Product Marketing Skills

I was a PMM before being made a PML. I suspect that I might still be functioning as a PMM.

I find that product marketing has become a position that doesn’t require much experience. You can be fairly seasoned and compete with someone that is just out of undergraduate because the discipline is not the same in tech as it might be in consumer goods or retail.

I find that interviewers very often focus on the hard skills, but I think it’s the soft skills that can make/break a candidate. I usually try to highlight my soft skills within the context of my “STAR” stories.

i.e. working at a large company with minimal scope, focusing on sales enablement but knowing you need experience on the product launch side, other marketing teams covering responsibilities, etc.

I'm a PMM with 4+ YOE and I work at a B2B SaaS company. The issue is that I only have content marketing, sales enablement and campaign management experience, and NO product launch or go-to market experience. Across different interviews, I've been rejected because I'm not able to come up with strategies for positioning a new product in the market. I've consumed several courses and understand the theories now. But I don't have any practical experience of working with the Product team for launch. How do I leverage my theoretical knowledge into practical applications and crack interviews?

I will work to see how I can accomplish this at my current company, but there are limited slots and I may need to go elsewhere. I know PMM is different at different companies, but it's helpful to hear what you look for

What pragmatic marketing courses would you recommend for a 15-year veteran marketer who is new to Product Marketing? My boss is recommending Pragmatic Institute, but I'm curious what is the most-effective course/certification. I want to be sure that I can actually apply the concepts I learn versus signing up for a course that is entry level and not worth it. It would be great if I could converse with the instructor about my particular work situation so that I can better understand how to apply the concepts.

Typically, these roles require 3-5 years of experience and/or an MBA. Are there roles we should target instead that will help transition into product marketing? What qualities do you want to see in young professionals that want to land in product marketing?

There is often a huge emphasis on analytical skills, instead of brand marketing skills, when it comes to product marketing job descriptions.

I am finding it difficult to get call back from any larger companies due to only having small to midsize startups on my resume.

I get a lot of critical feedback from my boss and I don't always know what to do with it or how to improve. Sometimes I don't even agree with the feedback.