Product Marketing 30/60/90 Day Plan

As you establish a relationship with your Product Manager, it is important to align on expectations. You should understand their needs and pain points and share with them your vision for how PMM can add value to the team. From there, it is often helpful to draft a set of goals that reflect the output of that conversation and get your PM's buy-in. Once you have established those goals, they can help in your day-to-day prioritization of work, and enable you to prove impact against those benchmarks over time.

Since Prodduct Marketing is in charge of messaging (internal / and guidance for external) has a really good value with Product Management for translating the usability, functionality and benefits of any product. Product Manager should be more focus on release products, and Product Marketing focus on translate that products into the correct message (how it works? or how that product should be used?).    Btw Product Marketing should understand users/consumers needs for transmitting them to Product Managers and the products can be improved or develop new ones.

In a word - results. Your product managers should have a goal defined for the product you're supporting. It may not be the most realistic goal, but there should be a goal you can anchor to. Take that goal and break it down into bite size pieces. Think about what it's going to take to get a buyer from Attention to Acquisition (assuming a new customer goal). Break a purchase into individual buying steps. Identify the buyers (on average) that influence a purchase and find out what they need. Then measure like crazy. Use my favorite - Win/Loss - to track as many deals as you can. Find out why they bought and why they didn't. Use that to refine your understanding of a buyer's journey.  If it's not a revenue goal but a retention goal, find out why they renew and why they don't. Then recommend a course of action to fix it.  I have a class on this to help you build a Buyer's Journey Decision Map (self-paced video). Take a look and if you have questions I'd be happy to answer them. --D

I say: "You don't have to deal with the sales people anymore. Just send them to me." Tears in their eyes... [There is a 300 character minimum, but my answer was already complete so I'll fill this out with haiku. Sales guy got too drunk Who can save our key meeting? Product marketing Six cups of coffee A CIO sips daily Persona research ]

Product Marketing Manager is kind of the role project management for marketing & internal communications.   the PM & PMM are the two core role of product-market/customer bi-directionel communication.  As PM, the direction is more of external(market/customer) to internal - to study the market needs & trends, to learn about what caters for the clients; whereas the PMM on the contrary - to translate the product info in marketer's way while keeping aligned with the market or customer needs.  Personally, these 2 roles in binominal collaboration can be combined in some not-too-granulared structures. 

Analytics, Attribution and Awareness (of the consumer) Analytics Product Managers are constantly looking at key metrics and data to inform roadmap and resource allocation decisions. To speak the quantitative language, I recommend creating and referencing a marketing dashboard to track not only core marketing KPIs but also products’s core metrics on a campaign level. Then, use those numbers and data to show effectiveness or learnings of your marketing strategy. Attribution I recently integrated Branch, a third party vendor, to help with deep linking and attribution for Words With Friends’ Friendiversary campaign (via reengagement- focused email and social campaigns). Having a deeper level of attribution per channel was valuable to PMs to understand how better to support and resource ongoing initiatives based on where our high value reacts were coming from. Awareness Again, PMMs represent the consumer voice. Coming to the table with aggregated data on consumers’ top issues week after week should give your voice the heaviest weight in the room. No one can argue with the end user! 

I think a good PMM should take the stance that "I'm going to know everything about the product, competitive landscape and our customers." If you do that well there are several ways to prove value to PMs, for example:  1. Provide competitive insights/positioning they may be missing.  2. Share a perspective or understanding of customers they may be lacking or not have exposure to.  3. And of course being skilled at bringing products to market and messaging in a way that's differentiated, clear and compelling.  Let's not sell ourselves short, these are touchpoints/inights that are critical for a product's success and many PMs won't have a robust purview to. 

One of the best ways Product Marketers can provide value is through market and consumer insights. Often times Product Management teams are laser-focused on understanding existing customers and developing features to meet their specific needs. Product Marketers can provide perspective on the broader market and the needs/use cases for segments that a company hasn’t yet targeted. Product Marketers are testing different messages and value-props in-market every day and those learnings can help guide a Product Teams' future roadmap. 

Become an expert in a data set that's close to revenue. Knowing as much as you can about how market interest turns into revenue (i.e. your entire marketing & sales funnel) is the easiest way to make yourself indispensible to both product and company strategy.  When you know more than anyone else in the company about how leads turn into pipeline turn into closed business for your product line or area of ownership, product will start to seek you out for your insights.  Also, be a good editor. They will inevitably write a blog post or PRD or some kind of document that requires some critical feedback. Get good at editing and being a thought partner on external facing materials. 

It’s a good question, but also a loaded one! Product management needs to prove their value to the company too, right? The dynamic you’re describing is common though, unfortunately. I’ve lived it many times. The best working relationship comes when both sides have shared goals. If that’s not reality, one thing I’ve advised PMMs on my team to do is figure out what the PMs they work with care about and are goaled on. What are their OKRs or objectives? Assuming it’s not something crazy and counterproductive for the business, get a quick win and help them improve the thing they’re measured on (adoption, revenue, etc) to earn their trust. In terms of how to be most helpful, each PM I’ve worked with has a unique skillset. PMMs are most valuable when they are complementary. For example, if the PM is technical but not a great writer, make them look good by doing the heavy lifting on the blog and slides for the new launch. If they’re business-savvy and just need more insights from the field to form their strategy, do some market research and collect insights from customers and sales. If I were to generalize from my experiences, working with the sales team is the most common thing that PMs appreciate help with. When you’re creating great collateral and running trainings that enable the field to sell the PM’s product, they’ll be ecstatic. Unless your company is overstaffed, there’s always going to be enough work for both Product and Product Marketing. The key is finding the balance where you’re “better together,” to use a corny phrase. When the product is being adopted and driving revenue, both sides look good.

Remind them that in your title 'product' is first, you are a Product Marketer. You see yourself as part of their org and are an active participant in all their meetings. You are team members who always need to be aligned. Initially you rely on them for KT (knowledge transfer) of the product roadmap so you can help with GTM activities and launch the product. But over time, you are talking to customers and you need to collect feedback and bring it back to PM’s to help influence the roadmap. A circular relationship is the goal.  You also help improve the roadmap by always asking why they are building something, so you can tie it back to your customer pain points and the value you are delivering. You help bring clarity to what they are building and help make sure you stay accurate. You also do research together to both understand your market, customers and competitors. You also make your PMs look good – help ghost write a blog with them, have them be SME’s on your webinars, help them craft a story to present at a conference, clean up a deck they are presenting. You are two peas in a pod.

Prove that the Product Strategy delivers what it promises. Some multinational companies build the Product Strategy on three elements: - Product technical performance, what the product does at work. When the performance is weak against competitors there is room for improvement (eg, like removing spots for heavy-duty detergents). - Product design, how the product looks and works. When the design is weak against competitors there is room for improvement (eg, like for the boxes of Baby Diapers to be used with a single hand). - Customer acceptance, hence the appreciation of consumers for the other two elements of the PS If it is all good, turn to the Copy Strategy, which is built on: - Product benefit, what the customer gets - Support to the benefit, it makes the benefit believable - Tone of the communication, like speaking to modern as opposed to traditional people Although I do not like the term product marketing, there is a lot you can do to prove your value to product management.  Just, begin from strategies.

