SMB Product Marketing

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • August 4

Love this question! I'd think about it in terms of outcomes, and effectiveness. So I'd look at metrics like: Competitive Win Rates Usage - To be clear, I like to look at this through the lens of w

Alex McDonnell

Market Intelligence Lead at Airtable • September 21

For the Sales side, you can look at: - competitive win/loss rates - win rates of deals that used competitive support or resources vs. did not - ultimately, market share over time But for the Product

6 Saves

Andrew McCotter-Bicknell

Head of Competitive Intelligence at ClickUp • October 19

Competitive win rate is a great north star goal. But it can be challenging to accurately impact that in a positive way in a short amount of time. A couple other KPIs I've used in the past and that I

7 Saves

Adrienne Joselow

Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot • December 7

Competitive win rate! This requires reps to record (and for your CRM to have a field for) competitor (existing -rip and replace - or exploring - head to head). This is the most direct way to see if yo

Dave Steer

Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • January 31

Terrific question! A few metrics that are key to competitive intel: Competitive Intel 101 Metrics 1. Sales engagement -- Is your sales team using the competitive content that your team is developing?

Sean Lauer

Senior Director, Product Marketing at MURAL • February 17

Teams should be tracking win/loss rates vs specific competitors. This information is most easily gathered and tracked via the sales team (or possibly solutions eng) and stored in a system of record li

What are some important differences to consider when moving from marketing to ENT to SMB for the same product? How should it change your marketing mix and messaging?

2 answers

Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • July 28

Obviously, the target personas are different which informs the messaging, positioning, pricing, and packaging strategy. But at a high level, in SMB, the user and the decision-maker are usually the sa

7 Saves

Madison Leonard 🕶

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • December 8

With SMB, your buyers are also your individual users. You need to sell them on both the solution of your product and impact on business results, as well as sell them on the experience of the product.

2 Saves

What do self-serve product marketers spend their time doing, given that they don't have sales enablement responsibilities?

Where does all that time get repurposed in self-serve PMM? What are some of the big categories of work where you over-invest in self-serve vs. traditional B2B PMM?

7 answers

Christy Roach

Senior Director, Portfolio & Engagement Product Marketing at Airtable • November 18

You’re right that as a self-serve PMM, you’re no longer as focused on sales enablement as many B2B product marketers are. Here are some of the big areas my team is focused on that might be a bit diffe

129 Saves

Kacy Boone

Head of Growth Marketing at Clockwise • July 30

Great question! I’ve sat in product marketing roles at both consumer/product-led companies and B2B companies so I’ve seen both. In a B2B setting, product marketing is making its impact on revenue and

16 Saves

Anna Wiggins

Sr. Director Product Marketing, Insights, Copy & Content at Bluevine • January 19

Similar to my earlier answer, product marketers who work on self-serve products are mainly focused on communicating with customers at scale - since this model relies on broad-based channels to interes

4 Saves

Claire Maynard

Head Of Marketing at Magical • February 11

In my eyes, much of the time you spend and core fundamentals and responsibilities are the same. As a PMM for self-serve and sales-led motions, you need to be an expert on the product, customer, and ma

15 Saves

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • April 8

In most B2B settings, Product Marketing, or a distinct Enablement team (if your organization has one), spends a lot of time driving revenue and user growth through enabling Sales and CS. Whereas, in s

2 Saves

Jenna Crane

Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo | Formerly Drift, Dropbox, Upwork • October 20

Even in sales-enabled businesses, sales enablement is just one aspect of product marketing responsibilities. The bulk of the work is consistent across both self-serve and sales-enabled product marketi

Madison Leonard 🕶

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • December 8

Great question. To clarify, self-serve product marketing still needs to enable sales teams. Just not as frequently as sales-led organizations. Typically, self-serve products have a tiered pricing st

2 Saves

As a PMM charged with balancing both self-serve and enterprise customers of the same product, what are the nuances between the two?

