Consumer Product Marketing

It’s difficult to define growth by titles since titles vary greatly by company and company maturity. Also, more and more companies are shying away from title heavy culture. When you consider growth and trajectory, I encourage you to evaluate it based on your goals, what you want to learn, and what you want to do next vs. a title. Focusing on obtaining a title can be short sighted and may result on you being lost after you achieve it. That said, with career progression top of mind, here are some tips:  * Perform at the next level: Companies want to see that you can demonstrate perfor...

Moving up the ladder from an IC or manager role into a director role is typically dependent on a few factors, some of which individual PMMs are very much in control of, some of which they are not unfortunately. At a high level, some of the requirements needed to progress include the following: * Clearly defining your team's purpose and strategy and clearly articulating how your strategy aligns with the overarching company objectives. I will start by saying I am fully in the camp that the words 'strategy' and 'strategic' are often overused and serve as a default term to describe, ...

This varies across every organization, but if you’re looking to move up from your current role, I’d recommend bringing it up with your direct manager in your 1:1 even if you think the leveling up is a ways away. Starting the conversation will allow you both to focus on the skills you need to work on in order to get there. In most medium or larger sized organizations there is a competency framework that is used for calibrating levels which has requirements for each role. More broadly speaking, the more senior you get the more broad the scope becomes. That can mean a bigger area of respons...

There is definitely overlap between brand strategy/account management and product marketing especially because the two roles operate slightly differently at every organization. Brand strategy can translate really well to product positioning, messaging and storytelling while account management can translate well to go-to-market planning and roadmaps. I answered another question above on how to break into the PMM field including a helpful storytelling exercise to build out your PMM oriented resume.  

Having identified what type of role you want next and why, already puts you ahead of the game and lets you hone your experience more and more towards the field. I would first explore to see how you can get (or maybe already have) actual working experience even if it’s project based. * If you’re in a non-product marketing role currently, try to identify if you’re working on projects or doing anything that are core PMM skills and see if you could take on more of that type of work to build up your resume with examples. * Explore if there are cross functional projects in your org ...

In general, I don't really think "background" is that important. To me, background does not = skills. I hire for signal on skill and not for whether or not somebody has done something before.  We have some absolutely incredible PMMs on Eats and almost all of them came from a background that was not Product Marketing.  Because the function and the role is growing so quickly, you rarely find somebody who's spent 5 years in Consumer PMM for example. Instead, hone your skills.  Uncover great insights, run a bunch of research and get really good at understanding customers, competition a...

I myself come from a less than traditional path to PMM after spending the first half of my career on the brand side of the house. I may be biased, but I think less than traditional backgrounds are really valuable in a PMM and I typically look for a couple of key characteristics: Trust Building I look at roles this person has had before and ask about the stakeholders they've had to work with. So much of PMM is being at the center of a wheel where you need to operate without top-down automony. I look for stories of times where they were able to use the trust they built to execute beyond t...

If someone is new to PMM, there are two skills I look for: 1. Strategic thinking: Can you demonstrate an ability to take an intentional, rational thought process when solving problems? Can you get creative about solving a problem while also never losing sight of the end goal? Can you solve a problem as it develops / as you receive new information?  2. Ability to prioritize and execute: Can you cut through noise and narrow in on what’s most critically important? Once you have a plan, can you make that plan a reality?

Whether you are an experienced or aspiring product marketer, these are the qualities I look for in product marketing hires:  * Customer obsessed. Product marketing is the voice of the customer and a successful product marketer is one that is customer obsessed and keeps the consumer at the core of all that they do. Product marketing's role is to help inform the product roadmap and market new products and features to consumers. If we don't have a deep understanding of who our customers are and what they care about we simply cannot do our job well.  * Analytical. Marketing is...

It all depends on the role I am hiring for and what stage a company is at, but on a general note, I would look for transferable experience and skills that could work well for the role. Crafting messaging/positioning, identifying user insights and translating them into strategy, influencing product/technical roadmaps, understanding market behaviors and trends, project managing projects from start to finish, Go-to-market campaigns (integrated or channel based), product development & packaging is all experience that is super valuable for consumer product marketing For example if you have be...

Great question! This highly depends on the role, what stage the company is at and what the requirements are in the job description - Product marketing can be so different at different companies With that said my recommendation is to think about your resume as an opportunity to product market yourself and your experience! Think of it less as a list of everything you’ve done, and instead use it as an opportunity to tell the story of how your experience makes you an excellent candidate to take on the role you’re applying for. Identify what matters to your customer, the hiring manager (look ...

