Messaging

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!

Thanks, Diana.  I see Messaging as a broader element and which can be broken down into: - Corporate / Brand messaging - Segment messaging - Solution or Product Messaging As for Pitch and Story, I agree that your pitch may include your story however I typically see the "pitch" as your typical sales pitch. I once heard of a good framework: 30-3-30. The 30-seconds pitch (or elevator pitch), the 3 minutes pitch (typically quick overview after someone says 'tell me more'), and your 30-minutes presentation. This last one is where you weave in the 'why change', 'why now', and 'why you' story.

This is a great question. As product marketers, I think we often confuse this terminology, and due to the common use of these terms it amplifies the perception they are different. From my point of view, there are differences between positioning and messaging which I’ll cover here, but everything else you mentioned — story, pitch, etc — is either an output of positioning and messaging, or is one and the same.

 First, positioning is an internal resource that covers how your product is uniquely different from other solutions on the market and addresses key buyer pain points. At HubSpot, we believe that this positioning comes to life through a story and is often written in narrative form.

 Messaging, on the other hand, is the external-facing version of that positioning. Messaging needs to carry the essence of your positioning but should be more concise and oriented around driving the activity you want (free user signups, conversions, etc). At HubSpot, we’ll usually create a pitch deck that carries the messaging of our product/launch but exists as a separate document used by various teams.

Interesting! I'll take a stab at it. My sense is that all of these fall under the parent bucket of messaging and positioning. Value Proposition is a subset of messaging that refers to the benefit of the feature or product or platform to the end user or economic buyer. What business impact can they expect by adopting the feature or product? Pitch (often referred to as an elevator pitch) is a :30 second or so description of the product that roughly tells the entire story. A pitch should captivate the audience enough that they want to learn more. Story is perhaps a superset of all of this, or at least, a creative skill set that benefit how messaging is developed and maintained. Again, just my take.

Very straightforward question, with anything but a straightforward answer. They are each distinct... with roughly an 80% overlap with one another. The biggest differences are whether they are buyer-specific or general and whether one must precede the other. You need a value proposition to create a pitch, and these are typically developed for a particular persona. Similarly, you need messaging to have a coherent story, both of which can be for a broader audience.  The main takeaway is that they are all different, but don't be surprised/discouraged/frustrated when they end up looking very similar to one another. I could probably come up with detailed definitions of each, but I think we're best off channeling Justice Potter Stewart's opinion on pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..." Applies quite well to the four items in the question. 

I like this kind of question becuase so much time is spent at work getting humans to agree that we're talking about the same thing. My particular answers are less important than creating a shared lexicon with the teams you need to mind-meld with. That said, I do like precision and so here's how I parse some of these terms: Value Proposition: This is the reason that your target audiences should choose you instead of your competition. It's the thing that you do uniquely well and it's the reason someone who lands on your site decides to learn more. Sometimes your value prop emerges so clear and forceful that you don't need to put it through rounds of wordsmithing, but more often than not you probably will. Using an example anyone who has ever seen a single TV commercial break will relate to, Geico's value prop has always looked something like: "we make it easier than anyone else to save significantly on insurance". That used to get translated a lot in their marketing to this famous copy: "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance". Substantiating their value prop that way made it crisper and more compelling.  Messaging: Typically an outcome of a product positioning process, I think of messaging as the step in which we identify the specific things we want to say to our audience that support that positioning. What are the compelling arguments that make your value clear relative to competitors? What are the features and benefits you need to make clear? The common confusion about messaging is whether it's the same as copywriting and in my experience, it's wise to distinguish those two steps. Messaging is the "what", copy is the "how" in our communiation approach.  The question doesn't ask about positioning statements, though I often see that term used interchangably with value proposition. I tend to see a couple areas of daylight between the two ideas. I think a value proposition can be broader than a positioning statement that is going to define, in detail, an audience, their unique needs and the competition. 

[Warning] Extremely Opinionated Zone starts now :) * Value Proposition answers the question of whether buying your product is a good value exchange for the customer/prospect. The pain you are reducing or the delight you are introducing - is it worth the commercial exchange and a good deal for the prospect? * Messaging is the act of clearly articulating the value proposition through words that resonate with the target audience. * Pitch is a succinct and impactful delivery of the messaging, frequently customized (with examples) relevant to the person being pitched, done with an intent to create urgency of action. * Story is your unique point of view about why your company/product exists, and your position in the market/industry.

On the Consumer side (where I sit) we have Brand Marketers and Product Marketers. Product Marketers need to deeply understand the value prop, positioning and user needs of the product. A big part of the PMM role is Inbound - leveraging research and insights to influence product strategy. When a PMM has Outbound work they need to do, we work very closely with our Brand counterparts to ensure our campaigns are consistent with the overall Brand message, and don’t conflict in terms of timing and channel.

I think there is a ton of value in having these teams work closely but separated into specific pods. As you noted, there are different skillsets here and they can be even more effective when given the space to own their domain expertise. That being said I think when PMM and Brand get too far from each other the end results suffer. I often think of PMM & Brand like a zipper in that they are stronger together and work in tandem. It's essential that brand messaging aligns with the product experience and that launches are appropriately timed and presented in the market. For all of these reasons, I am a fan of having these teams ladder up to the same marketing leader but for they also to be split into separate smaller teams/pods for ownership and skill alignment. 

At my current company, these roles are different and lean on the different skills that you mention! That said, at smaller organizations, or even smaller marketing organizations, you may not have the luxury of having different individuals occupy each role.  If you are in a spot where you aren't able to add dedicated headcount to partner with product or creative separately, I'd suggest having a conversation about priorities with your leadership and using that to guide not only the talent you bring on, but the allocation of time on activities for those individuals. While it may feel like too much to execute on both capabilities simultaneously, it's also exciting and a benefit of being at a small company!

I see those as different skills sets and usually different teams but I don't think there are strict lines in between them. Product Marketers should own the story, the core positioning and messaging, the surrounding context / thought leadership and GTM strategy. Ideally there are counterparts in integrated marketing, campaigns or growth marketing to help make that come to life.  But I think there's also what is ideal on paper and what is practical in real life. More often then not those integrated brand / campaign teams are swamped and not only serving the needs of product marketing. As a result, PMMs will more often then not need to stretch into what it specific assets and content needs to be created - whether that's videos, ebooks, blog posts, etc. And quite frankly, your partners in marketing will thank you if you come to them with ideas and they you can brainstorm the best path forward.  When I am hiring PMMs the core positioning and messaging skills matter the most, but I also want to know that they can stretch to think and how should this be brough to market. 

Yes, great question! As a PMM, I've always worked closely with a separate integrated/brand marketing function. The PMM sits closer to product/eng, is more initimately familiar with the product, owns inbound product marketing (including user insights, strategy, competitive benchmarking, roadmap prioritization etc.). When it comes to outbound marketing, PMM sets GTM strategy and works with a variety of GTM stakeholders, including comms and integrated marketing, to bring a launch or campaign to life. The integrated marketing team usually works with a group of PMMs covering an entire product area, which has the benefit of upleveling how the brand shows up to consumers and ensuring you're telling the right brand narrative, versus a product specific narrative. They also have more specialized skillsets, such as working closely with creative teams (or being creatives themselves), are accountable to brand/campaign goals rather than product goals (e.g. driving Q4 sales vs. driving adoption of X feature) and are great thought partners for how a product will show up to consumers. 