3 answers

Kacy Boone

Head of Growth Marketing at Clockwise • July 30

Great question—thanks for asking! One thing to get out of the way first: Most products will have both users and buyers and those users and buyers can live across self-serve and enterprise. Users: In

Jenna Crane

Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo | Formerly Drift, Dropbox, Upwork • October 20

I know this situation well; it's the same here at Klaviyo! First, you need to understand the composition of both audiences. Are the self-serve customers smaller businesses that don't need to talk to

20 Saves

Madison Leonard 🕶

Product Marketing & Growth Advisor at | Formerly ClickUp, Vanta, DreamWorks Animation • December 8

Great question - this is very common in today's PMM landscape. There are 3 main product marketing differences: Target audience Messaging Value prop For self-serve products, the target is usually f

3 Saves

What are the key differences between enterprise PMM and mid-market?

2 answers

Mandy Schafer

Director of Product Marketing at Mastercard • June 16

Enterprise Product marketers really need to be able to understand the long, and complex sales cycles that Enterprise deals take. In addition, they need to understand all the additional nuances that co

19 Saves

Liz Gonzalez

Director of Product Marketing - Global Enterprise (previously NYSE: ZEN) at Zendesk • August 24

One of the key areas of differentiation is the buying group involved with a larger organization which typically lengthens the sales cycle. It’s critical to understand who are the key players in your b

What can I include in my marketing portfolio to standout from the crowd as a product marketing candidate.

I'm new to Product Marketing. In the interviews that I've done, I am being asked to present a marketing portfolio.

11 answers

Sharadhi (Gadagkar) Patel

Director, Product and Solutions Marketing at Hopin • June 2

This is a great question, and one that I ask most of the candidates I interview at some point in the process. The kinds of materials I like to see are dependent on the job they’re being hired for, but

79 Saves

Jasmine Anderson Taylor

Senior Director, Product Marketing at Instacart • June 2

First - anyone inviting you to interview will see from your resume whether you’ve done product marketing. If you haven’t and you still get invited to interview, then there’s no need to worry about bei

59 Saves

Andy Schumeister

Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8

Try to align your portfolio with the job description: If the job description focuses on messaging and positioning, share an example of a messaging framework or landing page that you put together. If

38 Saves

Priya Gill

Vice President, Product Marketing at Momentive (SurveyMonkey) • July 1

Not sure I completely answer the question. Typically when I ask candidates to give a presentation, it's less about the specific products they're presenting, but rather HOW they present it. Can the can

70 Saves

Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • July 28

Welcome to the PMM world! ;) My approach to this would be: Take a closer look at the particular job responsibilities. If the job responsibilities are heavy on content creation, I'd include samples o

108 Saves

Hien Phan

Director of Product Marketing at Amplitude • October 6

First, welcome to PMM. It would depend on what kind of PMM they are looking to hire. I would do three buckets. (1) a thought leadership piece or website/landing page (2) a launch plan or GTM plan (3)

53 Saves

Mike Berger

Vice President Product Marketing at ClickUp | Formerly Momentive, Gainsight, Marketo • November 11

Maybe I'm unique but I've been in Product Marketing for a long time and I've never been asked to present a "marketing portfolio". I have, on the other hand, been asked to present on specific topics or

49 Saves

Julien Sauvage

VP, Corporate and Product Marketing at Clari • December 7

I would be super metrics-dr :iven here. Maybe show a few functions you've owned (or contributed to), from top of the funnel to middle and bottom of the funnel, with the corresponding programs and the

44 Saves

Aneri Shah

Head of Product Marketing at Ethos Life | Formerly Meta, Microsoft • February 18

Think creatively about marketing-adjacent work you've done, and put together a series of case studies that you can share with the hiring team. Examples can include: Identifying customer insights and

49 Saves

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • April 8

There's a lot of potential variability here depending on company, exact role, industry, and more. That said, here are a few ideas of what you can show: Cross-functional Initiative: If you've directly

32 Saves

Lisa Dziuba

Head of Product Marketing at LottieFiles | Formerly WeLoveNoCode (made $3.6M ARR), Abstract, Flawless App (sold) • July 29

The product marketing portfolio could be: Messaging: key messaging on the products you worked on GTM: links to your part launches (landing pages) GTM: launch brief which you can share Content: links

