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Building a Product Marketing Team
Building a Product Marketing Team
6 answers
Director of Brand and Product Marketing, Twilio.org at Twilio
We match internal promotion based on the level of the product announcement.
Small updates are little features that mostly existing customers are excited
about. Medium updates are larger changes that potentially open up a small new
audience or unlock new revenue potential. Large updates are major product
changes or brand new products that require significantly adjusting our go to
market strategy.
Small updates: Monthly email to sales, slack message to success
Medium updates: ^ + dedicated email to sales/success + all company slack channel
+ join sales all hands recurring meeting to train...more
VP of Marketing at Builder.io
Internal comms is sometimes undervalued, but in my opinion, it is one of the
most important parts of a PMM's role, especially because product marketing is
one of the very few roles that are extremely cross-functional and sits between
multiple teams. Here are few ways I've seen it work best:
* For major XF projects, have regular update emails so that you can make sure
you are bringing everyone along the journey and it does not feel like you are
working in a black box.
* Internal newsletters (whatever cadence works for your org). We partner with
the product team on a monthly newsl...more
Head of Product Marketing at Sendbird | Formerly SmartRecruiters, Mixpanel, Deloitte
Internal newsletters, revenue org all-hands, relevant slack channels, and
team-specific meetings.
Of course, not every activity is shared through every channel. Depending on the
"size" of the project or deliverable, we choose which channels to broadcast
through. Thankfully we have a well-organized enablement team that manages these
channel logistics, so we're able to efficiently streamline internal comms.
On a personal level, it's critical that I provide key executives and other team
leads with visibility of what's coming, so that they get their teams' attention
and start a network effe...more
Group Product Marketing Manager at Intercom
I think this depends largely on the size of an update - and the audience.
For our largest releases, they are communicated early and often - to drum up
excitement. Through company all hands, sales trainings, slack channels, etc.
For mid-sized and smaller updates, we'll leverage the internal channels that
make the most sense for the internal audience. If its sales, we'll update via
our bi-weekly newsletter, slack channels, internal knoweldgebase docs on what to
know, as one example. Each internal audience has their own channels and
communication styles they prefer - and usually we work ...more
Senior Director Product Marketing at Fivetran
We are a slack heavy company. So we have our own announcement channel for all things Marketing that I actually started so that we could share our updates!
We also do quarterly roadmaps and retros where PM + PMMs present their upcoming roadmap and a retro on their activities from the past quarter. All of Product and PMM go - and we invite our key stakeholders across the business, including the leaders from other areas of Marketing.
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
Why do you want to communicate updates and activities?
If the goal is to communicate just the work the team has been doing, then I
don't think that you should be communicating this to a large audience. This may
be a good weekly summary email to your manager (Also, why would your manager
need it?, the manager should already know it and it should be in your 1:1 doc),
anyway, my point is communicating just WHAT you or your team is working on is
waste of time for you and the reader.
I would rather communicate the impact and how other teams could leverage the
work your team has done. This ...more
2 answers
Head of Product Marketing, VR Work Experiences, Oculus at Meta
If you have global projects or have syndicated a regional product to the global
level, I would think that experience is relevant. If you are a regional product
marketing manager and do not have a project like that to speak of then work on
getting one. This will help with your own visibility and help the company
projects succeed. If you want this experience and you’re already in product
marketing you can network in the company to try and make that happen for
yourself. Then in the interview/vetting process you can speak to these projects
and show that you do have global experience, despite no...more
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
* You must have crafted regional value props. Discuss how you approached
building those. The same framework can be scaled to craft global value props
* You must have led a regional sales enablement program: This also scales well
for global PMM teams. Your playbook will be similar just that the target
audience will be larger
* Market Intel: You should highlight this as a strength. For a regional PMM,
market intel (competitive landscape, customer insights, industry knowledge)
is crucial for their success. Share how you gathered, used, and distributed
those to your stakeho...more
8 answers
PMO at TikTok
Starting with those three functional responsibilities - insights, launch/go-to-market, and sales enablement makes a ton of sense for a team of that size. Depending on the current and future product set, I've also seen teams re-org to match customer segment (SMB, enterprise, etc.) or paired with a product manager who is either tasked with overseeing a product and/or stage of a user life cycle (e.g. acquisition, retention).