It's been a while since we've had an integrated marketing function at Momentive, but here's how I'd envision this working: Product marketing owns: - Buyer persona research, development, and enablement - Product messaging/positioning - Go-to-market strategy (e.g. by persona, industry) - Product/feature launches - Bottom-of-the-funnel product content/collateral - Competitive intelligence - Analyst relations Customer marketing owns: - Customer advocacy: customer stories, customer participation in thought leadership, review site management, communities, advisory boards - Customer marketing: scaled customer onboarding & engagement programs, cross-sell and up-sell customer campaigns - could include email nurtures, customer webinars, etc. Brand marketing owns: - Brand messaging and narrative, as well as brand guidelines - The visual manifestation of the brand (logo, colors, fonts, imagery/animation style, iconography, etc.) - Content strategy, and Top-of-the-funnel thought leadership content - Creative production for full-funnel campaigns (ads,  - Brand health measurement & tracking Once the company scales to where there is a) a full portfolio of products and/or brands and b) there is significant investment in full-funnel campaigns across those products/brands, then integrated marketing becomes a necessary function. Integrated marketing owns: - Full-funnel marketing strategy & execution management for large-scale campaigns (these could be brand campaigns or Tier 1 launches).

I have seen this done differently in different organizations. There is no right or wrong way. However, I firmly believe that the Product Marketer should own the narrative for their product.  * If it is a customer story - what value prop are we trying to highlight?  * If it is an ad campaign, what audience are we going after and what is the right messaging and CTA? * If it is an email campaign to existing customers, what outcome are we trying to drive, and what messaging are we using? PMM, as the person closest to product and audience knowledge, needs to own these pieces. If that is in place, then whether PMM is directly working on the campaign or simply enabling an integrated marketing team is just a matter of logistics.

I think it depends on what sub-function of PMM you've excelled in (or are applying for). If more technically-oriented, I'd want to learn about a product launch that you've been a part of, walk through a set of messaging you've developed, and understand how you've worked closely with the product team. If more GTM-oriented, I'd love to see a deck you've built for the sales team, how you've thought about personas and market segmentation, and understand how you've supported the sales team in hitting their targets. If you're applying for a Head of PMM role, perhaps a view into all of the above and how you've led through that. Also, if this is you, we are hiring at Front :)

I would try to highlight anything that shows you have the key skills to be an effective product marketer. That definitely includes strong writing samples and case studies like you suggested, but also: * Presentations that show you can create a compelling narrative and convince an audience of your point * Detailed GTM launch plans with how you will or did measure success * Clear, convincing and well-supported messaging and positioning, like through a messaging source document (something we use at Zendesk for all of our major products and launches) or a presentation * Thorough competitive analyses that highlight where the opportunity is for that company and what value props they should use to differentiate Also, depending on what PMM role you’re interviewing for, like if it’s a Retail Solutions PMM let’s say, I’d suggest adding more to show you have knowledge or experience particularly relevant to Retail and that role if you have it. Lastly, just in case the above feels overwhelming and you don’t have a lot of great materials to put a portfolio together, don’t worry, I rarely see PMM portfolios and usually we just evaluate strong PMMs through the interviews, homework assignments, and recommendations.

Case studies and writing samples signal to me that you can do the job you are asked to do but they rarely make a candidate stand out (unless the content is really bad!) I do think long-form writing samples have their place - they should show that you can communicate well and that you can possess critical thinking skills. But what makes a great candidate stand out for me, far more than anything, is a strategic mindset and an ability to provide evidence of outcomes during the interview. I'd focus on this more than on the portfolio. I go into how to do this in more detail in other questions.

The trifecta of short-form published writing, long-form writing, and enablement materials always does the trick for me. If I can see the candidate has written a great feature-related blog post or one-pager, a positioning and differentiation narrative, and slides that cue up best practices, then I'm a happy hiring manager.

Please add the "why" behind why you chose to take on new initiatives. I often see marketer proposing solutions that are searching for a problem. So, always start with Why and how your work aligned with the company/marketing/PMM north start. Then mention the results.  Example: It's great that you wrote an e-book, but why did you do an e-book instead of a webinar? What was the outcome? How it helped the company drive certain goal.  Some guidelines on what to include:   1. Include different formats - media, writing, interactive  2. Balance long and short form - 1 pagers or inforgraphics and longer whitepapers 3. If the role asks for a specific thing, make sure that you give more than one sample. Example - for a technical marketing role, the hiring manager is trying to asses how well can you simplify technical jargon to drive sales in low maturity buyer but the hiring manage is also curious about the depth of technical knowledge - so, if you did release notes, add that,  4. Don't be afraid to add samples from your previous roles: No one was born as a PMM. so, you might have some work experience before moving to PMM. If you did something that's relevant, please add that. Hiring managers are looking for fresh ideas and the fresh ideas come from the intersection of different fields.  5. Public speaking examples: Public speaking is a core skill for PMMs. The sample doesn't have to be from a large event. Even if it was a webinar or an internal training, add that. 

Absolutely writing samples! I always ask for those. (As you can tell from my other answers, communication is something I care deeply about!)  Case studies, landing pages, pitch decks / other enablement assets, and messaging frameworks can also be great additions to a portfolio. Just make sure you can speak to the process of building those, because it's impossible to know just from looking at them how much was built by the candidate vs. a collaborator.  What really makes a candidate stand out, I've found, is a short 'about me' deck. I've seen some great decks that include:  * Work samples (including some commentary about the process of developing that work) * Some thoughts about their approach to product marketing  * A slide or two about their career and the highlights of their experience * Bonus: Something that tells me a little bit about who they are as a person outside of work (hobbies, things they're passionate about, etc.) Not only is this full of great insight into the candidate, but it's also a great example of how they position themselves. It's essentially a sales enablement asset, which should hopefully translate into how well they can do that for our company and products. 

I've mentioned this framework in other answers, but I believe that great product marketers are great researchers, storytellers, and project managers. A standout product marketing portfolio would include work that helps you cover these critical bases. I've added below some examples of things that could help you stand out in each area. Research: * A summary of a research project you ran and how the insights were used * An example of a research question + interview questions you used in customer calls * An overview of a beta process you helped run, how many customers you talked to, and the outcomes that your insights helped solidify * An example of how you incorporated insights from industry experts or reports into a launch Storytelling: *  Core messaging + the landing page you built to distill the message * A product blog post you wrote to support a launch + outcomes * A video tutorial or webinar that you helped write or execute * A product announcement email + outcomes Project management: * A project plan that you used + the outcomes of the project * A product launch plan that you used + the outcomes * A hefty asset + a description of the team you coordinated to ship it * A cross-functional project timeline and breakdown + how you'd do it better

The great candidate stands out at every stage of the interview process, highlighting her & his value prop 😊 PMM portfolio is one more channel to show how you can help the company. Some practical things you can add to your PMM portfolio (copied from my other answer): * Messaging: key messaging on the products you worked on * GTM: links to your past launches (landing pages) * GTM: launch brief which you can share * Content: links to case studies you have prepared * Sales enablement: sales presentations, personas, sales emails * Your content (articles)

I am a big fan of writing examples.  * Writing crisp customer-facing content (blog posts, data sheets, whitepapers, product pages, etc.) is essential for any Product Marketer. * I must also add that the cross-functional nature of a PMM's job makes internal writing also very important. Clear, concise writing (GTM plans, memos, messages, 1-pagers, etc.) to get the point across succinctly to multiple stakeholders, drives alignment, and reduces duplicated efforts. Besides, I firmly believe that writing is the exercise of organizing your thoughts, answering your own questions, and articulating a straightforward story to the audience. In other words, writing is thinking. So, as much as possible, I ask people for their writing examples in interviews, etc., and I also try to write publicly, something that has benefitted me through connections.

