Internal alignment takes time. Here are a few recommendations for getting
started and fostering strong relationships for the long term. First - it's
important to recognize and write down who your stak
Product Marketing Stakeholders
4 answers
Product Marketing SME, AWS at Amazon • February 9
Head of Product Marketing at Retool • October 6
Product marketers have to work with a lot of stakeholders! I always recommend
two strategies for keeping internal stakeholders aligned—and they both require
consistent work. I recommend rigorous docu
Director of Product Marketing at Sanity.io | Formerly Twilio, SendGrid • November 29
While this will depend on the company culture and existing relationships across
stakeholders, there are first principles that I always find helpful. Crystalize
your story and strategy first. Start b
Director of Product Marketing at Attentive • March 16
Getting stakeholder alignment is critical for the success of any project or
initiative. I think this skill set is even more important to a PMM as a large
part of the job is getting teams aligned on th
4 answers
Head (VP) of Global Enablement at Benchling • January 24
What a great question. One thing I do in almost all my teams is run them in
agile sprints - they can be two weeks, three weeks, or monthly depending on the
speed of business. As part of this, one thin
VP, Product and Growth Marketing at 1Password | Formerly Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, LinkedIn • February 11
I completely agree that PMMs are highly cross-functional and often broadly
scoped. The common trap I’ve seen us fall into is that of “peanut-buttering”,
spreading ourselves thin over a broad range of
Vice President Product Marketing at AppFolio • April 6
Set boundaries and clear expectations with the various stakeholders you work
with. Don't commit to crazy timelines. If a crazy timeline is unavoidable,
communicate what you will have to trade off. C
Director of Product Marketing at Attentive • March 16
There are a few things that I believe help PMMs to prioritize and manage
expectations across the organization. Creating quarterly and annual plans. These
plans should include the top priorities for y
17 answers
Head of Lightroom Product Marketing at Adobe • August 2
Thoughtful answers, Feng! In my experience, resource-wise its best to be with
the marketing team & budget. Tech-wise, product. If you want to pull your hair
out all the time, sales :)
VP, Product at Barracuda Networks • August 3
This reminds me of the classic "SDR team in sales or marketing" debate. The
answer is that it can work in either place and really doesn't matter as long as
PMM and the rest of marketing are communicat
Director of Product Marketing at Skopenow • August 18
It can work in many places, but I find it to be the most effective if it is
either within Marketing or on its own entirely so that marketing is properly on
message. I often draw a venn diagram of prod
Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco • March 11
I have been in marketing and product org -- both places and see pros and cons
for both. It all depends on the strength of the PM team and their skills. > If
PM team is strong enough to own end-t
Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • July 4
Based on some research we did (admittendly small sample size), we found that 2/3
report to CMO / VP Marketing and only ~10% to Product. Source: A New Definition
of Product Marketing At this stage
Vice President of Marketing at Snorkel AI • July 9
Product Management and Product Marketing are two sides of the same coin.