I'd reframe the question a bit from proving value to adding value. Proving value is a little defensive, vs adding value puts the onus on PMM to show up every day with a task to be done. I think about adding value to PMs in two parts: 1.  Trust: If I had to simplify it to a few key things, its a strong understanding of the customer and their problems and then a strong understanding of the competitive space and market. I think its also important to have a point of view. If you bring those insights to your day-to-day meetings, you can establish your line of thinking with your PM stakeholders. If you have a point of view -- meaning have an opinion, dont defer all decisions to the group -- then you can engage in productive conversations and brainstorms with your stakeholders. This will help to earn trust.  2.  Results: From there, the second part is to deliver results. That comes in a variety of ways, but some areas where I've built up my internal brand with my PMs have been in creating decks for customer events--taking the onus off product to craft a presentation, and delivering it in a concise, new, and engaging manner. Thus the PM's job is easier and theyre getting a better output. Other areas have been in supplying notes, bullet points, and data points for customer/partner briefings that PMs have led. In one case, I worked on one slide for a customer meeting, and that slide ended up being where our PM team spent a bulk of their time with the customer and that led to the PM proactively asking for my input in other areas.  At the end of the day, product teams are in really high demand. If you, as a PMM, can own some of the areas in which a PM might get pulled into different meetings/projects and can deliver high value work back--then the PM doesnt need think like they have to do everything. I read a LinkedIn post a few months ago from a CS leader who wrote about how great CS work comes from a great relationship with PM, so that the product can stay top of mind with CSMs and get its way to customers. And while I think thats true as an end result, I also think it showcases a gap where PMM should have filled. PMMs should know the market and know the product, and that should be able to inform multiple internal teams. While PMs probably dont have an issue meeting with XFN teams, I'm sure they'd appreciate the luxury of focus--and thats where PMMs can help.  So while it's obviously great if that established model exists and PMMs can show up with their value to the org known, its much easier (IMO) to take back control and not hope for infrastructure change in an org at the expense of creating your own fortune. 

This is a great question - especially because I think this relationship between product and marketing (product marketing) is one that often takes time. Trust needs to be built and that often comes from being able to show value.  I think inately part of Product Marketing's role is to become a subject matter expert in your space. This means deeply understanding the market (trends, competitors, hot topics), prospects and ideal customer profiles - their pain points and how your product helps solve them (and what gaps exist), and existing customers - both the power user super fans, and those that haven't yet gotten to deep usage or adoption.  All of this knowledge is extremely powerful for product teams. It will help offer a more macro lens to their roadmapping and strategy planning. Oftentimes product teams will do their own research to help define their roadmaps, but it can usually be very narrow aligned to their core focus area and limited to feature gaps. Package your knowledge and insights in a way that offers insight beyond existing customer feedback - to help paint a broader picture. It may take awhile for teams to know exactly how to take action - but it will never be an unvaluable resource, and will undoubtedly add valuable context - and you will position yourself as a valuable partner representing the market. 

You can switch from right brain to left brain activities and fire both at the same time. You have to be analytical and strategic, you like art and science, numbers and words. You have to be able to go 1 level deeper than marketers to understand the technology, make sense of it then explain it in a clear manner that is well positioned for your customer’s pain. You are a storyteller. Example: 1. You can go deep in research and analysis to create charts and define your TAM, SAM, ICP, persona and competitors. Then you can take the data, glean insights and turn it into an actionable plan to create and deliver a first meeting deck that is clearly positioned, messaged and inspires people to open their wallets and stakeholders to ask for more. 2. Then you can deliver the pitch in a few sentences and also in one sentence on the spot. Your words bring ultimate clarity and value. 3. Since you have clarity in the value you are delivering you can help price and package a product to drive revenue into the millions and billions. 4. Last, you can take the message and positioning to direct or create content to amplify it in different forms: a keynote, webinar, podcast, event, PR, blog, website, video, any social channel, email, case study, analyst meeting etc… If this is you, please ping me, I’d love to work with you. If you have some skills but not all, and want to be a full stack PMM, please ping me, I’d love to mentor you.

The skills I look for in a PMM are:  - Messaging / Positioning: Ability to create compelling messaging that articulates how the products value propositions solve customer pain points. Examples of how messaging and positioning has been leveraged to tell stories that resonate with the core audience.  - Project management / Prioritization: Sitting at the cross section of multiple other orgs (Sales, Marketing, Product) there are often many balls in the air - the ability to prioritize, manage stakeholder expectations and drive project deliverables and timelines is a must.  - Cross-functional skills: I look for PMMs that have solid examples of working with multiple teams within an organization, and I look for examples for how they have handled hard situations, how they've had to push back on requests, how they've had to claim a seat at the table.  - Empathy: I believe as a PMM, one of our key responsibilities is to represent the voice of the customer internally. Therefore we should always be putting ourselves in the customers shoes. We should advocate for what is best for the customer - and their experience with our products. These are just a few. There are many soft skills that are equally as important, and generally apply to most roles that I won't go into detail here - but are weighted just as heavily for me. :) 

Start building the foundational materials - product positioning, the pitch deck, messaging guides, launch processes, etc. and get alignment on these early! It's critical to get these pieces done first so that you can scale effectively. As a team of 1, you are going to need to rely on the other people in your org to help you get your product (and message) to market. By having these core materials created and getting buy-in from your execs and cross-functional teams in your first few months, you'll be enabling your team to be more self-sufficient and get some of those critical pieces done without having to wait on you for content or approvals.

There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer.  First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it.  30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days.  60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy. 

Look at my phases of success for a PMM in your first 100 days, it has the building blocks on what to focus on so you can be prepared to help scale with your company. This can be tailored and used at a 40 person company or larger one as it covers all the fundamentals any full stack PMM should be able to deliver on. I created this when I was working at a 2-sided marketplace and in B2B but it’s also relevant to B2C. We are all selling to humans at the end of the day so B2B companies should also think like a B2C company as people expect things to 'just work' and enterprises are becoming more consumerized. Many of the more successful B2B companies run and operate like a B2C company from their marketing tactics to software adoption strategy (Zoom, Slack, Zuora, Dropbox). In your first month you need to focus on discovery and building positive relationships. Be self aware of your gaps and learn as much about your industry, product, problem you are solving, customer journey, competitors, etc… by interviewing key internal stakeholders. During this time it is key to find and deliver on a win. See here for ideas on quick wins. A 40 person startup is small and many people likely don’t know the power a product marketer can bring. If this is the case, read this. Offer to do a presentation on your strategy if you didn’t already during your interview. You must both 'show and tell' for everyone to appreciate your value. 

I’ll caveat this answer largely depends on your company’s goals, existing team structure, and culture. One should never parachute into a new company with a rigid 30/60/90 plan or assume the recipe for success in your last role will apply here. First month = Big picture Learn both your people and your products. Overload on 1:1s, get your hands dirty with the product, and speak to customers. “First seek to understand, then to be understood.” First quarter = Build the basics Hiring plan, messaging and positioning frameworks, etc. This could also be establishing the norms like announcement tiers and turnaround times or requirements like customer references before launch. First year = Boom! Once you have the understanding and foundation, this is when you can really start to have a more meaningful impact within the company. While you may play catch-up your first quarter launching products ready long before you arrived, the subsequent months are when you can demonstrate the value of a PMM to influence product and sales strategies if involved earlier. Definitely seek smaller wins earlier before this to establish some trust and credibility, but plan to get the basics established before steering the ship.