Brand plays a critical role in Product Marketing and vice versa. In broad strokes, campaigns are either Product or Brand-led, and if one is leading, to be effective the other must be supporting. If we’re launching a new app, our focus is sharing the value proposition and highlighting key features, but the campaign is delivered in our Brand’s voice and within the umbrella of our broader Brand promise. If we’re launching a campaign to drive greater awareness of our Brand within a category, we’ll put our story and message front and center, but we’ll use key RTBs of our Product to underscore relevance. In this way Product and Brand are never too far apart and we’re best positioned to win hearts and minds.

Brand is such an important part of product marketing. Developing a strong brand, voice, and tone for your product or company lends itself to everything you do from launching new features to tradeshows. Brand is all about how your company or product is perceived in the market - how it stacks up against competitors and how it informs what people believe to be true about the functionality of your product. Product marketing can be 100x more effective at an organization if brand is a focus - features/products lean on brand and vice versa - when the two work well in tandem it can really set organizations apart.

At Momentive, Brand and Product Marketing are closely aligned, and collaborate on many initiatives. Here are some examples: * Brand<>Product messaging: For brand messaging, PMM will consult on things like the category, brand-level value propositions, and connecting the brand narrative to product messaging. For product messaging, the brand team (specifically content strategy) will consult on elements like short descriptions, headlines, etc. to make sure any documented customer-facing messaging reflects the brand voice/tone. * Product naming: as part of any product/feature naming process, you need to ensure brand fit. For example, at Momentive, we use very descriptive names for our solutions, like "Ad Testing" and "Brand Tracking", so if product marketing were to suggest a new heavily branded product name like "Satisfacto Plus" (making this up), we'd quickly realize it doesn't fit with the brand & naming hierarchy already established. * Product visuals: PMM and brand collaborate on how we design product imagery across marketing assets (web, email, collateral, etc). For example: do we abstract the product or show actual screenshots? Show it in a desktop/mobile frame? Bold color borders? etc. In this case, visual consistency is key to convey the brand look/feel with bottom-of-the-funnel product assets. * Thought leadership: PMM gets heavily involved in thought leadership across channels, whether it's partnering with demand gen on events/webinars or content strategy on guides/resources. Ultimately, thought leadership at the top of the funnel exists to build credibility for the brand, so should be reinforcing brand messaging. As you move through the funnel, thought leadership starts to lean more product-focused, but brand voice/tone are still critical for a consistent brand experience. * ALL content/collateral: PMM needs to consider brand guidelines for any content they own outright. This goes for collateral, one-pagers, pitch decks, etc. One thing we did at Momentive to streamline this was work with Brand to create templates in Google Slides for things like collateral, white papers, customer-facing decks, etc. So all we had to do was start with the branded template - no need for brand approval or custom design work for every asset!

A brand is not a logo. It is not a catchy tagline. It is not a color or font scheme. It is not the visual imagery. It is not the writing style guideline. It is the sum total of all the experiences an organization provides to its customers and prospects. I have worked in organizations where the company's most prominent "brand surface area" is its educational content (even though it is not in the education business). I have also worked on product teams where the product is the users' most significant brand interaction point. Similarly, website, email communications, support experiences, events (both in-person and virtual), etc., are all opportunities to create positive brand impressions with the target audience. Since Product Marketers care about all of these for their products, they should also care about the overall brand impression left behind by these interactions.

It's funny, I've been working on a deck looking at exactly this question. It's fascinating how much it varies from company to company. We're moving to a place where the distinctions between product marketing and brand marketing are becoming increasingly blurry. Think of it as simply different problems to solve, that map to different parts of the funnel.   Some product launches need broad awareness and call for high-funnel, or what we often call brand marketing. Whereas some launches are updates to features within existing, already known products, in which case they need more low-funnel, iterative test-and-learn attention. Sometimes you need all of the above! As long as you have a diverse Product Marketing team with different strengths, you'll always be able to send in the right hitter for the right moment in the game. 

For companies of a certain DNA (Bay Area, technology), brand marketing is not a priority compared to being able to measure the performance of your own marketing, with a philosophy of investigating what works and what doesn't. That's because the company likely has a demand problem, not a brand problem. So if product marketing wants to support demand generation and growth, then the product marketer needs to have an analytical foundation or analytical acumen.   Brand marketing comes into play with a product marketer's natural audience intuition. How is the brand received by the audience? How are the words that are used also being received by the audience? Product marketers with brand marketing skills have a mastery of language and intuition of audience to be able to convey. This is the other half of the product marketing skillset required. But still, without analytical skills, the intuition is full of bias and can often times be wrong without the know-how to shift gears.   For most growth-focused tech companies, if I had to pick between a demand gen background or a brand marketing background to shoehorn into product marketing, I'd hire the demand gen person to do a product marketer's job rather than a brand marketing person 9 times out of 10. Outside of that, and outside the Bay Area, I'd perhaps think a little differently.

Just a feedback on the last comment, as I reacquaint myself to the "new" bay area. I have noticed more emphasis on demand gen skills amongst many startups. If there are stakeholders in the company already like product management and technical marketing who are also good at writing, messaging, positioning - then this might work. However, a good product marketer who has enough knowledge of demand gen mechanism is probably a better fit versus demand gen being forced into product marketing. Easier to pick up demand gen skills versus the opposite - in my view. It offers a career growth path for product marketers, who also make for better CMOs as messaging and positioning is critical and also drives brand strategy downstream. 

First, you can not decouple analytical skills from brand marketing skills. They are not mutually exclusive. You are right that there is more emphasis on analytical skills in job description for product marketers. Primarily because analytical skills are easier to evaluate. They are also critical because analytical mindset helps you have a solid foundation for your marketing strategy (including brand marketing). However, these strategies come to life with creativity. You can not undermine creative skills and just focus on analytics skills while hiring. Examples of brand marketing playing a role in product marketing -   Brand campaigns - they are planned jointly between demand gen, product marketing and brand marketing Positioning - brand helps reinforce your product positioning. Think of ads that support company positioning. Non technical content marketing - producing interactive and engaging content Customer community - Depends on what your community needs are build if it building creative ways to engage the community, then you could play a vital role. Salesforce did an amazing job with Trailhead. Many B2C and B2B2C companies are seeing that these two marketing streams are coming together. So, if you are planning to switch from brand to product marketing, those comapnies can provide you a good platform for success. 

100% agree with Suyog. Nothing we do exists in a vacuum and all of the positioning and messaging we bring to market should be looked at from a brand lens to ensure consistency. Ultimately, the consumer is not going to differentiate what’s brand marketing and what’s product marketing. It’s all the same to them!

I definitely appreciate this tension -- and in a perfect world you find the right mix of both on the team. Analytical skills will benefit our understanding of market sizing and opportunity, pricing and packaging decisions and so on. The "brand" or creative skillset would aid in storytelling around messaging, content efforts, etc. I think it depends on your role within the PMM org. A Head of PMM, ideally, would be able to balance both analytical and creative capability, and hire to his/her weaknesses. But an appreciation for the power of brand marketing is a superpower in product marketing or any GTM motion. Look no further than Simon Sinek's iconic TED Talk to break down why -- "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." A PMM that can connect the product (the what) to the brand promise (the why) will be a huge asset to any company.

