you are joining an organisation that never had product marketing before and are struggling with all areas of Product Marketing (Position, Persona, Messaging, Sales enablement etc) what should be prioritised first?

When you are starting up a product marketing organization (even if it's an organization of one!), it's easy to get pulled in a lot of directions. It's hard to add the most value, though, without tackling the fundamentals: buyer personas, positioning and messaging, and understanding the buyer journey. The trick is to get this strategic work done in a way that it appears to be addressing your company's burning tactical needs.  Example: In Week 2 of one crazy job, I was tasked with building a sales ...Read More

For me, the first focus would be understanding the buyer and building the personas; everything else will cascade from there. I'd start spending time with the sales to understand the deals we've won, what problems they were experiencing, why they needed a solution, and how we provided value. Work with the CS team to understand who the happy customers are and why they are still with us (how we continue to deliver value)--a bonus if you can work in a customer interview. Finally, work with the produ ...Read More

Product marketing is the most misunderstood career paths in an organization. You are often asked to wear all the hats and then have nothing to hang them on after other teams have taken credit. How do you solve this problem, especially as you're starting out? As a product marketer, use product marketing disciplines internally to establish your team for success - 1) identify the customer problems; 2) build your messaging; 3) Find the right channels to go to market.   Your stakeholders are quite ob ...Read More

Earn exec trust and alignment. If an organization has never had product marketing before, they still have been doing some of the core product marketing activities. They have words to describe the offering, there are pricing tiers established, etc. This also means that they may feel like their messaging is great because they did it. You coming in and saying "here is why your messaging is broken..." may not land the way hope it will. Before you join: Figure out why they haven't had PMM thus far. T ...Read More

Here's your priority list:  Listen and learn. And understand what isn't being said. You'll quickly realize where the gaps are and what  Schedule 1:1s with people to learn more about their specific customers, this will challenge your own assumptions of the current product marketing state.  Now after you've learned a bit, focus on doing your own product research. Look at how the product works, understand it.  Learn about how it's currently being marketed and to who, what do sales folks use to mark ...Read More