My perspective here is whether you are starting at a larger organization with hundreds of employees or a startup with 40 employees - the first 30 days look roughly the same. This is your window to build up as much context as possible, understand the goals, mission and prioritiies of the business, and identify gaps and areas for impact. The advantage of being at a smaller company is this access to information is much more accessible. People are easier to reach, things are probably still very evergreen - which means a lot of blank space for you to think about how you'd like to build things vs negotiating to adapt what others have built. So I'd spend those first 30 days really getting to know those 40 people - envisioning what you'd like marketing and pmm to look like in the long term and deciding what you can do today that will get you to that longer term vision - ie. start building those bi-lateral product/engineering relationships now.  Within the first quarter at a scaling B2B SaaS business, I'd imagine you'd want to take a look at how your story is showing up in the market - for your core audience. Do you know who your core audience is? Who is your ideal customer profile, what is their role, industry, company size etc. This is the time that you want to do the work to define this audience, and develop your positioning and messaging so as you scale you know where and how to reach these prospects in a way that converts. Once you have solid positioning and messaging it should be the foundation that your website it built off of, and your sales narratives are crafted from, etc.  Outside of core positioning and messaging, I'd take some time in the first quarter to define your GTM process, specifically for how to take new products and features to market. If you are starting to scale, and fast - you'll want a repeatable process in place that all of your cross-functional counterparts are aligned with - so you can spend less time re-creating the wheel each launch.  And lastly (although this list could probably go on and on), another advantage of being at a smaller and earlier stage company is access to customers. Carve out time every week to talk to customers, talk to prospects, listen in on calls - and start to build relationship with these early customers. Those relationships can often times lead to co-marketing, where customers are open to sharing your story through testimonials, customer stories, and positive reviews. These endorsements are crucial for early stage businesses.  Your first 30 days - 90 days will offer many areas to tackle that will have immediate and often big impact, your key role will be in defining how to prioritize. 

My first, and likely only, item would be 'Let's get to know each other.' Of all the skills I've acquired over the years as a PMM, I think the most valuable have been the human / people side of business. I've thought a lot and deeply on how to be a good manager. How to listen to people and understand them as people. I think this really starts with getting to know each other. That doesn't necissarily mean opening up on a personal level, but talking about why we're here, what drives us, how we like to work and communicate, etc.  There will be plenty of time to dig into the tactical projects and logistical set up - but I'd carve out that very first meeting as a time to just connect. 

When I'm taking over a PMM team, my first priority is to understand the individual people on the team, what drives them, what they are good at, and what they think is going well with the business and what is not. I meet with each member of the team and ask some variation on the following: * What's going well? * What's not? * How do you define your role, and what does a typical day look like? * How can I support you as your manager? What do you need from me to be successful? * Where would you like to take your career? I ask these questions in part to get to know the team, and in part to suss out: * Does this person understand the business? Are they plugged in to how the business makes money, what the high-level strategy is, and do they have a point of view of what could be changed and why? * Are they able to articulate a relationship between what they do and the business results? * Is this person being put in a position their best work? Are they in the right role? Is a career management discussion in order? * As I build the team, where would this person be the best fit based on their interest and aptitude? In the first team meeting, I discuss: 1. Summary/synthesis of what I heard from the team in my individual meetings 2. Big picture on where the team is in alignment with overall business strategy and how we can execute on the strategy 3. Discussion on how best to work together as a team 4. Concrete next steps on goal setting, priorities, and development of a business-focused PMM plan 

First item to to get to know the team and for the team to get to know you. I start with a picture perfect introduction and this opens the doors into your life outside of the job title. My teams and mentees have adopted this idea and its amazing to see everyone's values and life stories. * Candidate experience - https://divmanickam.substack.com/p/candidate-experience-reimagined * Picture perfect introduction https://divmanickam.substack.com/p/picture-perfect-introduction

I interview them to get to know them first, why they joined the company, what they are excited about, what they oversee, what they need help in (their pain points) and I start mapping their needs and how we can work together. I spend the majority of my time having them explain to me the product and pain we are solving. They are SME’s (subject matter experts) at the company and I do a messaging & positioning interview – I take my positioning and messaging framework and turn this into my interview questions. I also interview them about our users and competitors. I’m basically filling out my playbooks for positioning, messaging, competitive intel and users. Lean on them to do your knowledge transfer and become an SME yourself. Listen to their version of how they explain your product and opportunity. Each stakeholder has different information to contribute to your full understanding.  I take copious notes (or ask to record the interview) and then I go back to review and bucket answers. I identify gaps, areas that need clarity and start filling out my PMM playbooks to then get feedback on.   I also structure these interviews no more than 30min at a time, sometimes 45min if it's a dense topic, and do multiple short interviews across many days/weeks. I need time to process, refine my thinking and build those relationships. I try to kill multiple birds at once here and be very efficient with mine and my stakeholders time. 

I think the common questions you'd want to ask both of these teams are  1. Tell me about your role and your teams - how do you operate today? (Build context of how these teams work in this organization as it will likely look different from places you've previously worked, even if only slightly)  2. What is working well in your orgs, and what are areas that could use improvement. (Understand what challenges these teams face - and listen through the lens of how your team may fit into the solution. Obviously, not all challenges will be something PMM can help solve).  3. How do you partner with the product marketing team today - or if there isn't a PMM team in place yet, ask how they've partnered with PMMs in the past. What are ways they see PMM and their teams partnering?  I'd ask these questions without committing to partner on anything, all of this is context building and painting a picture of the current state of the org.  More specifically to each org, I think if I were digging in with sales I'd want to know how the teams are structured - by segment, region, etc. How are sales stages defined, and what are the roles of each sales team across those stages (SDRs vs AEs vs Customer Success, etc), how long is the average sales cycle and where to deals most often get stuck? Where and how can you listen to sales calls? Any question that helps you understand how sales operates, and how PMM can align to more deals closed/won.  For engineering or product teams, the things I typically like to understand are how product teams are organized. Is it by product, features, use cases, industry, etc - this will help you understand how to align product marketing in a way to create synergy. I'd ask how the team currently roadmaps - what are all the inputs, how are they weighted, how product and engineering teams envision PMMs inputing to roadmaps. Sometimes product teams don't envision this as PMMs role, it would be good to know if this is the case up front - and ensure that PMMs are bringing value to the product and engineering teams to earn a seat at that table. I'd ask if they can share any documentation that would help build product knowledge - whether its strategy docs, or rationale docs, or just team working docs - to offer a look into how these teams work.  Ultimately, in those early days in a role - your main goal is gaining as much context as possible - so ask any question that will help get you there as fast as possible, and don't hold back. If something doesn't make sense, or is foreign to you - just ask. 

Don't bother. If you work for an executive team that doesn't see the value of PMM, you need to get a new job. You've got way too much work to do to waste your time trying to demonstrate something that should be obvious to anyone with a clue. 

Mike makes a good point - in that it can be hard to help people see the value that PMM brings to the table. When I'm looking to take on a job in a new company, it's one of the first things I try to sniff out is what the company's view is on Product Marketing (e.g. do they just view product marketing as glorified content writers - which by the way, we're not... we're messaging, market, and buyer experts - not copywriters).   In terms of showing ROI beyond that, treat Product Marketing more like a data science than an art. So, for example, what is PMM job? it's to essentially accelerate sales and help drive revenue. Really, that's a lot of our end goal for the business. So, you should know your numbers through and through. How much revenue is the product bringing in every quarter? What's the growth rate? how long is the sales cycle? How are different ads/content/assets performing that use your messaging?   Now that you have all of those numbers (and more, that's not an exhaustive list), then it's time to put into action a plan that accelerates those numbers. How do you turn that growth from 10% to 20%. Why is the sales cycle for X product Y long, but the cycle for A product is B long? How do you shorten that window? Why do some customers hate your product, and others love your product (a clear sign of incorrect messaging/positioning/targeting)? Then once you make changes, keep tracking the numbers - does the new ad copy with the revised messaging bring in more clicks/trials/customers? then there is your ROI. Rinse and repeat for everything else. Did the new audience your targeting result in shorter sales cycles? great, double down, there's more ROI. Luckily for us, a lot of our work can be directly attributed to a return on the investment, but it's really up to you to make sure that you're the one tracking your numbers and the work that goes into it.  