How do you drive alignment across the exec team on messaging

16 answers

Ajit Ghuman

Director of Product Management - Pricing & Packaging, CXP at Twilio | Formerly Narvar, Medallia, Helpshift, Feedzai, Reputation.com • September 9

It's hard. Real hard. Many PMMs make the mistake of starting with messaging. This is a no-no. Messaging comes last and just puts words behind what was already decided. You have to nail this in sequ

24 Saves

April Rassa

Product Marketing at Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • September 29

It's key to align around a high-level story that powers success—in sales, marketing, fundraising, product development and recruiting—by getting everyone on the same page about strategy and differentia

25 Saves

Aliza Edelstein

Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Brex • December 3

I see three parts to driving alignment, both with execs and among all other stakeholders: First, bring them along for the journey. Messaging cannot be done in a silo, and it’s difficult to properly

89 Saves

Eric Petitt

Vice President, Marketing at Glassdoor • March 18

To drive alignment, make something that execs can respond to. Recently, I created an example “future state” pitch deck to articulate a future narrative for Glassdoor. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped

33 Saves

Jeff Hardison

Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • August 11

I feel fortunate that I’ve led positioning/messaging workshops since I graduated college because I worked for an agency that mandated them for every project we worked on for tech clients. Getting an

Priyanka Srinivasan

Head of Product & Growth Marketing at Qualia • August 25

At the end of the day, Product Marketing owns messaging, and there should be general alignment around that. I think that's a really important place to start because literally everyone has an opinion o

Leandro Margulis

Head of Product at Prove • September 8

This is an iterative process, and always better to over-communicate than under-communicate, so we can get everyone's feedback and input and people feel they have been heard and their input taken into

6 Saves

Lauren Craigie

Head of Product Marketing at Cortex • September 14

I start with personas. I develop a thesis about core personas based on sales and customer success feedback, and then conduct user interviews to validate or invalidate those ideas. That's probably the

10 Saves

Leah Brite

Head of Product Marketing, Core Product at Gusto • October 1

Start with data. Ground your messaging in first and third party data that illuminates what is important to your target customers, key pain points, aspirations, how they like to be messaged to, languag

18 Saves

Hien Phan

Director of Product Marketing at Amplitude • October 6

Ha! this skill is probably the hardest. When it comes to messaging, everyone will have an opinion. Before you drive alignment on the messaging, align on the problem and solution. That is 50% - 60% of

19 Saves

Rahul Chhabria

Director of Product Marketing at Sentry • October 7

Here's my process, I Conduct customer and prospect research (exec team will be more likely to be bought in with data - especially from your key personas and customers) Consolidate findings and prepa

Malli Vangala

Chief Strategy Officer at Circana | Formerly Microsoft, SAP, McKinsey • October 8

We typically prepare and validate a strong Messaging and Positioning Framework (MPF) document first. Our template typically includes things like the market context, objectives of our messaging (i.e. w

Chris Glanzman

Director of Product Marketing & Demand Generation at ESO | Formerly Fortive • November 2

First, start with data-driven positioning. Who are you in the marketplace? Where are you heading or trying to become? How do you think your competitors are moving in the space? If you skip this step,

Christiana Rattazzi

VP, Industries & Platform Product Marketing at Okta • November 3

Every executive team is different, so I would encourage you to think through the culture (and sometimes - quirks!) of the members of that team as you craft your own approach. That said, I've found a c

19 Saves

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • April 8

This is so important, and not focused on enough so I'm glad you asked! A few thoughts around this: Get your CEO and CMO involved early. Ideally you can get early drafts to them, and also get them bou

Tracy Montour

Head of Product Marketing at HiredScore • July 29

This requires having a strong relationship built on trust with your executive team and, depending on the size of your company, the CEO. Get the executive team involved early and often, and be willing

4 Saves

How would you approach this product marketing interview assignment?