Analytical skills tend to be the preferred skill set of a product marketer because they are "running the business". Product Marketers own a product's P&L and must have the business acumen to drive revenue. Important the ones trying to size and segment the marketplace. Additionally, they'll probably be on the front lines trying to determine what segment, region, or geo to invest their budget.  Brand marketing's closest overlap is with the Marketing Programs PMM function. They will ensure that the outbound messaging of the product ladders up to company's overall messaging. Additionally, they will ensure that customer facing presentations, events, and content stay true to the company's look, feel, and messaging hierarchy.

You've hit upon one of the reasons why marketing in tech is a neverending challenge (and the fun part IMO). I think the best marketers have both strong analytical skills and grasp how to build long-lasting brands based on an emotional connection with their customer. If your goal is to one day lead marketing more broadly, you absolutely need to demonstrate that you can build a brand beyond the product marketing itself.  I think a strong brand requires a consistent identity and tone that emphasizes: 1. Specificity (what) 2. Resonance (why) 3. Emotional connection (how) But the foundation of your brand can't be disconnected from your product. And product marketing in B2B tech at least, requires that you can deeply understand your customer's problems (based on both quantitative and qualitative data), evaluate fast-moving industries that evolve super quickly, and get deep on complicated products. You also need those analytical skills to understand what's working with your output and be curious about what to improve. So I'd argue, as a foundation for marketers, analytical skills are a requirement but brand marketing skills are what will set you apart longer term!

Brand is more than just a logo or color palette or tag line. Brand is the combination of customer touchpoints that create meaning and belonging for that customer...Brand attracts the customer in the first place, for sure, but brand shows up in how the product delivers on its promise, how customer support handled your issues, how easy it was to purchase. Imagine if you had expectations of a Nordstrom experience, but then got Wal-Mart. It's not that Wal-Mart is bad, but the misalignm of expectations and experience creates dissonance for the customer that can damage the relationship. Now, if you had set Wal-Mart expectations, and got Wal-mart experiences, then the customer is happy - they got exactly what they expected and wanted. So to that end, I think it's important the product marketing and brand marketing are tighly connected. Brand marketing will be setting the expectations in the marketplace for customers, and PMM should be a big part of helping to inform those expectations so the experiences are aligned. Then, PMM via working with product, sales, other marketing touchpoints, can ensure there is a consistent experience for that customer that delivers on those expectations.

Understanding how Brand Marketing works is critical to succeed in Product Marketing as these two teams work closely together to bring any Marketing and Product work to life. Brand Marketing thinks about creating a long-term, strategic plan to continuously boost a brand's recognition and reputation. It involves creating and maintaining brand-consumer OR brand-customer relationships and marketing brand attributes—the traits that people think of when they picture a particular brand. I see this as the overarching umbrella of any company -- and often categories and/or products within each company (for example -- YouTube or Google Workspace).  In tech companies, brand marketing represent this higher-level hierarchy. They generally invest in marketing the higher-level brand (e.g. Google) and this has positive halo effects on the product portfolio for that specific company. Product Marketing comes in at the second level of this hierarchy. It benefits from brand halo effects of positive and well-done brand marketing, but it's core is to focus on communicating the benefits of what the product delivers to its users. It leans more into the functional and emotional aspects of a particular product or set of products, vs. a set of high-level, aspirational attributes.  The combination of these two can yield in positive brand awareness, consideration, and intent, as well as long-term usage and retention of products with our core audiences. The most successful teams I've worked at have Brand + Product working hand-in-hand to nail what exactly the user wants, how to properly message it, and how to creatively bring this idea to life.

In my opinion, a big part of Product Marketing is storytelling - connecting the customers' and prospects' desires and pain points to the capabilities of your products and solutions.  Brand Marketing is not dissimilar. Just that brand is not limited to a single product; in this case, the entire company is the "product." Understanding your company's " story, "your reason for existence (or point of view), and your unique differentiation in the market are essential elements of the brand. These are important things for all PMMs to understand so they are not just building product collateral in a vacuum.

At HubSpot we have a “master” positioning guide that exists for every core product and is shared on a central wiki that everyone can access. This positioning guide helps inform the work of marketers, sales enablement, and many other customer-facing teams. To ensure alignment we work closely with these other teams, such as sales enablement, to build assets like “Demo Like a Pro” that carry our positioning and messaging and transform it into an actual sample demo from a sales rep. This is just one example, but we typically carry this across departments to ensure messaging stays consistent.

Generally, product marketing creates messaging guides for new products, features, pricing, campaigns, company positioning, etc. While develop the messaging guide, we typically solicity input from other teams and individuals including product management and other marketers like communications/brand, demand gen and marketing leadership. As the messaging gets near final we do a final review with sales enablement, our sales advisory council (a handful of individual reps and saleas managers) and finally with sales/revenue leadership.   We then roll-out at one of our weekly or bi-weekly all sales meetings and/or share at the team lead meetings for more in depth Q&A and objection handling. Typically, the messaging guide comes with supporting customer facing slides, talk tracks, etc. We re-inforce through an on-line learning tool to make sure folks internalize the messaging.

I mentioned in another post that I have come up with a structured process for messaging development. with my team of product managers and product marketers, I work through a series of questions that force us to define and articulate our differentiation. This results in a number of messaging framework and source messaging documents that we hand off to the Marketing and Sales teams. We see these types of documents as foundational - the North Star for how we tell our story. Other marketing teams extend that messaging into demand gen campaigns, and our Sales teams pick up our pitch decks and marketing collateral to present to prospects. Ensuring commercial team alignment is tricky because it's fundamentally about dissemination (Confluence, newsletters, G-Drive, etc), training (both live and on-demand), and repetition (going on sales calls and using it over and over again). Messaging guides are a critical product marketing deliverable - they are foundational -- but a series of hands-on training and reinforcement on a per-deal-level are required to get a larger organization on-board.

In my view, the whole point of messaging guides is that they are shared as widely and as openly in your organization as possible. We actually keep a "launch tracker" document (google sheets file) that has the latest on every launch we're planning. This document is publicly available and very widely distributed. We link to the positioning guide for the new product or set of features there. In addition, we've built really strong relationships with counterparts in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success, so we are regularly communicating across a wide number of forums (team trainings, slack channels, in person meetings with leadership, etc) and share or point to key documents like messaging guides in these meetings. Unfortunately, in my experience, there is no 'silver bullet' to communicating to large audiences - having lots of channels and repetition is really key.  I think the other thing to keep in mind is having your messaging guide be a format that is really easily digestible. We use a format that actually summarizes the goal of the campaign or launch really nicely upfront, then gets into the messaging, and towards the bottom goes into more of the nitty gritty research on the market, trends, competition, etc. We've gotten good feedback that the format is pretty easy to consume, and I think that goes a long way in getting the message out there. 