Map and tie yourself to the company level OKRs, mirror the ones in marketing and product or create and define your own KR’s if they don’t exist. Every Marketing Dept has 2 focuses: 1. Customer: # of signups, downloads, purchases, engagement, interactions, industries/verticals, you define the usage metric, etc… 2. Revenue: goals for new, renewal, upsell, expansion, you define the type of revenue etc… Product can also own similar metrics as marketing. They also care about shipping product, so you can show your ROI by launching products and tracking the marketing metrics and engagement that result from your GTM efforts. I also always look at product usage metrics and fold those into my OKRs. You may not own these metrics, but you influence them. You should definitely own or mirror owning them with your cross-functional partners. I also talk here about how to breakdown responsibilities and KPIs when working with demand gen.

This question shows up a lot for product marketers, in many different ways. Unlike other parts of the busienss that have numbers attached to their roles (quotas, MQLs, etc) often times PMMs share success metrics with their cross-functional counterparts, and attribution is not black and white. That said, there clear ways for PMMs to showcase their value (which might not always be quantatively measureable) AND ways to quantifiably measure success.  I'll start with value. A fundamental way to bring value across the business as a PMM is by truly becoming a subject matter expert in your space. Learn your competitors inside and out, learn your product as if you were a power user, learn the market and trends, deeply understand customers -- (this one might be the most important) -- because the more you understand your customers, the more you can represent their voice within the walls of your organization. Their insight combined with what you know about competitors and the market will make you a very valuable asset to product teams that look for that insight as they roadmap, sales teams that need to position the product to different buyers and segments, the marketing org as they decide how to fill the pipeline and what messages resonate, where, and so on.  I understand that some orgs want numbers - and clear metrics to define success. And ideally this is in combination with the point above. In every project you drive, define how you will measure success. If it is a product or feature launch, define how you will measure the go to market strategies you put in place, for example, announcement message open and click through rates, content views, qualified leads generated from your announcement messages, or expansion, upsell or adoption metrics tied to your channel strategies. Part of our role as PMMs is product health beyond feature and product launches. So develop strategies for product adoption and usage, and measure how effective those strategies are. Maybe you run and in-product marketing push to drive adoption of specific features - measure how that push drove adoption. Adoption metrics are often shared with your Product Manager counterparts, so work together on that strategy and shared success. Regardless of what initiative you are driving, always ask yourself how you will define success - and if it can't be quantatively - look for ways to bring in qualititative feedback - even if just from your internal stakeholders. 

Start with my 30/60/90 day plan. I embark on this process and begin looking for where I can dive in for my quick wins. You never know what scenario you are walking into or which project has suddenly been prioritized when you first start. The key is listening for what people are working on, understanding why it’s important and raising your hand for anything you know you can do with your eyes closed. I have 10% execute in my first 30 days because that is me working on my win. Then each 30 days thereafter ramps up my time spent executing and delivering more wins. I've joined companies where I took full control of a product launch, created all the decks for a conference, launched new partnerships and pricing strategies in my first 90 days. Your company hired a PMM because a board member or executive knows they need you, so look for all that low hanging fruit.  QUICK WINS EXAMPLES * Product Launches: are they planning one or in the midst of one? Jump in to run it, help/takeover an aspect of it, uplevel the launch plan line items * Press Release: is there a PR going out? Ask to write or review it and uplevel it. * Acquisition: are they acquiring a new company? Help with how to message and position the new partnership * Conference: do they have a user/customer/internal conference coming up? Dive in and volunteer to help with the decks, speakers, storyline and content. * Competitive: hear lots of chatter about competitors? Offer to deep dive on collecting research and create some battle cards with your killer template * Product Market Fit: did you join before product market fit? Start doing research to define ICP, Personas, TAM, SAM, Competitors and map the Customer Journey * Marketing campaigns: look at existing campaigns and help create content, position content better, discuss which new channels to activate, ensure campaigns are integrated * Content: look at existing content and uplevel it, create what’s missing ASAP or help organize it better * Video: think they could do more? Help create a good video for their website or marketing * Website: looks lackluster or they want to update their website? Jump in to help with strategy and delivery, definately fix any copy/messages that aren't clear * Hiring: have open headcount or gaps? Help hire, close top candidates, refer good people you've worked with before * Blog: offer to ghost write a blog with Eng or Product * Webinar: help create content or present on a webinar * Monetization: pricing a new product? Jump in to help them figure out value, pricing and packaging * Partner: are they announcing a new partner? Help message and position it * Gaps: see a hole? If you can’t fill it, offer to find and manage a contractor who can and bring them onboard, so you can have a win together * See something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense? Speak up, ask questions and dive in to help bring clarity

This is a hard question to answer because it is pretty dependent on your company's industry, business model, gtm strategy, etc. However, I'll give some examples I've come across in my experience.  1. Website. As a marketer, your website is your storefront - and there are endless ways to continue to improve it to maximize results. Whether your business is built on a self-serve model or you are 100% sales-led - the role of the website is an integral one - spefically in letting prospects and custoemrs know you understand their pain points and have a solution that can help solve them. So - spend some time evaluating your company's website - especially while you have fresh eyes as an outsider, and note ideas for how to optimize. Look at product positioning, audience targeting, clearly articulating value, CTAs, etc. There are likely many quick wins to be found  2. GTM plans. Take a look at how new products and features are currently being brought to market to prospect and existing customers. There are likely quick wins here as well. If there isn't a current GTM template, create one. That is a really great quick win. Make sure your company is taking products to market with the right channels based on what is being released, and to the right audience. Are announcements segmented? (if your company doesnt have clear segments - this should be something on your list of things to help tackle). Are there new and creative ways to get your audiences attention (not everything needs a billboard) -- this can be a clever social media strategy, or in-house videos. When I started at Intercom, the PMM team created 'quick look' videos that were short videos made by an individual PMM, delivered in product. They were not shiny, or overly polished - just a way to connect as humans to customers that didnt require a massive budget or an eloborate project plan. Just a PMM, a script and screen recording software.  3. Sales assets. There are many ways to support a sales team, and hopefully once you've done your listening tour you'll have identified a few areas that are low hanging fruit. I'd say often times an item that shows up on sales wishlists is competitive intel. Not just a feature comparison grid, but how your company can and should win in deals against specific competitors. This is a great first project to take as it often kills a few birds with one stone. on Usually, with some dedicated space and time carved out to do research, this research can be tackled fairly quickly - and as a new person in the company it is a great way to get up to speed on your product and market and build context. You can also start by delivering the content in small digestable pieces. Talking points to SDRs/BDRs, a battlecard for all of sales, a live training, feature deep dives, etc. 

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. 

30 days - Learn the market and competitive landscape. Visit as many customers and non-customers as possible. Read every Win/Loss report you can get your hands on. Talk to as many sales reps as possible. Use the Steve Jobs line of questioning: "What's working here?" "What's not working here?" Warning: don't assume you're the smartest person in the room. Network and leverage as many brains in the organization as you can.  60 days - Formulate a GTM strategy. Be prepared for a lot of "We don't do it that way here". Be persistent and focused. Use facts to inform your decisions not fantasies.  90 days - Execute, execute, execute. 

