Product Marketing Career Path

Retaining talent is one of those things that has no magic bullet. I believe keeping talent, begins with hiring the right talent in the first place. Obviously you need to be hiring for someone who aligns with your company culture, mission and is talented and make sure you pay them well, give them ...more

Retaining good talent for high demand roles in a competitive market is, obviously, tough. But I think it's also easy to overthink it. Not to oversimplify, but two things I always try to keep in mind are: * Continuously providing new opportunities: It's easy to get stuck in a rut if you feel ...more

There’s definitely core management competencies you have to focus on that are true of any role which I won’t go into (e.g. developing your people, advocating for them and backing them up, etc.). But I think something we as product marketing leaders need to focus on is making the job exciting and ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Let me ask you a question: What are the top 3 reasons people join, stay or leave companies? Answer... 1. Company (culture, potential, growth) 2. Job (fit, growth potential and salary) 3. Manager (leadership qualities, chemistry, trust, etc.) The first is mostly not in your control. You are ...more

Having a culture of openness and transparency across the team. Strong support in the development and alignment with each individual PMMs career & skill development roadmap. Finally, you offer interesting and stretching projectsthat spike passions and, as a manager, give your team the guardrails t...more

I think you have to remember that people typically stay with an organization when 5 things exist: 1. A great culture that they believe in 2. Sticky relationships with their peers 3. Good pay & benefits 4. They're appreciated and can see how they can grow their careers 5. Good work/life bala...more

That's an especially important question for PMM leaders today. There are a few key components to pay attention to: - Compensation - Work - Growth First is to ensure your people are being paid fairly. This means always keeping an eye on the market rate for people on your team and whether the...more

I focus on the fundamentals: 1. Opportunity - how does each person on the team have opportunity to grow? 2. Appreciation - so many ways to show appreciation, big and small 3. Prioritize the person - work is work, life is bigger. walk the walk on making it work for them to prioritize thei...more

Retention is a hard topic and I personally think a healthy amount of rotation across different companies and roles is critical to develop a robust PMM skillset, so I have that in mind when I think about the team's I've managed and how to provide them with what they need to feel motivated and cont...more

I admit, that’s a tough one. When you say ‘critical’ feedback, I hope it’s still constructive rather than just tearing you down. 1) If the feedback is just criticism, it’s time to move on to a new boss. It’s not your job to mentor your boss on how to work positively with people. 2) If the feedba...more

Its important to have a maanger who believes in you and supports your career. I'd break the meetings apart into weekly tactical conversations about what needs to be done, blockers, etc. Monthly convos around areas for improvement and then quarterly convos regarding career development. If you have...more

First of all - I empathize with you and I know it's hard to receive critical feedback, but I applaud your interest in wanting to do something about this feedback and improve it. Feedback and manager relationships are often tough to navigate and there is no one-size-fits-all answer, but I'll share...more

I believe there is no hard / fast rule about requiring an MBA. I have seen plenty of young graduates make the transition to product marketing. The first year or two is critical in terms of the kind of experience you gather that would help you to position yourself in product marketing.  - pick ...more

I agree with a lot of Savita's points above. I see a lot of new grads who are interested in product marketing and recommend most new grads to try to build up general marketing skills before they try to move into product marketing roles which are often more senior or more specialized.  I like s...more

It is possible to start a junior product marketing role straight out of college, but a true PMM role requires some real world skills. As a hiring managers, these are some of the things I look for: 1. High maturity and tact: Product Marketing roles are intensely cross functional with the nee...more

Written and oral communication are probably the most important skills you can develop, as they will help you get a foot in the door early in your career and also will continue to be useful throughout your whole career. Going straight into product marketing without any background in it is difficu...more

You should seek out product marketing specialist roles. In such a role you'll get to help product marketing managers conduct market, customer and competitive research, analyze data on product adoption and new customer acquisition, and develop marketing content and sales collateral. You'll have op...more

Product Marketing Specialists, Associates or General Marketing Specialist roles are good roles to kick-off your career in Product Marketing. They all will require you to develop Product Marketing skillsets and eventually become proficient in them -- including areas like working with Product/Tech ...more

Perhaps this is controversial, but I would say there are zero pros and many, many cons.   MBAs can be useful if you're looking to switch fields. Otherwise, I'd much rather see two additional years of work experience. I've hired MBAs from top 15 schools and from a PMM perspective, I was basicall...more

It really depends on your goals and the current situation. In my humble opinion, the value of an MBA is likely to be higher if one or a few of the following things are true about you: 1. You're trying to change your role/function (and having a hard time doing it without a degree) 2. You're trying...more

If you are literally looking to stay in product marketing or marketing (and already have a job in the field) then I would agree with the other posters that an MBA is not going to get you much. However, if you have designs to move into (strategic) product management, start your own company, or ...more