One thing I try not to do is share content or messaging without walking the person I want to get feedback from through the context and purpose live on a call/zoom. Sending something over for feedback without the right context can be disastrous...especially if they share with others and expand any confusion/dissent to others.  I will typically walk them through a google slide or doc with what we're trying to move towards and then offer them the opportunity to provide feedback live or in the doc once they've had some time to think about it.  Always try to prove why the messaging you're recommending is the right approach with proof points...these can be based on surveys, customer/analyst feedback, A/B or some testing framework, market movement, etc.  If your internal teams see the context for why you're moving in a specific direction and the proof points that support what you're trying to do then it will go a long way in getting their support/alignment. 

What I’ve learned from great leaders who are able to inspire and motivate is to gain consensus before you walk into the room. This is pretty much how I have shared messaging guides internally to ensure alignment. If you are really starting from scratch, hosting a workshop to hear everyone’s opinions works well. If you are adding value to something that already exists, have 1:few meetings to get specific feedback on voice, tone, choice of words, etc. Then, share it more broadly at a team meeting. Then share it with all leaders in Rev org. Then share it with C-level, backing up how much consensus you’ve already built and the alignment that’s been established.

We are still working on refining our process here, however, our usual process is to attend the commercial team all-hands to notify them of any new messaging guides and materials and then we record a more in-depth Loom video that walks through the messaging in more detail and with more nuance. We house these looms in a Sales Library in Notion. By recording it, reps and CSMs can review it more than once if needed in their own time. It also doubles as great onboarding material. We have a system to ensure everyone consumes the content.

I like the positioning doc to address your audience need, how do you stand out / differentiated, what do you provide and white space. For example, if you have customer need, you can easily come up with the FOR and WHO; if you have white space, you can fill in the UNLIKE; and if you have unique capabilities, you can communicate the PROVIDES and ONLY. It really draws out that CRITICAL THING that defines your company or product.

Posted this on another similar question, but on the competitive positioning point specifically, I think there's a 'turn' in the narrative toward the end of the story where existing solutions can't solve the problem completely and it's good to have specifics on how your solution is better. But you never want to lead with the competitive view because that tends to cause a lot of friction between yourself and the customer. The goal is that the customer realizes you're a better approach to where the world is going and through that lens, the discussion narrative is all around jointly figuring out the best way to solve the problem. ---- As for messaging frameworks, a couple to try out. Here’s a combined messaging source doc that I use every time I start working with one of our portfolio companies. Inherited from Citrix days and then adapted over time. Hope it’s helpful! The second one is one I've been working on for a year and am sharing with the Sharebird community before publishing for feedback. The core idea is that I've that that a lot of messaging focuses too much on product/benefit and not enough on fitting the narrative into a broader context of how a customer views their world, their priorities, and setting the table for the new world. Interestingly, there are all kinds of tools for salespeople to essentially become a consultative partner to their customer - Command of the Message, Challenger Selling, etc. As marketers, we don’t really have a single framework to help us build a narrative in the way that these sales frameworks do. The net of the issue is that we don’t stay focused on answering the 3 big ‘why' questions that a rep needs to answer to close a sale: 1) why buy anything, 2) why buy now, and 3) why buy you. The idea is that if your messaging/story can answer these three questions better than your competition, customers will buy from you. Over the past couple years, I’ve been working with a couple dozen startups here at Unusual Ventures and see the same problem at play with our founders. So, I wrote a new messaging guide that we’re going to be publishing (for free) called “Three Why Storytelling”. It’s a simple storytelling framework that nets out 6 steps to crafting a story that wins customers: Why Buy Anything 1. Start with an authentic founder insight 2. Align on shared view of impact Why Buy Now 3. Connect problem to business urgency 4. Show current solutions to be ineffective Why Buy You 6. Frame new approach to solve the problem 7. Prove unique offering and value Is this rocket science? No. You’ve probably seen each of these concepts in various forms all over. But this framework strives to simplify and codify the building blocks of a story that, when laid out together, form an airtight, irrefutable narrative that is purpose-built to lead customers to your solution as the best choice. By the way, if I had to pick one ‘Why’ that is most underrepresented in messaging, it is most definitely Why Buy Now. We are conditioned to think in problem/solution terms. But the reality is that there are two types of problems - big problems (we’re moving from on-premises software to SaaS) and urgent problems (my business units are going around my IT team and signing up for SaaS apps like Dropbox and Concur, cutting us out of our core function!). Big problems are market-focused while urgent problems are customer-focused. Companies that obsess on Why Buy Now typically have a solutions marketing mentality that starts with the customer initiative and works back to product vs. the other way around. Here’s the draft .pdf of 3 Why Storytelling. Would love any feedback! 

My views on competitive positioning are largely stolen from Andy Raskin. Rather than repeat that which I've "adopted" from his writing, I'd suggest looking them up (LinkedIn great place to find a lot of it, and links to the rest). The persona framework is pretty simple: consider the relevant stakeholders, determine what incentives they are responding to and implicitly discuss your product in the context of those incentives.

At its most basic, messaging is about answering 3 key prompts: * What is the problem facing the market today? * What solution (generally) will help solve this problem? * What does your product do to help solve it? To me, competitive falls squarely underneath that third bullet point. It's one thing to list the entire list of features for your product, but the real exercise in messaging is to find the differentiating features (i.e. what makes your product different from "the other guys"). Therefore, it's important to map your key capabilities with the competition to understand where that white space is, because that is where your messaging focus should live.

Once you are clear on the value proposition of a product/feature and/or a positioning statement for the company or product, you are ready to pull together a messaging framework that your cross-functional stakeholders (from marketing to product) can leverage.  In terms of a messaging framework, I have found that formats vary by company but all fundamentally cover a combo of key elements based on what your teams require for a successful launch (ideally delivered as a 1-sheeter or 1 slide format): * Product name/quick descriptor * Target audience (your best-fit prospective customer and the more specific, the better!); include primary (and secondary if applicable) business goal - new customer acquisition, or existing customer adoption/renewal/retention? Your persona work, if any, would also fall into this category. * Target market/geo (as-needed) * Pricing/packaging (as-needed) * Value proposition or position statement (internal language); your competitive positioning/greatest advantages should be covered here and “proven” in the reasons-to-believe or key benefits section. What are your actual competitive advantages? Who or what are the actual alternatives to your solutions for your “best-fit” customers and how will you or your product solve the need better? * Short and sweet elevator pitch or tagline (external language) * Reasons-to-believe and supporting evidence (external language) OR Key features/benefits/value statements and proof points/claims (external language) Pro tip: Do the pre-work to get approved proof points ready to use! Value claims that directly support your key benefits or reasons-to-believe will amp up the strength of your messaging, and third-party validation claims including star-ratings and/or reviews will often show lifts in trust and conversion

Competitive research is a critical step before you even start your messaging and positioning exercise — I see it as an input rather than an output. I have a few favorite messaging frameworks and usually combine my favorite elements into one. Geoffrey Moore's classic FOR...WHO...PROVIDES...UNLIKE...ONLY framework (not sure where this originated) is a solid start for messaging.  For personas, we build cards that cover demographics, sensibilities, responsibilities, pain points, motivations. There's no wrong way to do it but for enablement and internal education, it's best to distill into something easily consumable.

I use a pretty simple framework for messaging - namely, the messaging house. I typically focus on the following sections of the house (top to bottom): Brand prop, product description, customer context (the problem), Needs and wants, 3-5 value props, Benefits & features that address needs and wants(How does it work?) Competitive positioning is a great foundation for supporting messaging. FInding the intersection of the unfair advantages of your product/service and the items your customers' value (I.e. speed, flexibility, security, etc) is a great way to build lasting messaging. 