One thing I'd add that's very tactical to the great stuff that David has already laid out: Find your allies.  Talk to everyone within the org that you can and assemble a shortlist of people who have good understandings of things like the customers, the tech etc... Befriend a good sales rep, the best sales reps in complex sales cycles are often product marketers in disguise. If they've been there for a bit they have a ton of knowledge that has never ever been documented or made sense of and they can accelerate your understanding immensely. 

I suggest combining pieces from my answers to these questions.  1. What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first Product Marketer at a company establishing the function?   2. How do you think about your first 30/60/90 day goals when coming in as the Head of Product Marketing in a startup that didn't have product marketing before? 

Whenever you are starting a new role, it's critical to understand what's important to your manager and what the objectives are for your new organization so you can align yourself well to them. Every company has a different onboarding plan, and for PMMs I think it's critical to get the lay of the land through meet and greets with the people you'll work with to hear first hand what is on their mind, so you can start to understand how you will work together. I also work with my manager to define what I can deliver as soon as possible to show impact to the organization.  This is not PMM specific, but there is an app that I use called the "The First 90 days" which I use to help me think through different elements of my new role. The information is useful enough that you can adapt it to a PMM role. 

Copied over from a similar question: There are a lot of things you could do - and it's easy to get distracted as a product marketer. First 30 days - Listen, listen, listen. Ask a TON of questions. Hold back from providing ideas unless you are really sure about it. Help others behind the scenes on ongoing projects with work you are good at - like writing or editing copy, preparing slides, etc. Help them look good and make allies. This is also a great way to learn the business. Talk to customers - jump in on existing calls and ask good questions. Get familiar with basic analytics and KPIs - need to know what needle to move and what drives it. 30-60 days - Make a success plan & set concrete expectations. Create a list of things you are going to focus on to make the most impact on the business. Separate quick wins from strategic work. Have a healthy debate with your boss and cross-functional leaders in sales, product, and customer success. Focus on your first big win that can be accomplished in under 30 days. Get an A in that even if you let everything else fail or push to the next 30 days. Figure out which fires you are going to let burn. Also, do most of your work in the open - it's often not a good idea to wait for the "big reveal". Surprises are not your friends. We tend to miss out on helpful feedback others can provide when we are missing context - this is critical during the early days. 60-90 days - Create momentum. Ask leadership for informal feedback - how you are doing and where you can tweak things. Once aligned, I would focus on the next big win while delivering smaller, tangible outcomes that line up with your success plan. The most important thing a product marketer should be doing through this journey is saying "no" enough. Smaller companies tend to see everything that is not about generating leads to be product marketing's job. While you could make that argument, it is important to say no to those seemingly urgent things and let those fires burn. Jumping on things because the CEO/CMO said so without considering the tradeoffs to your current priorities can be your biggest enemy.

First 100 days in a job quite important. The First 100 days are your opportunity to ask questions, make some bold moves, build trusted relationships, and set the tone. I would focus on the following things: Build a solid understanding of your industry and target market: As a PMM, you need to bring unique perspectives to the table. PMMs are fortunate that they get to interact with customers, sales, analysts, product managers and gain insights about competitors. In the first 30-60 days, I will focus on understanding things like market opportunity, competitive differentiation, why people buy us? or why they don't buy us?, TAM, Your core market, your adjacent markets. Trust me, invest your time in understanding these things better and you will get payoff in the next 12-18 months. So, although this will never be part of your initial projects, make sure you save time to build your own point of view o the market.  Think of your lack of knowledge for processes/tools more as a "fresh perspective" you can bring to the team: As a PMM leader, it is important that you invest in building scalable processes and you invest in building some foundational templates. So, while it's important to understand current processes/tools/SLAs, don't be afraid to propose new things that could save hours and hours of your team. People who are already following set processes tend to miss out on improvement opportunities. You can add tremendous value here. One of the best pieces of advice I got was from a PMM leader at Salesforce. When I was moving to a new company, she cautioned me to stay away from saying that the things are really broken (in her words - that the kitchen sink is dirty). Be mindful that the team has been using/working/following their own processes that may not be the best, but they got work done. Focus on building relationships: You have a blank slate. Use it wisely. Build solid relationships with sales, product leaders, CS leaders, your team, your managers, extended marketing org. Try to listen before jumping to conclusions. It's difficult to do it during COVID time but casual coffees and happy hours can forge good relationships with your colleagues. 

I don't know about you, but I think there's so often a tendency to jump right in and start delivering. I encourage everyone that starts working on my team to spend their first 30 days learning! If you can work with your boss, try to buy yourself some time just to soak up knowledge and develop a point of view. The key things I try to get to know as much as possible when starting a new job are: the product (spend time using it, get certified if that's an option), customers/prospects (listen to Gong calls, shadow sales calls), the business (dig into your dashboards -- what's your average deal size, how long are sales cycles, which segments are performing well or aren't, what's your pricing...), and your colleagues (product managers, sales RVPs, CS, enablement, demand gen...). At the end of 30 days, share a SWOT with your manager, and identify a few quick wins for days 31-90. The quick wins should be tangible deliverables that have some visibility with cross-functional teams. Maybe there's an in-progress launch a colleague is leading that you can contribute to and present deliver part of the enablement. Or maybe there's an under-served area (a persona, a part of the product) where you can collaborate on with a few people to build out the storyline, materials, and training on. 

The first 90 days is such an exciting and sometimes overwhelming time in a person's career.  The best way to set up for success in 90 days is as follows:  Day 1 - 30: Learn, learn, learn The first task I complete (and subsequently ask my newbies to complete) is an end-to-end product audit. The goal of this exercise is for newbies to learn the product and marketing flows inside out, from the perspective of one of our customers (ie. not looking up internal docs of what the flows are meant to be). While on this journey we want our newbies to use their fresh set of eyes to scrutinize the flows for anything which doesn’t make sense, was confusing, is broken or could be optimized. This audit is shared with the product and marketing teams and suggestions are factored into the roadmaps. This task celebrates the person's new and unique perspective on your product and helps them share their ideas with a wide range of stakeholders.  For the remainder of the 30 days, become a complete sponge and absorb as much context as you possibly can before your workload starts to creep up on you. The key areas to explore to help build context are:  * Identifying and meeting with all your key stakeholders for a listing tour * Diving into key dashboards and reporting * Reviewing the company and your teams' strategic focuses for the year * Immersing yourself in your audience: reading reports, recorded interviews,  * user testing, feedback channels, speaking with customers   * Understanding the ways of operating and processes of the business  * Reviewing all the sales enablement content, sales goals  * Reviewing and understand the product roadmap and the current product functionality  * Understanding the competitive landscape of your company and product offering Days 30 - 60: Getting some quick wins Once you have all this context you’ll be in a much better position to start executing your workload. Work with your manager to identify your key deliverables for the next 60 dates and a prioritization framework. Identify some quick win projects you can quickly execute to help build your confidence in the new role and build rapport with your colleagues.  In many of the roles I’ve started, I’ve often been brought in to help wrangle a large GTM or group of stakeholders from chaos to clarity. If this is the case, evaluate all angles of the GTM from the perspective of each core stakeholder to help formulate an understanding of the project holistically. Spending a decent chunk of time understanding the blockers, challenges, and misalignment from your key stakeholders will help you build relationships with these folks and ultimately help you develop a GTM strategy that brings clarity to the situation. Helping to bring clarity to any project is a surefire way to have a big impact.  Days 60 - 90: Executing Based on your project list, this is the timeframe where you might start to see some of your bigger projects come to life and be executed. Now that you have a better understanding of the company and you’ve got some wins on the board, a great way to make an impact is to seek out new opportunities or problems to solve for your team. Be the person that sees opportunity in a problem and proposes a solution or experiment to try and resolve it.

