Product Marketing Career Path

PMMs are typically tasked with a broad scope, balancing both strategic & tactical work and serving as the X-functional glue across multiple teams. How do you combat burnout for your team?

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Head (VP) of Global Enablement at Benchling • January 24

What a great question. One thing I do in almost all my teams is run them in agile sprints - they can be two weeks, three weeks, or monthly depending on the speed of business. As part of this, one thin

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Eileen Buenviaje Reyes

VP, Product and Growth Marketing at 1Password | Formerly Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, LinkedIn • February 12

I completely agree that PMMs are highly cross-functional and often broadly scoped. The common trap I’ve seen us fall into is that of “peanut-buttering”, spreading ourselves thin over a broad range of

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Daniel Waas

Vice President Product Marketing at AppFolio • April 7

Set boundaries and clear expectations with the various stakeholders you work with. Don't commit to crazy timelines. If a crazy timeline is unavoidable, communicate what you will have to trade off. C

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Candice Sparks

Director of Product Marketing at Attentive • March 17

There are a few things that I believe help PMMs to prioritize and manage expectations across the organization. Creating quarterly and annual plans. These plans should include the top priorities for y

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Should product marketing report into Product management or Marketing?

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Feng Hong

Global Product Marketing Manager at TikTok • August 3

This depends on the company and what it needs the role of product marketing to be. This boils down to: what gap is the company trying to fill? I'll use my role as an example, and for context, Full Cir

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Mary (Shirley) Sheehan

Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe • August 3

Thoughtful answers, Feng! In my experience, resource-wise its best to be with the marketing team & budget. Tech-wise, product. If you want to pull your hair out all the time, sales :)

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Mike Flouton

VP, Product at Barracuda Networks • August 3

This reminds me of the classic "SDR team in sales or marketing" debate. The answer is that it can work in either place and really doesn't matter as long as PMM and the rest of marketing are communicat

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Ross Overline

Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Fivestars • August 16

While there are benefits to both, judging from my experience, I believe PMM reporting into Marketing is more effective. Reporting into makreting creates stronger ties between PMM and the revenue orga

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Clare Hegg

Director of Product Marketing at Skopenow • August 19

It can work in many places, but I find it to be the most effective if it is either within Marketing or on its own entirely so that marketing is properly on message. I often draw a venn diagram of prod

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Jennifer Ottovegio

Fmr Director of Product Marketing at Narvar • October 18

I’ve not personally sat on a product team (so I’m admittedly biased.) But I would vote for it to live in marketing. Here’s why - the essential functions of these teams are different: Product Team - e

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Savita Kini

Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • March 12

I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If PM team is strong enough to own end-t

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Pulkit Agrawal

Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • July 5

Based on some research we did (admittendly small sample size), we found that 2/3 report to CMO / VP Marketing and only ~10% to Product. Source: A New Definition of Product Marketing At this stage

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Devang Sachdev

Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI • July 10

Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin. Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I have had product marketers on my team, and as a

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Alexa Scordato

PMO at TikTok • August 14

This is related to the question above with regards to marketing's ability to influence the roadmap. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's a matter of the role a CEO wants marketing to play wi

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Dan Laufer

CEO at PipeDreams Ventures • January 15

There are good arguments for either. My team is in the marketing org so I have a bias towards that structure :) Ultimately it comes down to people and where you think PMM can have the most impact and

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Teresa Haun

Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk • February 5

I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk an

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Jon Rooney

Vice President Product Marketing at Unity | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • February 9

I firmly believe that Product Marketing should report into the Marketing org for one central reason: PMM is a communications-driven role requiring the ability to effectively craft and convey messages

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Natalie Louie

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5

The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The

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Julian Dunn

Senior Director of Product Management at GitHub • June 14

I've reported into both in my career and the best I can come up with is "it depends". As an overall philosophy, I would generally prefer to report into marketing, because it creates the right level of

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Carlos González de Villaumbrosia

CEO at Product School • July 15

A Product Marketing Manager’s position varies depending on the company. However, you will find yourself from time to time working very closely together with the PM and count yourselves as part of the

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Nayab Nazir

Product Marketing Manager at Metric • March 11

I believe it should always report to Marketing as the role directly links with messaging, personas, and understanding customers and all these things come into marketing. This is exactly how we are des

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What team structures have you explored, and which do you recommend?

When building a new PMM team, how would you think about structuring the team when product-alignment isn't a clear cut answer (ie, our platform isn't ready for distinct ownership of feature sets)?

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How have you set yourself up for promotion at a company?

This is in relation to not moving companies for a promotion it’s about how to get promoted at the existing company you are at. Also would love any insights to how establish the organization was in marketing as it relates to promote-ability.

1 answer

How do you stand out in a pool of product marketing candidates? What kinds of experiences, or which characteristics/traits, do employers care about most?

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Alina Fu

Head of Marketing for Viva Goals and Learning (Director) at Microsoft • January 25

Every company has its own system or values that they look for during candidate review. During interviews, especially at larger enterprise companies, the recruiter or hiring manager usually has a rubri

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Ryan Smith

Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Eightfold • March 9

A few things: - Highlight business impact as much as possible (ex helped grow ACV by 100% in 1 year) - Highlight product launches - Highlight technical proficiencies (I've always thought Solution E

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If you know that Product Marketing is your passion and you eventually want to be a leader of product marketing, how do you continue to grow in your role over time and take on the right experiences?

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Holly Xiao

Group Product Marketing Lead, Product & Solutions at Drift • January 13

This is a tough one because there’s no “correct” answer. Product Marketing varies depending on the industry, company size, and maturity. So evaluate the “right” experiences based on what you want to l

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Ryan Smith

Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Eightfold • March 9

Read. Watch. Listen. Consume as much information as possible. Knowledge is power. People listen and follow leaders who have opinions. Opinions are shaped by experiences. When you're uncomfortable, th

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Scenario — you’ve just landed your first Product Marketing role. What ideas or projects would you try to take on and lead, and what skills do you need to make those projects as successful as possible?

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What do you see as the foundational skill sets and areas of focus for a product marketer? And what are the best ways to establish those skills and competency in those areas?

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What do you look for when someone on your team wants to make the move from an individual contributor to a people manager?

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What has worked well (or has not worked) as far as positioning your product marketing team within a larger marketing org?

9 answers

Carrie Zhang

Product Lead at Square • November 17

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 collaborat

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Patrick Cuttica

Product Marketing Lead at Square | Formerly Sprout Social • October 16

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

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Shabih Syed

Product Lead, Ecosystem Discovery at Square | Formerly Mparticle • December 10

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 rea

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Mike Polner

Head of Marketing at Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 13

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 Pro

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Harsha Kalapala

Vice President Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • April 16

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 mar

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Jeff Beckham

Sr. Director and Head of Product Marketing at Gem • May 7

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 n

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Jasmine Jaume

Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • October 26

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

Marketing Strategy Consultant at • June 9

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 y

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Louis Debatte-Monroy

Director of Product Marketing at Backbase • March 1

Define (with your team) a short, memorable mission statement. Create a short slide deck that introduce your team, its mission, what you stand for, and some of the work you're the most proud of Show t

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