I honestly customize the framework for each company I work for, but over the year’s I've built my own since I never found anything existing that I really loved. If you want an example, message me and I can share an example. Competitive positioning is always part of the initial messaging development work, and then I do always have a section in my messaging docs on competitors to talk about competitors at a glance (and unique differentiators), which then links to more detailed competitive intel docs.

I borrow from the typical ones mentioned on Sharebird (the box one? mind's failing me here) and modify them based on what I'm messaging.  Re: competitive positioning, I break it down by 3 segments at a high level and against key value props how we stack up.  * Who are incumbents * Top direct competitors * Adjacents in the space I try not to get too much in the weeds on features so we focus on benefits. Detailed comparisons are more used as sales enablement.

There are a few different messaging and persona frameworks I have used for different purposes. Here are a few of my favorites.  Positioning Statement - this is typically the foundation of any product/GTM positioning.  * [Target Customer] For: describe who you're targeting your product at * [Statement of need or opportunity] Who: describe the pain or opportunity you're offering the target market * [Product name is a product category] List your product name and the product category it belongs to * [Statement of key benefit] That: describe the benefits of your product for the target customer * [Competiting Alternative] Unlike: describe how your product differentiates from the primary competition (this doesn't necessarily have to only include other vendors but it could be differentiating from the status quo) First Round had a solid blog on crafting positioning statements a while back- https://review.firstround.com/three-moves-every-startup-founder-must-make-to-build-a-brand-that-matters The other framework we're using is around product/company positioning with a 3rd party consultant which is organized in the following way  * Market Category * Statement of Differentiation * Message Pillars 1, 2, 3, etc. - supports the statement of differentiation and should have mulitple levels of detail depending upon the context...mapping to product/company capabilities * Big Idea - "No Software" from Salesforce is the canonical example here  For personas, it's key to map out the personas that are involved in your deals..typically this will look something like this: * Buyer/decision maker * User (if not buyer)  * Admin (if not user) * Technical evaluator * Champion (if not buyer)  Obviously, this is for more of an enterprise sale vs. a PLG model where buyer is user, tech evaluator, champion, etc. I also recently read the Challenger Customer (same authors of the Challenger Sale) and that book has an interesting view of personas.  Once you define personas, I would map out the following for each: * Description of persona  * Titles that map to the persona (persona & title should be different)  * Role in buying process (listed above)  * Skill set mapping as it relates to your product (business & tech acumen, etc.) * Goals * Pain points * Success measures or motivation * Real life examples of the persona (can be linkedin profile) 

There are a lot of great frameworks out there and they all have common elements. I recommend reviewing a few and customizing to what’s relevant and actionable for your company. I like to include: * our differentiated POV * positioning statement (internal-facing) * tag-line * brand personality * value pop * 25/50/75 word descriptions * 3 messaging pillars with core message, use case, business benefits, and proof points under each * high level persona descriptions and messaging by persona Competitive positioning needs to be at the heart of your messaging. It's the key input that you build your messaging around. Positioning is the strategy and messaging is the execution — the words and narratives that bring your competitive positioning to life and have it land with your personas.

I dont think we should ever mention competitors directly in our messaging. Sure, you can address it directly in response if a prospect brings them up. But proactively naming competitors puts you in a defensive position and gives them undue attention. This usually doesn't work to our advantage. You could position it more generally like: Unlike (category descriptor) platforms, (our product) helps you solve for x. There are a handful of good frameworks out there. But I found that none of them perfectly fit your need for a particular company and product portfolio. So I build my own custom one inspired by other frameworks. My own previous custom frameworks at a different company often don't work at a new company entirely. The best frameworks are customized to your need, and the time spent on those is well worth it, in my experience.

We develop personas in three degrees depending on the need: lightweight, qualitative, and quantitative (statistical). Each of these populate a similar framework: demographic details (job title, geo if applicable, age range, etc), responsibilities/needs/jobs to be done, challenges/pain points,  Worth mentioning that a companion framework, the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), is often created to establish firmagraphic targeting to complement.  Competitive insights are typically not included in our persona frameworks (though I hold space for exceptions here in rare cases - i.e. if credentialing on a certain product is part of a job responsibility). Instead, generally, our competitive insights are cultivated and applied in conjunction with the above. From a Challenger model, we aim to reframe the problem, introduce new/improved impavt as a result, and ultimately reveal value. 

My team and I use a Message House framework that covers the following elements: * Solution/Product Naming * Tagline * Positioning Statement * Short and Long Descriptions For the Positioning Strategy, we use a modified version of April Dunford's Obviously Awesome positioning canvas. The canvas, we have found, invites us to be more critical and thorough in our positioning strategy. It includes: * Competitive Alternatives * Unique Attributes * Value * Who Cares A Lot We inform the messaging framework with the positioning canvas, filling in the following elements: * Target audience (personas, ICP) * Unifying message * Pain Points (up to 3) * Solutions (up to 3) * Key messages (up to 3) * Competitive differentiators * Proof points/Customer references It can be quite comprehensive, but when the thinking is crisp, so is the end result -- differentiated positioning and clear, resonant messaging. As you can see, Competitive Positioning is woven through all of this work and strengthens the overall messaging strategy.

My team and I use a Message House framework that covers the following elements: * Solution/Product Naming * Tagline * Positioning Statement * Short and Long Descriptions For the Positioning Strategy, we use a modified version of April Dunford's Obviously Awesome positioning canvas. The canvas, we have found, invites us to be more critical and thorough in our positioning strategy. It includes: * Competitive Alternatives * Unique Attributes * Value * Who Cares A Lot We inform the messaging framework with the positioning canvas, filling in the following elements: * Target audience (personas, ICP) * Unifying message * Pain Points (up to 3) * Solutions (up to 3) * Key messages (up to 3) * Competitive differentiators * Proof points/Customer references It can be quite comprehensive, but when the thinking is crisp, so is the end result -- differentiated positioning and clear, resonant messaging. As you can see, Competitive Positioning is woven through all of this work and strengthens the overall messaging strategy.

At Zapier I approached this by starting with a mission statement to describe why our team exists and the work we aim to uniquely do for the company: “PMM exists to maximize Zapier’s market opportunities by (1) clarifying where we win and (2) driving GTM strategy for product success.” I then defined responsibilities that align to (1) like TAM, market segmentation, personas, positioning, competitive analysis, etc. and separately to (2) like working with Product validate market opportunities, designing and executing betas that ensure product/market fit, and of course planning and executing launches. Lastly, I made sure to socialize this charter around the org to ensure awareness and buy-in that this was the direction we were heading as a team. This is a very different scope from what PMM was doing when I joined — I often talk about it as charting a course from PMM 1.0 to PMM 2.0 with the expectation that getting to the full potential of PMM 2.0 will take quarters if not years. Thus when it comes to prioritization, I’m always asking myself “where do I see a combination of ripe business context, willing partners/stakeholders, and PMM team capacity for us to tackle an initiative that will take us more in the direction of PMM 2.0?” This requires hard prioritization conversations with stakeholder teams where we say no to some requests that come in in order to create the space for the bigger, more strategic efforts that pay long-term dividends. But without those tough conversations, the team wouldn’t ever get to PMM 2.0.