Here is what has worked for me in the past. This pace below is relevant for smaller teams/orgs. You can pace this out for larger teams/orgs as needed. 30 DAYS Goal: Establish credibility and define your goal and priorities Key tasks: * Build relationships with key stakeholders and understand expectations * If you are a manager, get to know your team (obviously!) * Understand the business - products, market opportunity, business metrics * Define your draft year 1 goal, strategy and priorities and get sign-off from stakeholders  * Deliver any critical (and time sensitive) initiatives to show an early win (if needed)  Deliverables: * Overall goal, strategy and priorities * Any critical initiative (if needed) 60 DAYS Goal: Start executing and define the plan Key tasks: * Continue building/strengthening relations with stakeholders, extend to co-workers * Build the plan (initiatives/projects, timelines, metrics, resources) aligned to the priorities * Understand the market - customer insights and competitive landscape * Fill any urgent sales content gaps/needs * Start executing on a few key initiatives aligned to your priorities Deliverables: * Customer and market observations * Critical sales content gaps  * PMM Plan aligned to priorities * Put tracking mechanisms in place * Make resource asks  90 DAYS Goal: Validate your strategy/plan and start ramping to your peak efficiency level Key tasks: * Based on everything you learned so far (and resources available), iterate on your goal, strategy, priorities and plan * Get into full execution mode * Start delivering early results/wins  Deliverables: * Any revisions for your strategy and plan  * Completed initiatives and results Pro tips for near term impact (depends on your focus) If the near term focus is internal, then understand your stakeholders biggest pain or need and put a plan in motion to address that (assuming you agree with it of course). But ensure all the key stakeholders agree on the biggest pain to solve first. For example if the biggest problem is the sales enablement mechanisms, then work on that, and do market research and positioning later.  If your internal stakeholders are not screaming, then you have the luxury to focus on the external market. And you can follow the classic PMM sequence of initiatives (as they tend to be sequential) - understand the business, gather insights (customer, market competitive), craft positioning and messaging, build sales content, drive/support sales enablement, and start evangelizing (social, AR, PR, marketing content). I also liked what Suyog shared during his AMA. 

Time for some radical transparency.  I'm in the midst of this right now. Tomorrow is my 30-day milestone at Cisco Meraki. It's been an awesome first four weeks, and I'm really looking forward to what's next. (Shameless pitch - we're hiring, too!) The size of the company and team adds a layer of complexity here, but in general, this is your best chance to really focus on learning your customer, product, and market here. It's hard to go back and do this again, especially in growth mode, so don't throw this away! Also, don't limit yourself to 90 days. I like framing this as a "First 100 Days." It sounds more presidential and breaks you out of the calendar a bit. First 4 weeks: Product, Team and Market - Learn everything you can about the product, what's in flight, and what competitors are doing overall - Read research, talk to sales, get demo-ready if you can - Exit mindset: "I understand what we do, and for whom, and how we're doing it today." Mid-term 4-5 weeks: Customers and Message - Now you're getting into it. Meet with as many customers and prospects as possible - Build your point of view on the message, the gaps, and what needs fixing - Data, data, data. Now that you have context on the business, the numbers will make more sense - Exit mindset: "I believe I know what we should do next, and what the big problems are." Closing 4 weeks: Start your Execution - By now, you've got a sense of problems and plan - Dig in and start doing. Pick priorities carefully, and line them up with near-term company objectives - Ideally, have 1 early win under your belt, and 2-3 more on the horizon - Exit mindset: "Follow me - here's where we're going to go, and how we're going to get there.  Finally, don't lose sight of key wins you can deliver. These are great ways to contribute, build trust, and start working towards that bigger impact. Starting in Month 2, can you: * Get a "big topic" on the blog * Contribute an article to PR for publication at a third party * Speak on a webinar or customer event * Refresh the EBC/Exec deck * Fix a broken or inefficient process * Update an unloved or overlooked part of your site

There is a ramp plan that I like & have used many times, both for myself and members of the team. Like most things that are awesome, it takes the form of a very simple looking table. 3 Columns: * People: Meet with stakeholders and the team I will be working with, understanding their needs & determine how to best work with each person * Product: Learn the product, value prop, messaging, pitch and know how to do a killer demo * Business: Understand the buyer journey, key metrics, market and all the "math camp" things 4 Rows: * 30 Day: List of activities I will do in my first 30 days for each column * 60 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (more advanced) * 90 Day: List of activities I will do in my next 30 days (even more advanced) * Deliverables: These are "contained projects" I will take ownership of each month, so that while I'm learning things, I'm also shipping things. This plan is focused on successfully ramping during the first 90 days, its not focused on making a big impact during th first 90 days. This is because you are only the "newbie" for a limited period of time. The first 90 days are the time to ask all the questions, re-ask the same questions and have people spend hours explaining it all to you. This is not time that will come back, so its important to take advantage of it. TLDR: Don't short circuit your ramp, it will be the investment that will make the big impact possible. If your stakeholders see you asking insightful questions, ramping well on the business and mastering the product in the first 90 days, you're already winning.

Congrats on the new role! Very excited for you. I agree that it is good to have a 30-60-90 day plan and to make sure you can show progress and positive impact early yo make a good impression. That said, I would suggest you give yourself some time during the first 30 days to absorb as much as you can about the company, the interpersonal dynamics, the challenges and opportunities so you can then define and priorities in month 2 and deliver something of value in month 3 on the top 3 opportunities you identified in month 1 and worked on month 2 and 3.

It depends a little on what the situation is with PMM in the company you join (i.e. size and maturity, what the team is currently doing, what your role is going to be, whether you're an IC or a manager), but here's some things to think about: 30 days - this first month is all about getting the lay of the land and meeting everyone you'll be working with, building relationships and establishing your credibility! You won't get all of this done in the first 30 days but it's good to get started on these areas.  I think it's really important to listen and understand in this early stage, rather than come in and start immediately changing things - every business is different, and what you've done before might not necessarily be right at your new place. So seek to learn and understand first, before making a ton of changes.  * Build relationships: Meet with stakeholders across the business to understand how they work with PMM, what's working, what's not, and what they think is the highest priority. Ask lots of questions! This is also a great opportunity to start establishing how you'll work together. Identifying some small 'quick wins' can help establish your credibility and build relationships with those stakeholders. * Get to know your team: If you're starting in a management role, start getting to know your team and building a relationship. Establish with each person how they like to work, what support they need, how they like to be given feedback etc, and set expectations about how you like to work also. Get up to speed on what they're working on, what they think is working in the team, and what could be improved. Also get to know them as people! * Get to know the product: Understand what it does (actually use it!), what's good and bad, and understand the journey customers go on from prospect>customer  * Start to learn the business strategy and goals: This will help you know what you're working towards, and then you can prioritise what to focus on. Understand from your manager what the expectations of your role and team are, and start to identify where you can have most impact. * Get to know your customers and your market: 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. Read everything, listen to calls, talk to your sales team, research your competitors etc 60 days - as you begin to understand the current state of things, start to think about what you want prioritise working on and build out a plan. I like to identify some small quick wins and some bigger meatier longer-term projects. If you're a manager, you'll likely be building out a roadmap of sorts on what you want the team to work on, what your goals will be, and then getting buy-in from your team and other stakeholders. You'll also want to start having more in-depth discussions with your team members about their career growth and ambitions. 90 days - start executing on your plan! It really depends on what you've identified as the highest priority things to work on but hopefully you've got some quick wins under your belt and are starting on some of your meatier initiatives. 