Organizationally there are benefits to both approaches. As a product manager, I
have had product marketers on my team, and as a
PMO at TikTok • August 13
This is related to the question above with regards to marketing's ability to
influence the roadmap. There's no right or wrong way to do this. It's a matter
of the role a CEO wants marketing to play wi
Senior Director, Technology Marketing and Communications at Zendesk • February 4
I personally think Product Marketing should report into Marketing with the head
of the whole product marketing function reporting directly to the CMO. This is
exactly how we’re organized at Zendesk an
Vice President Product Marketing at Unity | Formerly Splunk, New Relic, Microsoft, Oracle • February 9
I firmly believe that Product Marketing should report into the Marketing org for
one central reason: PMM is a communications-driven role requiring the ability to
effectively craft and convey messages
Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • May 5
The more technical your product and complex your use cases, i.e. selling to
enterprise customers, then PMM can report into Product. This is what we do at
Zuora and other companies I’ve worked at. The
Senior Director of Product Management at GitHub • June 13
I've reported into both in my career and the best I can come up with is "it
depends". As an overall philosophy, I would generally prefer to report into
marketing, because it creates the right level of
CEO at Product School • July 15
A Product Marketing Manager’s position varies depending on the company. However,
you will find yourself from time to time working very closely together with the
PM and count yourselves as part of the
Product Marketing Manager at Metric • March 10
I believe it should always report to Marketing as the role directly links with
messaging, personas, and understanding customers and all these things come into
marketing. This is exactly how we are des
9 answers
Product Lead at Square • November 16
Great question. I always tell my team that as product marketers we are the
bridge between product development and the broader marketing & sales teams. We
focus relationship building and collaborat
Product Marketing Lead at Square | Formerly Sprout Social • October 15
This is a great question. A fair amount has been written about where Product
Marketing should exist within the broader company structure—just Google "where
should Product Marketing report" and you'll
Product Lead, Ecosystem Discovery at Square | Formerly Mparticle • December 9
Within a large marketing team I have always positioned the Product Marketing
team as the experts who are the go-to people for any product question and I make
sure we indeed are. One of my personal rea
Head of Marketing at Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 12
Love this question and something I had to do a ton when I first got to Eats and
everybody was like - hold on, what is Product Marketing? I talk a lot about
internal marketing and say you have to Pro
Vice President Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • April 15
Product marketing's biggest challenge (no matter anywhere I go) is defining the
scope and sticking to it. Anything under the sun that is not Demand Gen or SEO
tends to be seen as a job for product mar
Sr. Director and Head of Product Marketing at Gem • May 6
I’ve found that most companies want the most capable people doing the most
important work. If you prove your value as a PMM by making the team and company
successful, bigger and better projects will n
Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • October 25
Being clear about what PMM's role and mission is, and ensuring other marketing
leaders understand what your team does and doesn't do. Have open discussions
about where there might be overlap between
Director of Product Marketing at Backbase • March 1
Define (with your team) a short, memorable mission statement. Create a short
slide deck that introduce your team, its mission, what you stand for, and some
of the work you're the most proud of Show t
10 answers
Head of Marketing at Discord | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts • December 12
Great question! I think about this one a lot...First off, it’s important to
callout that there is no perfect org structure :) In general, you have to
identify what you’re optimizing towards and what
Product Marketing Lead at Atlassian • January 16
This all comes down to how is the rest of the business organized. If you're
organizing in a way that's incongrous to everyone else in the org, you will not
be setup for success. With smaller nimble te
Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • November 10
In general, PMM roles at Intercom are more of the 'full stack' variety - i.e we
cover the whole journey from feeding into the roadmap to launch, including
competitive research, buyer/persona/market re
Head of Product Marketing, Platform & Commerce at Atlassian • December 22
The structure of the PMM team is usually a function of the size of the company
and it’s GTM model. The “typical” SaaS PMM team has a set of Core PMMs that are
focused on product, and usually a sister
Product Marketing at Fiddler AI • March 16
The PMM team structure depends on the size of the company, how technical the
product is, and the GTM model. Company Size: As the company grows and scales,
PMM tends to fall under the Marketing org an
VP of Product Marketing at Oyster® • September 29
Our team is structured by audience type and discipline. We have one part of the
team focused on our end users and prospects, another part of the team is focused
on our partners, and a third on market
Product Marketing Lead at Google | Formerly DocuSign • January 24
At DocuSign, there are product marketers across our main product categories, as
well as industry and audience teams. Every company I've ever worked at has
grouped their teams differently, so I tend to
Vice President Product Marketing at Salesforce • August 11
I've done it in so many different ways! Few quick pointers: The most important
thing is to ensure every team member has a good swim lane and growth path. Take
your revenue goal and slice that evenl
Sendbird is an in-app conversations platform, where we help improve customer
retention and conversion through chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs. Our
team is structured as follows: GTM excellenc
Former CMO at Dejero | Formerly ON Semiconductor • February 23
It depends on multiple factors, as others have pointed out, including company
size, number of markets served, number of products/solutions, GTM model, and
alignment with the rest of the organization (
How does this inform your core messaging, how do you enable sales to understand what makes you different/better, how do you know if it's working with your target buyers?