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Square
This depends heavily on the make-up of your company and your product portfolio.
Early on, I thought of our team as product marketing generalists. Each PMM
covered a wide range of responsibilites tied to the commercialization of our
product straetgy including: core product positioning, product launches and
release management, various sales enablement efforts, assisting with in-app
copywriting, executing internal product enablement (technical trainings, demo
environment, etc.). Over time, we began to further specialize.
I think the key is understanding the core needs of your main stakehol...more
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms
Well, the way you have it broke down, you seem to be describing a great
researcher, a great engineer and a great writer. Three very different, equally
important skillsets.
This is just my opinion, but there is another significant difference between the
three, and one that is probably overlooked wayyyyy too often when hiring: how
process-oriented one must be to succeed. Launches, for example, are probably
best handled by someone who thrives on process. Insights is likely somewhere in
the middle, as good research requires a methodical thinker, but it doesn't have
to be someone entirely pr...more
Head of Product Marketing at Hubspot | Formerly Salesforce, IBM, Silverpop, Blackboard
Great question! Sounds like your team is really prioritizing the awareness and
consideration phase of your buyer's journey, so you're optimizing for product
intel, launches and then sales enablement/support. I think one other area to
consider, which may be in your launch team's remit, is buyer enablement and
customer stories/proof, so the experience and content you're creating to help
your buyers quickly and confidently make decisions. Outside of that, I'd
recommend you have a good partnership with your competitive team, so that those
insights can help support your messaging and GTM strateg...more
Senior Director, Marketing at National Basketball Association | Formerly Uber, Square, 1stdibs
Structuring a product marketing team is unique to every business. You could
start by asking questions like:
1. What are the business metrics that the organization needs to drive and how
can your product marketing team contribute to those top line goals? I like
tying product marketing to topline business goals because it's easier to
point directly to impact that the organization care most about.
2. What are the key outcomes and objectives for our team and what are the
intiatives, roles, and responsibilities I need to achieve those objectives?
From there you can prior...more
Executive Vice President Product (fmr VP PMM) at Snow Software
What I would do here is to partner with your manager and key stakeholders to
understand the top 3-5 problems the business needs your Product Marketing to
solve. Basedo on the responses you receive, ensure you have people in the right
roles to solve these concerns.
While there are general roles & responsibilities (e.g. Launch Management) that
fall to Product Marketing, your aim is to ensure you're team is solving problems
for the ubsiness. In your case, if Sales Enablement, Product Launches, and
Product Insights are top 3 problems for the organization then you have the right
structure in...more
Director, Industry and Product Marketing at Motive
It all depends on what gaps need to be filled in your company.
Is there a need for sales materials, marketing strategy, customer sucess and
retention, or do you need to go upmarket and dive into mending relationships
with analysts?
Across the product marketing team there needs to be four key skills:
* Messaging & Positioning
* GTM Strategy & Orchestration
* Field Alignment
* Product Alignment
With that being said, you can split up, depending on your approach.
Product Marketer 1
* Positioning
* Messaging
* Pitch Decks
* Pricing/Packaging
Product Marketer 2
* Custo...more
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
Refer to my answer for this other question here (link)
For a team of 3, I can suggest some frameworks to use-
Do you have multiple products and can 3 people own 3 product GTMs?
Do you have a team where there are different strengths and are you able align
people by functional expertise? For example: Could you have one person lead
company messaging, positioning; one lead product launches and enablement and the
other can own solutions or programs/pricing?
Do you have different GTM motions - Enterprise, product led sales, volume sales
for SMB? Can you align by that?