I actually did a presentation on this about a month ago, which you can watch here. I don't split it out into 30-60-90 day increments, but within that period, these are the things I'd suggest doing: 1. Get to know your product - get demo certified, the same as your AEs 2. Start building key relationships internally - have lots of 1:1s 3. Create battlecards for your top 2-3 competitors 4. Put your positioning on paper 5. Define a product launch process 6. Set up your internal communication channels 7. Perform a content audit and find the gaps that need filling 8. Gather the tools, templates, frameworks that will accelerate your success Another late edition to this (added after my presentation) is to create your own PMM Charter. This is a foundational document that lays out the goals and objectives for your product daprtment. It helps you create guardrails for your team around the things that are in your wheelhouse, which will come in handy as people start firing projects at you.

I break up my 30-60-90 day plan into 4 phases of success for Product Marketing – it also includes focus for after your first 90 days, all outlined below.   You may not get to everything in each phase, or you may move through things faster – I use this as a guide and checklist to keep myself accountable. Following this has helped me identify what wins I can crush every 30 days. You can tailor it to your needs at your company and the level you are entering at. The key is to actively listen in interviews and cross-functional meetings and if anyone is working on something that syncs with your superpowers – speak up, ask questions about what they are doing and trying to achieve, schedule a 1:1 with them and volunteer to collaborate with them or take it off their plate. When you ask lots of questions and get to a point they don’t have an answer – that’s the signal to raise your hand and offer your help. Don’t go in guns blazing, it needs to be natural and collaborative. Show humbleness and mastery. PMMs are the strategic glue between product, marketing and your customers, we are not the main show and final end point. I also treat all internal stakeholders as one of my personas – get to know their pain points, what brings them value and how to speak to them. Also, during my 1:1 interviews with them, I’ll also ask if they have worked with a PMM before. If yes, I asked what worked well, what could’ve been better and discuss how we can work together to show the value I bring. If they’ve never worked with a PMM, I share with them what value I can bring and discuss how we can collaborate together. Tips here on how to approach all your stakeholders.   PMM Phases of Success The first 3 phases include execution (your wins) and they ramp up. See here for examples on quick wins.   30 DAYS: DISCOVERY * Listen, Ask Questions * 1:1 interviews with cross functional partners * Customer Interviews, ICP, personas, map customer journey * Product training, roadmap, launches to date * Analyze existing content, strategy, data * Research competitors 70% Discovery + 20% Strategy + 10% Execute 60 DAYS: STRATEGY * Think, Create, Iterate * Buy off on business plan: vision, headcount and OKRs, and PMM roadmap * Create PMM playbooks: * Messaging and positioning framework defined * GTM and product launch strategy defined * Pricing and packaging roadmap * Competitive intelligence framework / Amplification 60% Strategy + 30% Execute + 10% Iterate 90 DAYS: EXECUTION * Produce, Operationalize * Roll out PMM playbooks and frameworks * Have or identify how to get a team in place to fully execute * Uplevel existing team * Iterate and create efficiencies * Cadence established for customer interviews, GTM meetings, PMM standups, Working sessions, 1:1 80% Execute + 10% Strategy + 10% Iterate 91+ DAYS: SCALE * Refine, Scale, Expand * Focus on refining and tailoring playbooks and frameworks * Team in place is able to scale so we gain efficiencies * Ready to expand scope * Deep partnerships with cross-functional partners * Uplevel areas of development 30% Scale + 50% Execute + 10% Strategy + 10% Iterate

Here is what mine looked like roughly when I started about 9 months ago: 30 days: 1. Product onboarding and learning 2. Meet key people in PM, Sales, Marketing 3. Get introduced to tools used in the org 4. Understand the current messaging and positioning of the product(s)  5. Listen for key problems that we solve and internalise the personas and brand-level messaging 60 days: 1. Embed yourself in a customer conversation 2. Ride shotgun on monthly product updates 3. Study competitors and their market positioning 4. Review the state of sales enablement and plan for updates 5. Plan messaging updates if and as necessary 90 days: 1. Form opinions on current strategy and present an updated GTM back to the stakeholders 2. Create a GTM plan for any upcoming product changes in your portfolio This was how it went down for me and I think it covered off almost important bits of getting introduced to a new product, new target personas, and a new market. 

First 30 days -  Meet with key staholders across the company - ensure excitement for the mission and what you're about to take on. Ask key questions about their responsibilities, what they are working on, and describe a bit on how you plan on working together with them. Product marketing is all about relationship building, in fact its key to be succesful. Ensure you're speaking with and understanding the pain points of each stakeholder you speak with, and make sure you listen. Listen in on customer calls and recordings - Its imperative you start familiarizing yourself with the products and customers alike. My best approach is to get a complete recording of customer conversations that your sales team has, and start jotting down pain points you hear and truly understand how the product is being positioned, this will help you connect the dots down the road.  Acquire quick wins to show your chops - Quick wins are always nice. What is the biggest low hanging fruit you can take on in order to show your chops? Typically I like to work with the sales team early on, identify what they need, and build it. This helps establish relatioships with the team early on, and also helps with familiarizing yourself with the company.  60 - 90 Days:  Keep the 30 day momentum going. Continue to listen to calls, fill gaps, and familiarize yourself with the company. I would add a few more to the list now that you further understand whats happening:  Learn the product - Now that you understand whats happening across the company to a degree, make sure you get a sales engineer to show you details of the product. Talk to customers - get on a customer call and start surveying. Its important you hear first hand what your customers want and need.  Take Ownership - WIth whatever you're assigned to do, ensure you are taking ownership and leading the charge on what you're given. 

This is a great question, and one I thought deeply about prior to starting at Mode. Thankfully, I had a nice long break between Intercom and Mode which I leveraged for lots of down time 😉 but also as a time to reflect on how I wanted to approach those first 90 days. First, I'd recommend reading 'The First 90 days' by Michael Watkins. There was a lot of great information in here that I definitely borrowed from. Here is a birds eye view of how I applied it:  First 30 days - Listen! This can often be the hardest part of starting any new role. The urge to jump in and start proving value is very strong but without context and an understanding of the company, teams, problems, customers etc - this can be a detrimental move. So my goal was to spend the first 30 days building as much context as I possibly could. I met with as many people as I could - with the goal of learning about their roles in the company, asking for as much historical context they could provide, and digging into what challenges they were currently faciing - and how they saw product marketing playing a role in tackling those challenges. The goal was not to commit to anything, it was simply to listen. I listened to customer and prospect calls. I read, and read, and read - blogs, competitor sites and blogs, industry repots, substacks, internal docs, etc.  I joined right before a big product launch and a rebrand launch, so the urge to jump in was strong - and I did in fact pick up small pieces that I could help with, to start building the cross-functional muscle, but ultimately I measured the success of my first 30 days by how well I was able to start identifying gaps, and what priorities I was able to distill out of those gaps.  It is very important to align with your manager at this stage (and the rest) on their expectations - to ensure there is alignment - and pull up together at the end of those first 30/60/90 days.  First 60 days - Longer term goals / early wins Building context will continue well into the 60 days, but at around the 30 day mark there is a transition into taking action. What small wins have been identified, that you can start taking action against? Smaller wins usually can be accomplished without large x-functional buy in and without heavy internal resourcing. What larger gaps have been identified and how to start building a plan or brief to tackle those gaps? This is the time that it is also important to start setting up your strategic alliance. Who are you x-functional peers - and what standing meetings should you be joining, and reoccuring 1:1s should you be having? This is critical as you start to build out your plans as you'll likely need buy in from these peers, so set up the right working structure ahead of any plan execution. Bring them into your early thinking and ASK FOR FEEDBACK!  First 90 days - Rhthym and results By the 60 day mark you should be moving into a rhthym of work. You've established your aliances, you've implemented team rituals, you've identified gaps and problems to be solved and translated those into a plan for the next 1-2 quarters that outlines:  * top priorities * goals (success metrics) * specific milestons to achieving those goals * what outputs are associated with each priority  * alignment from manager and cross-functional counterparts  This is the time to start promoting yourself and your team as well. Build and share your team charter. Share your priorities, and set up the right structure for sharing out results. ASK FOR FEEDBACK and iterate.  There's a lot packed into each of these 30 day segments - but hopefully this provides a high-level overview of how to start a new role focused on optimizing for long-term success by setting up the right foundation first. Go slow to go fast. 🚀