12 answers
VP of Marketing at NetSpring • December 9
There are many stakeholders when it comes to competitive intelligence and
aligning messaging and product strategy with competitive differentiation. I have
found an effective model where PMM is the the
Head of Product Marketing at Ramp | Formerly Zendesk, ThoughtSpot, Oracle • June 22
Ideally, your brand positioning pillars are unique enough individually or in
combination with each other that competitive positioning is baked in.
Effectively enabling sales is about educating them o
Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp • September 23
Competitive differentiation should make up the pillars of your messaging and
value proposition. The reason being is that most markets are crowded and
customers can choose from many alterntatives, so y
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Productboard • December 14
Competitive differentiation is what forms your positioning and what you build
your messaging around. With how crowded every market category is now its
essential to nail your differentiation and then c
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • April 13
The answer here is in the question. My approach to differentiation starts with
understanding why the product or service you're responsible is uniquely suited
to a specific customer. And then focus on
Vice President Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • July 7
Competitive positioning is a key component of defining core messaging. If we sit
down and come up with copy on how to best describe our offerings, a key step is
to compare that against how competitors
Market Intelligence Lead at Airtable • September 20
Our competitive differentiation is central to our overall company/product
positioning. They're almost the same thing. We have a high-level view of our
position in the market vs other categories of too
VP Global Head of Product Marketing at Shopify • November 16
With messaging, the one thing that I always push my team to think about is
what’s unique to Shopify that no one else can own. Can someone slap their brand
on top and say the same things? If so, the me
Vice President of Product Marketing at GitLab • January 31
I have a few lenses that I look through for competitive differentiation: 1. The
Positioning Canvas -- I mentioned this in an earlier question, but it's worth
repeating the effectiveness of April Dunf
Senior Director, Product Marketing at MURAL • February 16
The most important aspect of competitive differentiation is that it's authentic
and resonates with the customer and/or user. From a core messaging standpoint,
you first and foremost want to focus on
8 answers
Vice President Product Marketing / GTM at Wrike • April 9
Generally, product marketing creates messaging guides for new products,
features, pricing, campaigns, company positioning, etc. While develop the
messaging guide, we typically solicity input from oth
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Heap • June 9
I mentioned in another post that I have come up with a structured process for
messaging development. with my team of product managers and product marketers, I
work through a series of questions that
Head of Product & Growth Marketing at Qualia • August 24
In my view, the whole point of messaging guides is that they are shared as
widely and as openly in your organization as possible. We actually keep a
"launch tracker" document (google sheets file) that
Vice President of Product Marketing at Workato • September 28
One thing I try not to do is share content or messaging without walking the
person I want to get feedback from through the context and purpose live on a
call/zoom. Sending something over for feedback
What I’ve learned from great leaders who are able to inspire and motivate is to
gain consensus before you walk into the room. This is pretty much how I have
shared messaging guides internally to ensur
Director of Product Marketing & Lifecycle Marketing at Loom • December 2
We are still working on refining our process here, however, our usual process is
to attend the commercial team all-hands to notify them of any new messaging
guides and materials and then we record a m
Co-Founder at Messages That Matter • February 13
I have my clients create a team responsible for positioning a B2B product and
seeking input and feedback throughout the process from key stakeholders -
especially sales. Once the team is confident tha
3 answers
Senior Director, Marketing at Figma • December 3
At all the companies I’ve been at, the one consistent segmentation lens has
always been company size. Bigger company = more people = more licenses you can
sell. Other lens can be the types of custom
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms • February 13
I always segment in three dimensions: One traditional segmentation metric (size,
industry, geography, etc.); the problems experienced (that create a need for the
product); the different stakeholders (
Product Marketing @ Twilio Segment at Twilio | Formerly Amazon • February 7
Depending on which part of the funnel you want to segment and whether its for
customers or prospects. An often great place to start for customer segmentation
is looking at the customer lifecycle, and
Do you see value in having both roles, e.g. Integrated team works more closely with the creative team on seasonal/holiday/brand campaigns whereas Product Marketing works more closely with the Product team on product launches, user research/insights, positioning strategy, etc. I have found it challenging for Product Marketing to own all of this, and often see different skill sets from marketers who are great at creative brand campaigns vs. PMMs who are skilled at positioning a new product and bringing it to market.