I interviewed earlier this year and did well except for this assignment. I'm hoping to better prepare for similar situations. Here's the quest: As mentioned, the next part of this process is to complete a brief assignment. The purpose of this assignment is just to see your methodology get some insight into your approach to tasks. For this assignment, I'd like for you to create a high-level go-to-market plan and strategy for our flagship product our event marketing platform. Our company traditionally has targeted enterprise b2b companies. I'd like you to come up with high-level messaging, define who the target audience is, and then detail your strategy for informing the market about our event platform and getting more leads. Please identify which channels you would use, and what you would need for this go-to-market launch. Please keep your response under 2 pages

7 answers

Grant Shirk

Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • July 7

Pulling this one up. It's outside the realm of KPIs and measurement, but I think it's really critical. And I have a few strong opinions here. If I can summarize this back, as part of your interview

44 Saves

Zachary Reiss-Davis

Head of Industry/Audience Marketing; Director of Product Marketing at Procore Technologies • July 14

I don't think I can help you on the full assignment within the scope of an AMA; especially since the sub-question reads like the company probably is going to be using this question for other candidate

25 Saves

Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • July 27

Sorry, that didn't work out! Here's how I would approach this assignment: Study Certain's website to understand their current product messaging and positioning. And make sure your draft is different

60 Saves

Jeff Hardison

Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • August 11

I’d have to see your assignment response to make recommendations! And I probably shouldn’t print my recommendations here publicly, as this company probably wants to keep the assignment confidential. F

20 Saves

Hien Phan

Director of Product Marketing at Amplitude • October 5

I have no idea how you prep your presentation. But for an assignment like this one, I think what employers want to test is your ability to assess the problem and provide a solution. So before I would

31 Saves

Priya Gill

Vice President, Product Marketing at Momentive (SurveyMonkey) • March 10

First off, I'll say that I'm never a fan of making someone create messaging/positioning and defining a GTM plan about the interviewing company's product because you're never going to get to the level

56 Saves

Tracy Montour

Head of Product Marketing at HiredScore • July 29

I often find these assignments are about your approach to problem solving, positioning, and alignment rather than the work you actually produce. This is how I evaluate candidates. To me, it's all abou

10 Saves

What should I include in my product marketing budget?

I already have things like Customer Visits, a Sales Enablement / Content Management tool, SKO, pricing model consulting.

8 answers

Hien Phan

Director of Product Marketing at Amplitude • November 13

I think that list is correct and you should prioritize this list depending on your business. In addition to the above, I would advise getting a tool like Chorus.ai or Gong.io. Chorus or Gong will help

36 Saves

Grant Shirk

Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • July 7

Aim high, and ask for more than you think you'll need - but not by more than 15-20%. People will always be your biggest budget line item in PMM - we're the most valuable asset because structured think

25 Saves

Liz Tassey (she/her)

VP of Marketing at Blueocean.ai • July 9

I would recommend doing a listening tour with your key stakeholder teams in the organization (product, sales, growth, enablement, partner) to help inform your priorities, as budget items could be almo

16 Saves

Rajendran Nair

Vice President Product Marketing at Medallia • July 21

This is a good list to start with. I will add a couple: Analyst/3rd party thought leadership pieces: Having independent, 3rd party content is very helpful. If you are focused on the Enterprise, hav

15 Saves

Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • July 27

You have all the right line items! In addition, I'd recommend: Focus groups for messaging/positioning/pricing & packaging: I'm a huge fan of getting feedback from prospects and customers on any n

32 Saves

Akshay Kerkar

Head of Product Marketing, Platform & Commerce at Atlassian • August 5

A few other things to consider: Your team's research needs (qual and/or quant) Any analyst-related spent (either for research reports or to engage w/ analysts) Content-related needs -- always a good

33 Saves

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • April 8

Great question. Looks like you've captured a lot of the big rocks that normally go into the budget, but a few additional things to consider: People Budget: Depending on the planned growth of your tea

7 Saves

Molly Friederich

Director of Product Marketing at Sanity.io | Formerly Twilio, SendGrid • May 26

Love what you have already! Do you have budget for qual research incentives? This is a huge gift if you can offer $100 to target personas to provide feedback on messaging, or to prospects for win/loss

It seems like people in product marketing come from all different departments, yet it can be hard to interview & make that functional transfer breaking into product marketing. What tips would you share with someone who is looking to breaking into product marketing?

2 answers

Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • July 28

You are already one step ahead about narrowing down your next move to product marketing - congratulations! Product marketing roles and responsibilities are different with every company. I'd encourag