In general I think there is a lot of overlap in the fundamental skill set needed between the two roles even though they operate differently. In consumer product marketing you’re targeting the end-user with your offering/product. In B2B you’re targeting other companies with your offering/product which then helps them solve a problem for the end-user. I love the consumer landscape and most of my roles have been with brands that target the end-consumer so take my answer with that caveat, but I’ll highlight two areas that can impact how you think about market behavior and product launches diffe...

- It's all about being able to tell a story about how your previous experience tracks to what you want to do - B2B and B2C are converging a bit so I think the skills are definitely transferrable. It might be hard to move from the far end of the spectrum all the way to the other far end - What determines fit for a position isn’t just about B2B vs. B2C. It is also about: - How well defined the product is - What stage of life the company is in - How well supported the role will be - Whether or it is a big brand vs. nascent brand - All of the above contribute to the kind of product marketing yo...

I touched on this a bit above - I started my career in B2B and learned really valuable lessons before moving more deeply into B2C.  I think Marketing is evolving so quickly that you can learn extremely valuable skills in either the B2B or the B2C world that are applicable across both, so wouldn't say strictly focusing on just one for the next 10-years is absolutely the right (or wrong choice.) It's more the growth mindset and defining and understanding what your career goals and ambitions are.  When hiring somebody, it's extremely context specific. For a Consumer Growth PMM for exampl...

I've thought about this a lot as I've worked across both B2B and B2C and wondered if it makes sense to specialize and how transferrable skills are. This is also something I've asked many leaders and mentors. The overwhelming advice I've gotten is to focus on being a good marketer and not focus on B2B vs. B2C - instead, think about the types of problems you're interested in solving, the day to day work that most engages and challenges you, and how much you'll learn in a certain job. Additionally, marketing leadership roles often span both B2B and B2C, so having a good knowledge of both can b...

There are multiple factors you could use to determine where to build a deeper focus but I don’t necessarily think that you have to make such a firm pick. There are definitely nuances between the two roles, but skills are also transferable. Crafting messaging/positioning, translating user insights into strategy, influencing product/technical roadmaps, and understanding market behaviors are all skills which at the core are the same across both B2B and B2C. It might be harder to cross over between the two if you have only been in one or the other for an extended period of time. Not impossib...

Great question. I always tell my team that as product marketers we are the bridge between product development and the broader marketing & sales teams. We focus relationship building and collaboration in 3 areas: 1. Product (development) team. At Square PMMs are embedded within the product teams so this is technically our home. Where we add value is bringing in the customers' voice when it comes to product strategy and roadmap. My team does a lot of work visiting customers, conducting qual/ quant research, collecting feedback from Sales, Account Management, Support, thr...

This is a great question. A fair amount has been written about where Product Marketing should exist within the broader company structure—just Google "where should Product Marketing report" and you'll find a bunch of articles on the topic. During my time at Sprout Social, we spent more than 3 years as part of the Product Team and nearly 2 reporting within Maketing, which is where we currently sit. All of this is to say, being thoughtful about how you position your product marketing team within the company, regardless of where you officially report, is paramount to earning trust and establish...

Within a large marketing team I have always positioned the Product Marketing team as the experts who are the go-to people for any product question and I make sure we indeed are. One of my personal reasons for moving into Product Marketing from Product Management was to alleviate the lack of technical know-how within our marketing team that contributed towards unclear messaging.  One of the biggest challenges that PMM's face is that they have to influence other people's work. Sales Enablement, Marketing and Customer Success for example rely on the PMM for delivering the product trainings,...

Love this question and something I had to do a ton when I first got to Eats and everybody was like - hold on, what is Product Marketing?  I talk a lot about internal marketing and say you have to Product Market, Product Marketing...This starts with a very clear and differentiated articulation of our value. For example, I made it very clear from Day 1 that PMM is the primary POC to Product within the Marketing organization and built teams, hired people, and reinforced with KPIs that story. Over time, that continued to build and we eventually built up a reputation (a brand!) that we were t...