7 answers
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Trust at LinkedIn • August 25
On the Consumer side (where I sit) we have Brand Marketers and Product
Marketers. Product Marketers need to deeply understand the value prop,
positioning and user needs of the product. A big part of t
Head Of Marketing at Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • June 16
I think there is a ton of value in having these teams work closely but separated
into specific pods. As you noted, there are different skillsets here and they
can be even more effective when given the
Head of Marketing, Google Maps Platform at Google • December 21
At my current company, these roles are different and lean on the different
skills that you mention! That said, at smaller organizations, or even smaller
marketing organizations, you may not have the l
Director, Product Marketing at Amplitude • January 26
I see those as different skills sets and usually different teams but I don't
think there are strict lines in between them. Product Marketers should own the
story, the core positioning and messaging, t
Head of Product Marketing at Ethos Life | Formerly Meta, Microsoft • February 17
Yes, great question! As a PMM, I've always worked closely with a separate
integrated/brand marketing function. The PMM sits closer to product/eng, is more
initimately familiar with the product, owns i
Director of Product Marketing, Global Insights Solutions @ Momentive at Momentive (SurveyMonkey) | Formerly SurveyMonkey, Nielsen • December 6
It's been a while since we've had an integrated marketing function at Momentive,
but here's how I'd envision this working: Product marketing owns: - Buyer
persona research, development, and enablemen
Vice President, Product Marketing at DigitalOcean • February 6
I have seen this done differently in different organizations. There is no right
or wrong way. However, I firmly believe that the Product Marketer should own the
narrative for their product. If it is
11 answers
VP of Marketing at Spekit • January 17
Hopefully I don't make this answer overly complex. I think the more important
question here is what are you actively working on? Because product marketing can
cover such a wide variety of activities
General Partner at Unusual Ventures • January 22
Definitely echo the fact that Product marketing KPIs need to keep evolving with
the focus that the organization currently has. When I was at Amplitude, we came
up with some strong *impact* metrics t
Chief Marketing Officer at Crayon • December 20
Agreed with the other answers about aligning impact with focus areas for the
business as a whole. Though I also like to have some consistent metrics to be
able to see some longer term trends. There's
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Highspot • January 24
Full disclosure - I work for Highspot - but we do use our own platforrm and one
of the benefits of it is that we can see usage and buyer enagement analytics for
all of the content we create. It's a qu
Co-founder & CEO at Chameleon • February 4
Curious to know if there are any metrics that the Product Marketing function is
accountable for any metrics?I know there is such a wide variety of jobs that
Product Marketers do, but for example, if t
Chief Growth Officer at Verifiable • March 26
Recently PMM has been very involved with top-of-funnel marketing and campaigns,
so a lot of the typical metrics you might suspect in a campaign are ways we
measure success for these (Leads, MQLs, MQL&
Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8
While there is no "one size fits all" metric that works for product marketing,
my recommendation is to try to align your goals with either sales, demand gen,
or product depending on what you're workin
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5
Sales win rate, more specifically competitive win rateMake sure that you're reps
are populating a "primary competitor" field in your CRM so you can track this
effectively. You'll then be able to trac