Product Marketing Subteams

I'm going to admit upfront that I answered this in a previous AMA, so I'll copy and paste that same answer here. A year later, I can truly say that these continue to be the things I think are most imp

High growth mindset / hunger to continuously improve. Great negotiators. We sit at the intersection of a lot of teams and needs! PMMs need to be skilled not just at bringing value, but negotiating pr

Communication: You simply must be a good communicator to be a stellar product marketer. So much of our discipline requires strong communication in order to provide clarity (both externally and interna

Because Product Marketing is at the cross-section between Marketing, Product and Sales, there are times when they are barely treading water to keep up with all the product launches, become a “catch al

A couple of others that come to mind: 1. Excellent communication skills and the ability to adapt these to the right audience - whether that's for consumers at scale, customers, or internal stakeholde

As I spend a decade working in product marketing at high-growth startups, I'll focus on must-have soft skills for PMM in a fast-growing startup: Hight user empathy: PMM should absolutely love talkin

A collaborative attitude is a must. Product marketing is one of the most cross-functional roles in any company, so the ability to work well with colleagues in every vertical of the business is vital.

With so much at stake, a lot can go wrong when trying to influence the product roadmap. When tensions run high, PMMs might risk their most important relationship by: Not providing Sufficient Quantit

The biggest mistakes to avoid when influencing the product roadmap: Being too prescriptive with the idea/solution, rather than presenting the problem space and enlisting your product, design, and eng

Not knowing the product: I've known PMMs who had never...used...the product. For real. This is job #1 - get familiar with the product, build and do demos with customers, spend time with the product

Two mistakes I've seen are: (1) Not getting on the same page as to the goals for the product. If you don't have a shared undersatnding with your PM / your product team as to what you are building and

A wise mentor once told me, there is a very big difference between being respected and being liked. You don't need your PM to like you, you need them to respect you.  With that being said, remember th

The big one is thinking they are smarter or better equiped to make roadmap decsions than the product team. Don't do that. Don't make it your crusade to get something on the roadmap. You have to give y

Product Marketers should be user/customer-centric, insights-driven, and data-driven. Understanding what users/customers need with breadth (at scale, representative of your target audience) and depth (

First - Not knowing the product. It doesn’t matter how many customers you talk to, how many insights you can glean from user analytics, or how many sales deals you can unlock with your ideas- you wi

It’s so important to understand the lift of the project you’re petitioning to add to the roadmap when approaching the team. If you’re not sure, speak with the stakeholders beforehand. When I first beg

The ideal candidate will have both but that’s often not possible. For me personally, I think the soft skills are far more important. Especially at the more junior and even mid-management levels, the h

A lot depends on the type of role. In general hard skills is where a lot of hiring managers would edge towards as it ensures the technicality of the role can be carried out. Soft skills are also vital

I think it's a balance, but if I had to choose, leaning in to those soft skills is a great strategy when you are starting out.   It's really important to go into a new team / company with a really st

It certainly depends but I'd say it's more important to have the right soft skills. Specifically for product marketing teams. What PMMs do can really vary company to company. So while it's likely your

If I had to choose one I would (slightly) lean towards soft skills. Having the right soft skills is what I believe enables a PMM to find the biggest opportunities and drive buy-in/alignment so that th

I think it depends ultimately on what the team needs. In a highly technical area, I'd value industry and product knowledge highly, as long as the person is then coachable and open to learn on other ar

I find that people with strong soft skills often have the ability to pick up the hard skills quickly. People who’ve honed their soft skills are proactive about asking the right questions, and are moti

Messaging is the ability to communicate pains and solutions for a specific persona using the written word. PMM writing is unique because it’s all about distilling a message down to it’s essence and pa

I would suggest practicing by creating your own messaging frameworks for some of your favorite products or companies be they B2C or B2B. This should help you to start to think through the different pr

Research, and come with a growth mindset! Look and listen to what competitors in your market are doing. How does their messaging make you feel, how does it relate to your own organisation's. Why do cu

Practice, practice, practice! Get as many reps in as you can, and have a marketer you admire give you very candid feedback. Bonus points if you can do a working session with someone who’s skilled in m

As others have mentioned, practice. It's hard to find the extra time, so here are some ideas: Try different frameworks to refresh on basics Find reasons to tag-team a refresh. I've used it as part of

2 pieces of advice here: 1) Take a look at the messaging from other companies (even outside of your market or industry). Who is really nailing it and what do you like about it? And who are the players

This is mostly just practice, start writing, and keep writing. However, some specific things you could do include: Actively consume other marketing content. For example subscribe to your favorite bra

I'd recommend making sure to spend enough time on the planning and information gathering phase that is necessary prior to creating messaging. The most common issue I've seen with messaging is PMMs jum

Messaging for me is both an art and a science. I've seen very good narrative building frameworks and courses around that can you help you nail basic concepts (e.g how to structure a well written value

Messaging is so important, not only when conveying new features, updates, and opportunities to your customers, but also when getting internal buy-in and gathering resources for a go-to-market plan. St

I love the data debate. A couple of my favorite quotes: "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald Coase. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have sai

The voice of the customer should be what drives your decisions as a PMM, and it reaches you through various channels. In some instances for OkCupid, that is completely data-driven. For example, when R

I admit, that’s a tough one. When you say ‘critical’ feedback, I hope it’s still constructive rather than just tearing you down. 1) If the feedback is just criticism, it’s time to move on to a new bos

Its important to have a maanger who believes in you and supports your career. I'd break the meetings apart into weekly tactical conversations about what needs to be done, blockers, etc. Monthly convos