Product marketing's biggest challenge (no matter anywhere I go) is defining the scope and sticking to it. Anything under the sun that is not Demand Gen or SEO tends to be seen as a job for product marketing. If we don't get a handle and drive the definition of role as product marketers and clearly write down what we own, and just as important what we don't own, we will be working against the grain. You may be doing a lot of great work, but that is always relative to expectations. In a nutshell, setting expectations is everything.  And it's not just with your boss and the exec team. It's ...

I’ve found that most companies want the most capable people doing the most important work. If you prove your value as a PMM by making the team and company successful, bigger and better projects will naturally come your way. When it comes to positioning the PMM team within marketing, it ultimately comes down to influencing the head of marketing. They want nothing more than for the marketing team to produce great work and achieve its goals. Whether marketing metrics are tied to pipeline, LTV, brand awareness, or all of the above, if the numbers aren’t going up, it reflects poorly on the whol...

* Being clear about what PMM's role and mission is, and ensuring other marketing leaders understand what your team does and doesn't do. Have open discussions about where there might be overlap between teams, and agree on how you'll handle it. * Building relationships with others across the marketing org - both leaders but also at the IC level - and communicating openly, sharing your goals and plans, developing processes together, and getting buy-in as you plan  * Having a clear framework for prioritising requests that come in to the team, so others know how and why we p...

Great question. Yes, been there & struggled there before. Think ultimately the more you can make product marketing a group of strategic thinkers and enablement gurus to marketing, the more clout your team will build. If demand gen wants to parnter with PMM to understand how to market features for a campaign, if content looks to product marketing for competitive intel or market insights to build content, those are all signs you've built a PMM with real value to the marketing org.

To embed PMM into product teams, PMM should strive to do the following: 1. Build strong relationships with product partners by ensuring they know your objectives are aligned and demonstrating value add from the get-go. If you are not top of mind for your product partners, you won't get a seat at the table. So, set up those regular touchbases with your product partners, proactively bring data and customer insights to the table and raise your hand to support the team whenever you can.  2. Act like an equal owner across the product development process and not just th...

The details of embedding a Product Marketer into a product team will look very different depending on the size, type, and structure of your company. There are two information flows Product Marketers can use to build collaboration with their Product partners: 1. Be the voice of your customers. I strongly believe that Product Marketers should work to be customer experts. The common gap for product teams is understanding the social and emotional jobs-to-be-done of their customer. Product Marketers should bring this to the table in interactions with their product teams (not ju...

Product is so important to Product Marketing, it is so important to establish those relationships early on. Schedule 1:1 with your direct product contact or with the full product team. Make sure you have open lines of communication, really try to dig in and understand the products they are working on. Partner with them to understand who your customer is and show a genuine interst in what they are doing.

Brand is promoting the company, while product is selling and promoting individual products/product lines. I've found that brand work is typically much more creative, whereas product work is about sales. The two functions should be in close contact with each other--my brand marketers are my best help in my job today.

Agree with Steve (Hi, Steve! 👋) and would like to add that there should be a push-pull relationship. Some good conversations to have with your brand marketers are around how brand and category positioning should show up within product marketing, and how product differentiation should show up in brand identity.  It's a good place in the business to apply some consumer marketing conventions...  "Our Brand is where these buyers find this category of product with these special characteristics to get these high value benefits." 

I think the two are very tightly correlated -- both are storytellers by nature, but telling stories at different parts of the funnel. A simple way to think about it is that brand is principally responsible for the "why" while product marketing owns the "who," "what," and the "how". Since people make buying decisions emotionally, brand is responsible for emotionally convicting the market and using the appropriate levers (in partnership with demand) to pull the newly converted into our audience and funnel. Product Marketing helps brand understand who the target audiences are and what they car...

I love this question because I came from brand marketing before. I like to think about it as the distinction between the promise and the proof. The partnership between these two teams is essential. Brand is the promise you make to your customers about your core ethos and what they can expect from you. It sets the tone for the relationship and is the thing that you often fall back on when times get tough. The brand team owns this promise, but like any promise it has to be believable. Your product is the proof. Product Marketing owns showing how the promise of the brand is relevant in uniq...

Brand marketing and product marketing perform very different roles in a company’s overall brand strategy, but when done well, they work together seamlessly to create a brand experience customers can trust. Let’s start with a basic analogy we use when helping a company create or improve its brand: a brand is like a person. It has a personality. It has strengths and weaknesses. It has goals. It has a voice. Now, this person also makes things. But you can see right away that it’s one thing to talk about the person herself, and another entirely to talk about what she makes. You can also see t...