For a 3 mem...more
1 answer
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
Change Management: As you grow the team, you will have to restructure and assign
new responsibilities to individuals. This can be tough when you are going from a
do-it-all mindset to functional expertise. While making such a change, it could
feel like you are taking away the responsibilities from individuals. It is
important that you are able to articulate the reasons and define a growth path
for all roles as you make the change. Additionally, change management requires
communication with stakeholders. If change is not communicated, stakeholders and
the team will either start executing base...more
3 answers
Vice President of Product Marketing at UpKeep
In my experience, the most important thing to do to support focus is assess
organizational alignment and capabilities when you arrive at the decision to
build a PMM team. It's not very common for organizations to invest heavily in
building whole Product Marketing teams, but when they do, it's to support growth
through more effective market expansion or better profitability. The trick is to
understand what the real objective is, which means getting to the heart of the
corporate strategy. You need to know what the real 'ask' is. If the organization
wants to expand market share you may feel th...more
Head of Product Marketing at Benchling | Formerly ExactTarget (Salesforce Marketing Cloud), Zendesk, Slack, Salesforce
IMPACT. So often product marketing teams get snowed under by trying to do all the things. They focus on completeness. They want to have every box checked. But they have no idea if any of it is working. Every other team in the business will have endless needs - endless requests - of PMM, but you have to get good at calling out what metric you're focused on and how you think you can ladder into it. Get good at talking to the metrics of the business and get good at thinking about how what you do ladders into the business stategy.
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
Two things:
Build company narrative: If you are just starting the PMM function in the
company, this would be one of the first things to focus on. Most likely the
existing narrative was built out by the founding team but bringing expert
perspective and start building out a differentiated narrative for your company.
A good framework is a 3 Why funnel. I recall reading a blog about 3 Whys funnel
(Apologies that I don't recall who wrote it). Why the problem you are solving is
critical, Why they should choose you and Why should they make the decision now.
Support the lead gen engine: Ever...more
1 answer
Product, Partner & Developer Marketing Leader at Samsara
DO IT ALL -> FUNCTIONAL -> BY PRODUCT -> GRID
It depends on the size of your team and the maturity of the company. Typically
what I have seen is that -
* With 1-2 PMMs - it's "do it all" approach. These PMMs take on all
responsibilities - Positioning, Messaging, Launches, Product GTM,
Competitive, and Market Intel. However, that is doable at that size of the
company beacuse PMM counterparts are doing the same. Sales will be a small
team, the sales team won't wait for sales enablement to happen, they hustle
and build their own pitch deck. Same for the product team
*...more
1 answer
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klaviyo | Formerly Drift, Dropbox, Upwork
I explain it across 4 core responsibilities:
Experts on our customers, products, and markets
We find the right insights and turn them into strategy, and make the insights
easily consumable for the rest of the org
Marketing owners for product
We partner with product teams to make our products successful — driving
awareness, acquisition, adoption and expansion for our product lines
Integrators
We sit at the intersection of most teams, working with each of them to break
down silos and get to better results
Customer advocates
We work with internal teams to design and deliver gr...more
2 answers
Director, PMM - Support & Platform at Intercom
This is a big question! It would be impossible for me to detail all the ways we
work with these teams, but at a high level:
* Sales & CSM: I'm bundling these two together, as the type of work we do with
each is similar at a high level. We work closely with sales leaders and the
sales enablement team to understand sales' needs, develop messaging and
content for them to use with both existing and prospective customers,
understand how that messaging is resonating, and creating training and other
enablement materials. We have a sales enablement group within PMM who drive
the...more
Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klaviyo | Formerly Drift, Dropbox, Upwork
Cross-functional work is Product Marketing's middle name!
PMM <> Sales
* Key deliverables: Pitch decks, enablement assets (internal resources like
battlecards and personas, external resources like one-pagers and case
studies), and trainings
* Key goals: Improve win rates, improve competitive win rates, increase ASP,
shorten sales cycles, improve demo request to demo held rates, generate
pipeline, improve sales team confidence
PMM <> CS
* Key deliverables: Same as sales, but with an existing customer upgrade /
health / cross-sell / retention angle. Add in enablemen...more
8 answers
PMO at TikTok
My first piece of advice: Talk to your direct manager about this and make it
known that a) you're interested in becoming a manager b) you'd appreciate any
professional development they can provide in this area. The reason I call this
out to start is because it's not always clear or obvious to managers that a team
member wants this for him or herself (I've managed PMMs who want to stay
individual contributors or move laterally into product management roles). I also
know that there are a ton of managers who aren't proactive about having career
developement conversations with their direct repo...more
Head of Talent Acquisition, Strategy & Operations at Asana
You do not have to have direct reports to develop some of the skills you will
need to be a good manager and demonstrate that you are ready to take on the
challenge of managing a team.