This can definitely be a challenge whether you're the first or tenth PMM at a company. I'm a fan of working backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for the product team or from the sales team. From there, I like to ladder needs/deliverables up to team goals and business goals (impact). Then I'll stackrank them based on perceived effort of the deliverable.  Essentially, I'm creating an 2X2 grid based on business impact and perceived effort to complete the task.

First, I listen. It's important to understand in depth why these needs/deliverables are being asked of Product Marketing. What is the underlying problem? How can Product Marketing solve this?  Then, I assess company goals and revenue by product. The Product Marketing function is meant to support the company goals and I find that using this as a guidepost for prioritization is key. Assessing revenue by product helps as another factor in prioritization, but isn't the only factor as some companies may prioritize growth of a new product rather than optimizing their existing successful one. From there, it's an exercise of documenting the asks and prioritizing what will make the most impact in terms of supporting company goals and return on investment. Alignment with leadership and communicating these priorities internally is a great way to keep your team focused on the most impactful work.

As mentioned before, product marketing is one of the most cross-functional roles of any in most companies. And as such, you’ll be getting requests for projects and deliverables from every angle. The first thing I try to understand is: what responsibilities fall under me vs. another team (ie: is there a separate pricing team? Enablement team? Market research team?) Once my purview is clear, I put together a Product Marketing Charter (my PMM mission, PMM pillars, responsibilities under each pillar) to share with my stakeholders, to help structure our conversations around what is top of mind for them and where they need support. I like to create a table of all these requests, the stakeholders who have requested them, and understand the effort level of each request. More often than not, you’ll start to see overlapping requests or challenges across multiple teams. That’s where I like to focus first, to help make the biggest impact with the limited time or resources I have.

Only a few weeks into my current role, I’m living this one in real-time! For myself, I’ve created the following approach: Listen → Set Expectations → Execute → Close the Loop. For prioritizing needs/deliverables, I spend as much time as possible listening and understanding what is most pressing for the business immediately (and then mid and longer term). The key here is to determine where the business needs product marketing the most. When you’re the first PMM, it can be incredibly natural for everyone to welcome you on to their project -- there will be so much product marketing to do! So it’s important in the early days that you never bite off more than you can chew and no one is under the impression that you’ll work on more than you feasibly can. Perhaps you’re coming in during planning, then you’re focused on helping identify key insights that can help shape the roadmap. If you’re coming in mid-stream, then you dive in to try to strengthen the most immediate and high stakes launches. Often it’s a mix of both. Wherever you’re coming into the cycle, choose these initiatives intentionally and ensure key partners agree with your prioritization. From there, it’s about flawless execution and communicating internally as projects reach milestones and meet objectives.

I generally use a modified version of the Eisenhower Matrix (I just learned the name). On the spectrum of "not urgent to urgent" and "not important to important," you should prioritize the deliverables/needs that are both urgent and important. When you're the first product marketer, it's easy to fall into the trap of just prioritizing the urgent needs without evaluating the relative importance.  When you're building out a new function, spend time meeting with the teams you'll be working with to understand their pain points and needs. Then, layer in your understanding of which pain points/needs product marketing is uniquely fit to support and create a plan. This will help you understand the urgency and importance of the various opportunities. Document your thoughts and share them broadly to confirm you're tackling the right things and in the right order of priority. Having a shared/common understanding of priorities will make it easier to justify why you are/aren't working on something. More importantly, give yourself time to build out the function. If you reactively tackle every request that comes your way, you won't be able to build the foundation that you need to be successful or spend time hiring the right team.

I'm going to talk about my experience at really early stage companies, at this point, everyone is doing everything, so the priority is to create some strcuture to help every get aligned on the same goals. When I’ve been the first Product Marketer, or only one establishing the PMM function the first thing I do is meet with sales, product and the rest of marketing to identify the gaps. Generally is there's that piece missing between Product and marketing/sales to message what has been built, and so forth. To solve for this I start building out a a messaging map to help define what our core persona is, the main problems we are solivng for and what are key messages should be. I also use this messaging map to help structure out how we should talk about our features by grouping like features and ideas together  This map creates the foundation requirements I need to help starting to 1) Build collateral with your marketing and sales teams 2) Create a cohesive narrative across the company to help keep everyone aligned. 3) Set up the foundation of how you want to structure the PMM team as it aligns to the product and features that your company offers. This will help you build out additional PMM roles and define responsibilities as your company grows.

As stated above, PMM wears so many hats it's important to recognize what is needed at any stage of a company. When first coming into an organization as the first PMM I think the most important thing to do is establish what does and doesn't exist. I think this is the right order of things that should happen first but if you come into an organization and feel that some of these things are already in a good place you can skip to the next step. That being said, when you are new to a company you have a fresh and unbiased perspective that only lasts for a few months - use those fresh eyes to your advantage! Write down all of your thoughts and learnings so you can look back at them later. 1. Interview internal stakeholders 2. Interview end-users 3. Competitive analysis 4. Align on and/or tweak the positioning 5. Sales enablement  6. Design GTM plans

Every company and every growth stage is different so the evaluative framework you utilize needs some flexibility. I recommend that your framework is developed in tandem with your partner stakeholders early on and is communicated often. A reliable framework includes a clear organizing principal, inputs, outputs/ impact, measurements, and timelines. As a first product marketer, I'd also advocate including a line item for dependencies and cross functional asks. Once you start building momentum in an organization, the asks come in quickly and from multiple directions. Your framework will allow you better yield management and help you organize and prioritize where you dedicate your efforts.

I don't have a set framework as such, but this is the approach I'd take: * Meet with stakeholders across the business to understand what's working, where the gaps are that PMM might be able to fill, and ask what they think is the highest priority. Ask lots of questions to understand what the underlying need/problem is, as the 'solution' people ask for might not always be the best way to solve the problem or might be better solved by another team. This is also a great opportunity to start educating others on what PMM does and how they should expect to work with you, if it's a new function. Identifying some small 'quick wins' can help establish your credibility and build relationships with those stakeholders.  * Understand the business strategy and goals. This will help you know what you're working towards, and then you can prioritise needs based on whether they will help towards those goals.  * Get to know your customers and your market. As well as understanding the pain points internally, it's also helpful to understand your current position in the market, how your product is perceived, how you stack up against competitors, what your customers say about you and so on. This should help you identify the highest priority areas - especially where these align with internal needs (for example, if your sales team is complaining you are losing deals to a specific competitor, and then you also find that the market doesn't know how you're differentiated, that may be a sign that you need to strengthen your messaging and enablement against that competitor) * Think about what you want you and your team to be focused on. It's easy for PMM to end up as a 'catch all' and end up doing a ton of things that aren't really product marketing, especially if the marketing team overall is small. That might be what the business needs at that time, and that's ok, but knowing where you want to get to will help you advocate for more resources and moving that work out of the team in the longer term. 