Know your ARR/Pipegen numbers and analytics tools: Get comfortable with building reports and dashboards. Know how to run reports and play around with that data. You will start uncovering interesting things - ex: we are weak in a certain market segment or we tend to have higher win rate for certain industries or deal cycles are longer for certain regions - Each of these insights can lead you to move from being tactical to being strategic. Learn, experiment and gain new skills: So, am I suggesting you to do project management product launches? Yes. It is ok to do that if that is the business need. I will worry when it starts becoming a pattern and you do more project management that product marketing. In that case, have a conversation with your manager. Understand why this is happening? Is it because the company doesn’t have a project manager and you are the best one to do it OR is it because you are seen as a better fit for the project manager role. Both of these are solvable but your course of actions would be very different. Focus on some initiatives that may not be urgent but are very important: You will have unique advantage when these initiatives become urgent. Don’t think only about this quarter, think of the next and the one after that. Don’t compromise your on-going projects but still give some thoughts to the company priorities for the upcoming quarters. I am sure your management would be happy to discuss company priorities for the upcoming quarters. Company priorities are typically set 90 days in advance so that the rest of teams can craft their’s based on the company's priorities. A lot of people say know your customer but it is not easy for a junior PMM to ask to be part of a customer visit or CAB or sales call (been there!). One way to learn about your customers and in fact the most efficient way I found is to do win-loss interviews & analysis. Get your hands on as many win-loss reports as you can. Don't know where to find - go to Salesforce and run report and add loss reason (or something similar) field. Learn why customers buy or don't buy our products. Ask sales, what went well or what went wrong?  

That's an interesting question. I see the PMM role as the GTM strategy which includes a success launch. And I see PMMs as the owner of product messaging. Not sure I can help here. Now if you're looking to move beyond those tasks and elevate your role then that's different question with a different answer.

Does not matter if you are a junior PMM or a seasoned PMM leader - owning/coordinating launches and copywriting will always be part of your job in one way or another so embrace those, be the best at it, and use the experience to hone your craft. But you also don’t want to be pigeonholed into JUST being a project manager or copywriter - that’s when you need to make sure that you are working on a variety of projects in your role, and there are multiple ways to make that happen. * Have an open discussion with your manager and make sure that you have at least 1 big strategic initiative to own per quarter, whether that is helping define a new use case, building messaging or buyer personas, defining your ICP, helping sales with Win/Loss, etc - whatever the need is in your organization * Don’t wait to be told what to do. If you have ambition and want to grow in your role, just look at where the gaps are and take the initiative to fill them. For example, Market research or competitive analysis are usually things that get left on the back burner for a lot of orgs unless you have a large team to divide the work - so just go ahead and do that and share those insights with the relevant teams like the product or sales team. In order to be a more strategic PMM and for you to get a seat at any table, junior or not, you have to bring something of value to other teams - so figure out what is missing and just do it!

Having consulted for PMM teams, and built/run one from scratch, it's safe to say the areas of responsibility for any PMM is on an ever-evolving continuum. However, I see a difference between a junior PMM vs a first PMM hire... in that the first PMM hire should NOT be junior. That's not a knock on the junior role. In fact, I'm urging early stage Founders/CEOs/VP Marketing to have some semblance of a career path for PMM if your natural inclination is to maximize value from a high performing yet low cost junior PMM unicorn. It's possible, but unless that individual is truly exceptional the situation will quickly erode into lack of equity and anxiety. Why? Because it's easy to staff a PMM on any (and many) projects and not everyone can handle the load without prior exposure. To actually answer your question -- my advice to a junior PMM and first marketing hire: It was nice knowing you? Godspeed? Jokes aside, have an honest and mature conversation with your manager on the expectations if you see the mound of projects transform into a mountain overnight. A critical skill to becoming a successful PMM is stakholder management, so it ought to start early in your career whether it's with your manager, his/her boss, or your peers. Finally, don't hesitate to ask for help to prioritize when you're overwhelmed 

Being a launch project manager is part of the job – PMMs own product launches, the creation, strategy and management of it. Being a strong copywriter for releases is also part of the job. We write a lot of content or partner with writers and clean up their content so we can use these for our product launches. If you don’t like writing, then being a PMM may not be for you, it’s a core skill set and PMM leaders pass on candidates that tell us they don't like to write. Both these skills are needed in a full stack PMM. If you are asking how to be more strategic and be seen as more strategic, please look at my phases of success for a PMM in my first 100 days here. And look here for the best skills and traits I think a PMM should have. 

Build relationships with your stakeholders in Product Management, Sales and other Marketing teams (Content, Digital, DG, Integrated, etc.). Ask them to invite you to meetings and listen intently to identify areas where they need help, and volunteer to help with with those areas - e.g. market trends analysis, customer segmentation, competitive analysis, content creation, sales enablement collateral, etc. In short, take the initiative to rise above your title and rank and prove to your stakeholders that you have what it takes to deliver meaningful impact on the business.

My advice is to work on building relationship with the Product org. Proactively find ways you can bring them value - whether it be through market or competitive insights, product teardowns, industry knowledge, customer insights, etc. Find out what information they wish they had more of, and figure out how you can bring that to them.  This partnership is so important for PMMs - and will help break down the metaphorical wall that stands between product and marketing, that products are tossed over to be shipped. This relationship should be bi-lateral. 

Product Marketers should always be thinking of ways to contribute directly to revenue. In my mind, if it doesn't move the needle, its not meant to be worked on. Prioritization needs to be ruthlessly put into check. Product Marketers should always key in on: * Driving pipeline and top-line revenue growth, inclusive of new logo and cross-sell / up-sell (land & expand growth) * Partner with Enablement to ensure quota-carrying teams know what to say to whom and when * Develop strategic sales plays

If you are a junior product marketing manager who is the first product marketing hire, you may be facing some unique challenges and opportunities. To succeed in this role, here are some pieces of advice to keep in mind: 1. Deeply understand the product and market: Take the time to thoroughly understand the product that you are marketing and the market it is targeting. This will help you position and promote the product effectively and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise to others. You should become the product, market, and users Wikipedia.  2. Build relationships with other teams: As the first product marketing hire, you will need to build strong relationships with other teams, such as Product Management, Sales, and Marketing. This will help you understand their perspectives and priorities, and will also make it easier for you to get the support and resources you need to succeed. 3. Be proactive and take initiative: As a team of one, you will need to be proactive and take on all PMM initiatives because no one else will do them :) 4. Seek guidance and support: As a junior product marketing manager, you may not have all the knowledge and experience you need to succeed. Seek help from more experienced colleagues in cross-functional roles (PMs, sales, marketing), PMM mentors, and product marketing communities like Sharebird or Product Marketing Alliance. 5. Be patient and persistent: Building a successful product marketing function from scratch can be a challenging and rewarding process. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes and adapt your approach as needed. Good luck to the junior PMM who asked this question ❤️