First of all - I empathize with you and I know it's hard to receive critical feedback, but I applaud your interest in wanting to do something about this feedback and improve it. Feedback and manager r

Even when feedback seems completely unfair, there may be some small nugget to pay attention to. So, in general don't dismiss the feedback without some introspection. Giving objective feedback is actua

We all get feedback we don't agree with. It's important to know when to push back and when to disagree and committ. But in general, if you're getting feedback that you're not sure what to do with, it

It sounds like the feedback you’re getting may not be constructive, so I encourage you to ask your boss for specific examples, as well as recommendations of how they can see you improving. It’s more t

IME this should sit in engineering, but it's generally not a bad idea for the copy writer to solicit PMM feedback. PMM needs to be hyper focused on strategic tasks. This is a good example of a tactica

If your company has the resources, I would advocate for there to be an in-app copy writer that sits under design. By putting them with design, they will have the shortest path to where the product is

We like keeping this with the PMM or a Product Manager/Owner, as the person writing this copy needs to be super familiar with the product and user experience. They need to be power users, IMO. Occasio

  It depends on how big your company is! At large companies, there’s often a Content Strategy or Product Writing person or team that sits under Design. The PMM should ensure the in-product copy aligns

For my company, it's currently shared between product, product marketing and design, but that's mostly a factor of being a startup and in the process of building out each of those functions. I think a

In-app copy typically falls under Product Marketing. If it is something you do not own today, my advice would be to work with the Design/PM team who is currently owning this to understand how you can

In my opinion, PMM has a better vantage of customer needs and command of customer voice to produce best in app copy, product naming nomenclature and in-product guidance. This responsibility can be sha

In-app copy does fit with Product Marketing - and Product! So technically, our PM team owns the in-product experience but PMM has full access to the tool. We have a slack channel for all in-app messag

A few answers here, based on use case!  Naming inside the product (like features, tabs, or experiences) would be handled by PMM during the launch process. PM is likely to have ideated an internally-r

This is always a gray area :) At Gong, most UX copy is owned by the product writing team, except for naming "Tier 1" products. Together with that team, we established a list of criteria that qualifie

The copy in the product itself is owned by our Product Design team. However, we have a Customer Engagement / Customer Lifecycle Marketing team that owns copy for in-app messages like tooltips, banners

In quickly growing companies, I've found there are a few "hot potatoes" that get passed around as the quarters pass by and employees come and go. One of those jobs that get shared is in-app copy (or t

I came from a background in brand and so my natural instincts served me most well on the outbound side of product marketing. I had my fair share of imposter syndrom in the early days when I looked at

I spent a lot of time in my early career worrying about getting to the next promotion and how I was progressing versus my peers. Looking back now, this was all wasted energy. I wish I had been more fo

One thing I wish I learned earlier is the most powerful product marketing you can do is always centered on a shared human truth. When I look back on my very early PMM GTM work, I focused primarily on

There is one key learning: Actively plan & manage your development. Here is what is involved: Know the menu: Since Product Marketing is such a broad discipline, its important to understand the va

When you're starting out your career as a PMM, it is very important to remember that your value promise is to customers and not internal stakeholders. I don't mean to say that internal alignment and b

Don't box yourself, ever!  Don't always stick to how things are always done.  And ask questions more.  And observe and take notes.  And don't pretend to know it all!  Here's the thing: When you are

As someone with a tech background and self-education in marketing, I learn everything in practice. I wish I knew more about the importance of user research and CI at the beginning of my PMM journey:

You are not here to market products. That's the main thing I wish I knew. Would have saved me countless hours and tears. The number one mistake PMMs make is to start from the product. They organize we

The ability to effectively build cross-functional relationships is really important in product marketing and understanding the role that each functional area plays in making a product successful. I'd

This is a great question. I would zoom out and think more holistically about how to approach career advice and what I tell people looking to get into Product Marketing overall.  I usually approach si

I can relate to this one, I actually started off my career in PMM at a B2B company. This experience was invaluable and where I learned the core competencies of PMM – the importance of product positio

Everything in B2C is based on users and the product.  The days of sales narratives, collateral creation, etc are over.  Become best buddies with your PMs and Growth leads at your existing companies.

Moving from B2B product marketing to B2C/consumer product marketing (or vice versa) can at times be a challenging transition, but it's definitely doable with the right strategy and approach. Here are

If product marketing is embedded within product, what that usually tells me is that marketing is a secondary function to product. If you're operating within a product-led organization, the cadence of

Our PMM team currently rolls up under the Marketing practice, which rolls up into the Customer Org (Customer Success/Support, People Science, Marketing). This means Sales reports up through another or

The PMM team at HackerOne reports in Marketing. PM's purpose in the universe is to build the right product by translating customer needs into products they can't live without. PMMs role is to transla

You would assume that being in the product organization would allow a PMM more influence. However, I’ve actually found the opposite to be the case.  For a brief period of time at Zendesk, Product Mar

There are pros and cons to any PMM reporting structure, with no perfect solution. My experience has mostly been with a PMM team that reports into a marketing leader and doesn’t report into product. In

From my experience, it's less about product marketing's placement in the org chart and more about product marketing's relationship with product and cross functional teams. I've been in orgs where PMM

I have led product marketing teams that reported into marketing and others that reported into product. I've been reorganized from one to the other twice. I don't find it makes all that much of a diffe

If the product marketing team is placed within the marketing department, they may be more focused on the promotion and positioning of products rather than on the development of the product itself. In