I'm still trying to master this one, but here's what I'm doing at Klue (I'm in my first month at the company).  Create your PMM Charter With the input of your boss and other leaders in the company, you'll first want to define what PMM looks like at your org. This helps set the guardrails for what product marketing is repsonsible for at your org and what your main objectives are. This will take into consideration what the top priorities are for company leadership.   Set out on a priority finding mission In your first month or so, you have the opportunity to have a ton of 1:1 conversations as a new employee. During these conversations, I ask everyone if they have any priorities or asks for product marketing. I use all of this to create a master list of all the internal priorities/projects that people would "like" my team to focus on.  I also like to do a content audit, focusing on all of the collateral that's leveraged throughout the sales cycle. I'll map the existing assets to the sales process and try to uncover gaps, or things that need updating.  After all of the steps above, you'll likely have a sizeable list of competing projects that you need to prioritize. Some factors to include in how you weight each project: * What impact can this have on revenue and how soon? * Is it tied to an existing deadline, like an upcoming product launch? * Who is requesting it? Is the CEO asking for this, or is it a one-off request from a sales rep?  * Does it fall within your charter, or is it outside the scope of product marketing at your org? * Where does it fit into your strategic objectives for that year, quarter, etc.  I would map this all out in a spreadsheet or project board and circulate it between a few key stakeholders in the company, ie. your boss, Head of Product, Head of Sales, Head of CS, the CEO, etc. You could even send them the raw list and ask them to rank it in terms of priority.  Using this feedback I'd create your final, prioritized project list. They key is to then make it available to everyone in your company so everyone can see where things fall and why. 

I start with my phases of success for a PMM in my first 100 days here. Through this process I create my priorities and ensure I have executive alignment on them. I always get feedback from my leadership team. I find that people often want the same thing but are saying it differently – identify this when it happens to bring alignment back on your priorities. Before any cross-functional meeting to get alignment or approval, make sure you’ve already shown your ideas to one or more people to get their advanced feedback and buyin. Some people, especially leaders have other context you don’t have. This is key to getting successful alignment. Also look here on how to build internal consensus on what you want to deliver. 

Chances are you will inherit a number of projects in queue Day 1. Do your best to deliver on those projects to drive results out of the gate. This will instantly help you build credibility with colleagues. That said, start thinking about a learning agenda for each of your org's big areas. At Chime we have built LAs for banking, credit, liquidity and insurance. The PMMs on my team work lock step with PM, UX, etc. to translate Chime's goals into a series of powerful initiatives twice a year. From there they set up a series of experiments and /or new feature - product launches. They work together to 1- knowledge map existing insights and data to inform the LA and 2- outline what is still left to learn. They then sequence the work. Having a formidable LA for each "vertical" really helps everyone with a single point of truth document. New opportunties, partnerships, scope will inevitably crop up. Having really solid LAs will help you more easily re-negotiate the work within each agenda and have thoughtful conversations with your partners ala, "Is [blank] now higher leverage than [blank] or do we stay the course, look for additional resourcing and capacity or backlog something else to make it happen?"

As a first PMM hire it's important to prioritize needs and deliverables based on the overall goals and objectives of the company. Do “discovery” similar to how you would approach a product launch – get up to speed on the business, the competitive landscape, the customer, and the product. This will help you understand the biggest opportunity areas and align your efforts with the company’s goals to maximize impact. In addition to listening & learning from your stakeholders its also important to educate your partners on the role of PMM, PMM’s superpowers, and the metrics you are accountable for. This will provide your peers with context on how to partner with you and give you a chance to share back the projects you’ll be prioritizing and gather feedback on that plan to ensure you are working on the most impactful things.

As a first (and oftentimes only) product marketer at a company, prioritization is the mother of all skills. The framework I would apply is a natural extension of the 30/60/90 day plan outlined above. Prioritization can only come once there is a decent amount of work done to understand the current state and needs of the business, and your fellow cross-functional counterparts. That said, there are some tangible and practical ways to approach prioritization.  1. Build out your team (functional) charter as a first step. How do you define your function, the areas you will focus on, the roles and responsiblities that fall within, how you measure success and how you collaborate with your cross-functional peers. Use this as a map to what projects you'll take on, and what projects you'll thoughtfully and respectfully say no to.  2. Have a clear understanding of the priorities and goals of the business overall, and specifically the wider marketing team. Your priorities should align to these areas. If the business has decided to strategically focus on the Enteprirse market, your prioritized deliverables should include how you will position your product to that market.  3. Leave space to build the foundations. If you are the first PMM, it is likely there are not a lot of processes or frameworks in place that set a PMM up to be effecient in the future. Give yourself the time and space to build these out. For example, building a launch framework and GTM templates for announcing new features and products. Defining with product and sales teams how you will work together. etc. If you jump into pumping out deliverables, you may end up positioning yourself and the PMM function as a service hub, rather than a strategic partner.  3. Capacity plan. As the only PMM, it can feel overwhelming at times to tackle all things - at once. Set clear and firm boundaries for yourself so you are not burning the midnight oil, and then plan your weeks, months, and quarters based on your capacity. What low hanging fruit is there - projects that take little time and resources that can deliver an impact - and how many of those can you take on, while still building out the foundations. Scope out how many meatier projects you can take on - and capacity plan with teams you may need to partner with. Things will not always go to plan, dates may slip and scope may creep - but starting with a plan will help provide guardrails to keep you on track to delivering impact. 

Customer advisory boards are best when you keep the customers under 10 people and ask them to stay on for 1-2 years. Strategically hand-pick your advisors from the markets you want to break into or dominate. For example, if you want to go more into Enterprise, you shouldn't have 9/10 people from SMB companies on your board.  While advisory boards can certainly help with retention, I'd argue they are better suited for roadmap planning and keeping them happy customers. For product retention, I'd pull in PMs and growth PMs to lead the charge on improving user retention and activation. 

If your role involves writing product messaging then you should be good at writing. Writing is a necessary skill to help users understand your product and to view solving their problem through the same frame as you.  Note that there are different forms of writing competencies. Writing short, succint headlines is different than writing long-form whitepapers. One way to segment this might be copywriting vs content writing. Typically I would expect to see a UX person with copywriting ability to guide the user's experience within the product. The UX or PM should then be in regular communication with their product marketer, who frequnetly operates as content writer — producing release notes, sales sheets, and other relevant assets to launch.

I think you can have two flavors of product marketers. The first are very analytical and business-minded. They identify the key top customer problems and benefits for the product. Then, they might need to collaborate with someone in brand, content, or copywriting to make those messaging points spiffier and more engaging. I am in this camp! Other PMMs are great wordsmiths who take pride in choosing just the right word to get to the essence of the point they are trying to make. Both can be good product marketers.  I believe product marketers, at minimum, need to be good at writing long-form content. It’s not only fine but common to ask for help tightening up messaging for short-form like headlines, which is an art in itself.

"Writing" in this context is a proxy for communicating; it is merely a vehicle through which to convey the right business case to the right audience. Brilliant thoughts have little value if you are unable to articulate them in a way that will resonate with your intended audience. You don't need to author the great American novel (and hopefully your message isn't fiction!) but you do need to be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of your audience's most important challenges and how whatever your selling relates to them.

Whether it be products or political campaigns, marketers move people.  Products exist to help people solve their problems or to help them win.  Yes it is important to be good at writing, but its critical to deeply understand your customer.  Don't worry about the words. Bring the empathy, the words will come. 

Short answer - yes. It depends on what you mean by “writing”. The skillset of a best-selling novel writer vs. an effective product marketer is different. Written copy is by far the most powerful way to engage our audience and drive results. In my experience, you can’t get really good at product messaging without being creative with words. And you can’t be really good at that without reading a lot. So my advice - read a lot and practice writing for the intended medium.

Yes and no. * To create good product messaging, no. It takes many skills to create a good one. * To create a good representation of that good product messaging, probably yes. In general, you should be good at writing. But you don't have to be good at copywriting. Especially if you work in orgs where you have access to content writers who are great creative copywriters.