Most of my career has been spent in Marketing and I used my MBA to transition industries (from CPG to Tech) and location (from Latin America/regional teams to the United States/global teams).  While I had practical experience as a Marketer, what I learned through my MBA is the strategic and an...more

It's funny, I've been working on a deck looking at exactly this question. It's fascinating how much it varies from company to company. We're moving to a place where the distinctions between product marketing and brand marketing are becoming increasingly blurry. Think of it as simply different pro...more

For companies of a certain DNA (Bay Area, technology), brand marketing is not a priority compared to being able to measure the performance of your own marketing, with a philosophy of investigating what works and what doesn't. That's because the company likely has a demand problem, not a brand pro...more

Just a feedback on the last comment, as I reacquaint myself to the "new" bay area. I have noticed more emphasis on demand gen skills amongst many startups. If there are stakeholders in the company already like product management and technical marketing who are also good at writing, messaging, pos...more

First, you can not decouple analytical skills from brand marketing skills. They are not mutually exclusive. You are right that there is more emphasis on analytical skills in job description for product marketers. Primarily because analytical skills are easier to evaluate. They are also critical b...more

100% agree with Suyog. Nothing we do exists in a vacuum and all of the positioning and messaging we bring to market should be looked at from a brand lens to ensure consistency. Ultimately, the consumer is not going to differentiate what’s brand marketing and what’s product marketing. It’s all the...more

I definitely appreciate this tension -- and in a perfect world you find the right mix of both on the team. Analytical skills will benefit our understanding of market sizing and opportunity, pricing and packaging decisions and so on. The "brand" or creative skillset would aid in storytelling aroun...more

Analytical skills tend to be the preferred skill set of a product marketer because they are "running the business". Product Marketers own a product's P&L and must have the business acumen to drive revenue. Important the ones trying to size and segment the marketplace. Additionally, they'll probab...more

You've hit upon one of the reasons why marketing in tech is a neverending challenge (and the fun part IMO). I think the best marketers have both strong analytical skills and grasp how to build long-lasting brands based on an emotional connection with their customer. If your goal is to one day lea...more

Brand is more than just a logo or color palette or tag line. Brand is the combination of customer touchpoints that create meaning and belonging for that customer...Brand attracts the customer in the first place, for sure, but brand shows up in how the product delivers on its promise, how customer...more

Understanding how Brand Marketing works is critical to succeed in Product Marketing as these two teams work closely together to bring any Marketing and Product work to life. Brand Marketing thinks about creating a long-term, strategic plan to continuously boost a brand's recognition and reputa...more

There are always going to be a million things that you feel need to be done. PMMs by nature want to take on everything, but the fact is, even though things might seem critical, not everything needs to be done right away. Especially in the absence of a senior marketing leader who can help triage p...more

The most straightforward way to manage this might be to divide the products between the two of you in an even way - where each of you has a clear line of ownership, end-to-end, of your skews. This will be less messy to untangle as you hire new pmms, where you can hand off speficic product areas i...more

I think there are a couple ways I'd think about it - and it would depend on what the PM organization looks like and the individual skills of the folks on the PMM team (if already in-seat).  Approach 1 - Make one of the PMMs Product-facing (handling predominantly new product/feature introductions...more

I would look at 2 vectors. * What products/features are critical in winning deals. At Honeycomb, our Sales Engineering leader looked at all closed/won deals in a given time frame and indicated which products/features were most important in successful POCs. We’re putting PMM ownership o...more

Fun! It sounds like you have so much potential for impact. I would recommend looking at your external and internal factors. So it'd be tempting with a "complex" feature set to say - split it into equal sets of product to become expert in. But the thing is - I may be unpopular for saying this -...more

To start I'd say thorough competitive research is the foundation of great product marketing, so it's great that your company is investing in it. It's really important for the PMM that owns a product to be an expert on both direct and indirect competitors. Competitive research shouldn't happen in ...more

Sales and customers will be your most vital partners for this task. They will have likely have had multiple run-ins with your competitors. As a result, they will give you an excellent high-level understanding of competitive pitches, pricing, what attracted customers to them, and how the market, i...more

The definition of "Extensive competitive product research" may be different for different people. I suggest asking the CEO and Product / Engineering teams the kind of questions they are looking to answer. Sometimes the high level market research you can get from a 3rd party will not be enough, an...more

The industry sector you deal with may lead to different suggestions. In general, however, “product research” may suggest you are working on a new product launch or re-staging. In such cases, begin with the framework, consider the research tools, and then move to the operating part of the research...more

We all miss the mark here. I'm not even sure I would trust a PMM that says they don't struggle with this! You can stack the deck though, to show that you're exploring every possible avenue:  1. Consider a competitive monitoring solution like Crayon. I've used them in the past and even if they ca...more

My first recommendation would be to make sure you understand exactly what exactly your stakeholders are wanting to know (and why). Are they looking at making product decisions based on this information? Adjusting the pricing? Refining the messaging? Knowing the strategic goals behind the request ...more

This is definitely tricky since getting in-depth product intel requires intimate knowledge about your competitors products. One technique some companies employ is mystery shopping research where you hire a researcher to pose as a buyer, but your organization may have a stance against this type of...more

I’d clarify upfront what they are hoping to achieve with the exercise. Is it for internal knowledge? To publish competitive checklists on your website? What will it mean for them to know how your tech stacks up in the market? Clarifying and getting alignment on how the information will be used an...more

Not sure what mark you're missing. But your CEO and product/eng team are probably looking for (1) an overview of the space, where everyone is going (2) highlighting a few players and going deep dive into why they're building it and who they are building for. [I would hire a secret shopper for the...more

If your'e missing the mark, take a step back. Make sure you have a clear understanding of the business challenge you're trying to solve (why do we need this research, what decisions will it help drive). I will share a tangable example of how we approached "how does our tech stack up" At a previ...more

The best competitive research I've seen goes beyond the competitor's website, press releases and YouTube videos. They might include competitor customer interviews and tailored sales demos. I've personally worked with great small businesses and consultants who are experts in doing this analysis an...more

Here are some tips based on my eperience: 1. Keeping up with competitive product research, especially in tech, is hard: The tech space evolves at a rapid pace and your research can become absolute/stale within few weeks. Provide competitive intelligence back to your CEO/Product teams at an agree...more

I think this one just dropped in. Let's do it live! My gut reaction is: If you're being asked to do "extensive competitive research," something is broken. And you should say no, gracefully. It's very difficult, if not impossible to learn how to win in a market by looking at a competitive produ...more

There's no silver bullet for this. You want to bake competitive research into everything you do and have your antennae out. The cool thing about product marketing is that done right, you have a unique vantage point. You are the closest members of your team to customer conversastions, product conv...more

I came from a background in brand and so my natural instincts served me most well on the outbound side of product marketing. I had my fair share of imposter syndrom in the early days when I looked at my peers and realized that I'd never done the traditional inbound work of a PMM. I spent more ...more

I spent a lot of time in my early career worrying about getting to the next promotion and how I was progressing versus my peers. Looking back now, this was all wasted energy. I wish I had been more focused on learning and picking up as many skills and experiences as possible. I also wish I had be...more

One thing I wish I learned earlier is the most powerful product marketing you can do is always centered on a shared human truth. When I look back on my very early PMM GTM work, I focused primarily on communicating about the product and the benefit derived from the features themselves. But the pro...more

There is one key learning: Actively plan & manage your development. Here is what is involved: * Know the menu: Since Product Marketing is such a broad discipline, its important to understand the various functional competenices that comprise it. This way, you can assess where you have str...more

When you're starting out your career as a PMM, it is very important to remember that your value promise is to customers and not internal stakeholders. I don't mean to say that internal alignment and buy-in isn't important but it should never take priority over serving your customers. In my early ...more

Yes, the easiest way to make this transition is to try to move into the Product Marketing org in your current company. I recommend getting to know some of the folks on the Product Marketing team. Ask them about their jobs and figure out if there are things you can do in your current job to prepar...more

  It is certainly possible to move into Product Marketing from a Digital Marketing role. Look a bit more holistically, where are you now in terms of knowledge and where you want to be? Which gaps you should fill and how? What can you do to get to where you want to be?  Here are a few optio...more

Thank you for your question. It's true that sometimes hiring managers look for the steretoypical background markers such as years of experience when evaluating candidates for product marketing. But in my experience I don't find those to be strong indicators of how well you are going to perform as...more

You might considering pitching yourself for a technical PMM role - or a technical associate PMM. My guess is you have a lot of experience with the more technical aspects of the product (and you’re certainly not afraid of it!) and, depending on the company, there is often a need for a technical pr...more

I'll start by saying that I love the initiative you're taking to break into product marketing. It sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things. A lot more than most who are in your shoes.  I think my first question would be why are you preferring to look externally for your first PMM role...more

First off, I would say that Product Marketing is in demand in the market and the most critical skill set is a passion for understanding the customer and crafting messaging. If you can show a deep empathy for customers and research how a product actually matches a specific customer need, then you ...more

It's a great time to get into Product Marketing - demand is high, and supply is low.  In my experience, great PMMs and PMs come from a wide variety of backgrounds, so there is no "one perfect path". They key is to take your existing skills and knowledge and position it in a way that matches th...more