Many PMMs have to mobilize large cross functional teams to get work done. To do
this well, you need to set a clear vision, set expectations for what will be
done by when, provide feedback and coaching when the work is not on track, etc.
All of these skills are critical to being an effective manager. In addition, you
can coach or mentor others on your team. If you are a more seasoned PMM, you can
help other ne...more
VP Marketing at Honeycomb.io
Great question. There are 3 ways to get demonstrable management experience
outside of having FTEs report to you.
#1: Manage interns and contractors. Volunteer to run a message testing project
through a research vendor. Volunteer to produce an explainer video series using
an animation production company. Volunteer to hire an intern and complete a data
analysis project that is valuable to the business. Outside of these
project-based examples, identify an area where having an ongoing freelancer on
the team (under you) would be valuable - a designer, a writer/copy editor, an
extra resource jus...more
Director of Product Marketing at Adobe
Yes, this is a tough one. I would suggest doing the following to gain some more
recent “management” experience:
1. Hire an intern - either summer or part-time
2. Manage agencies or contractors
3. If side projects are possible at your company, see if anyone wants to work
on a PMM side project with you
While you do need to acquire management experience somehow, you’re more likely
to get the opportunity to do it (with less experience) if you go to a small
company. And don’t completely discount your cross-functional leadership
experience - if you manage large groups of cross-functional...more
VP Product Marketing at Truework
As an individual contributor today, you can demonstrate your ability to manage
projects and influence and lead people who do not directly report to you. This
could be collaborating and convincing the product team of a new feature to win a
new segment, or in effectively managing the many pieces and stakeholders behind
a good product launch.
Also ensure you’re actively managing your career with those mentors or managers
who will shape it. Share your goals with your boss. Ask what they would need to
see from you to be considered for such a promotion.
Unfortunately, there is no single course ...more
Sr Director Product Marketing at Zendesk
In my experience, being a people manager doesn't change much across disciplines.
The priorities should always be to help your team grow and develop their career
(the output is great work and team success). If you've demonstrated you're a
strong people leader that should be enough.
I know formal people mangement opportunities can be hard to come by in a small
company. Try to informally mentor some of the less experienced PMMs on the team.
Also recognize that management skills is just one part of becoming a Director.
You also need to work on exec presence, story telling, strategy, leveraging...more
Director of Product Marketing at Bill.com
I’ve been a one person PMM-team several times in the last decade and encountered
the same challenges. More of my management experience comes from my analytics
and innovation roles in the past. I'd recommend that you find ways to onboard
people or be a mentor or teacher to others. A chunk of these management skills
are transferable, but I would consider three points as you grow:
What do you need to be a better manager?
Many general management (and people) skills can be transferable. Your experience
in the past will definitely help and you can continue to hone your skills. We’ve
also levera...more
VP of Marketing at Privy
I don't think courses or books will substitute real world management experience,
ever. Courses and books are helpful, but in terms of interviewing for a Director
role with people management responsibility, they are not a substitute.
I've hired first time managers a few times. Nothing against someone trying to
get their first at bat managing or running a team. All depends on the situation,
who they will be managing (and how many). Probably the best advice I can give
here is just what I'd look for if I were hiring a Director of PMM to run a small
team (which I happened to be doing last ye...more
8 answers
Product Lead (fmr Head of Product Marketing) at Square
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 collaboration in 3 areas:
1. Product (development) team. At Square PMMs are embedded within the product
teams so this is technically our home. Where we add value is bringing in the
customers' voice when it comes to product strategy and roadmap. My team does
a lot of work visiting customers, conducting qual/ quant
research, collecting feedback from Sales, Account Management,
Support, thr...more
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Square
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 find a bunch of articles on the
topic. During my time at Sprout Social, we spent more than 3 years as part of
the Product Team and nearly 2 reporting within Maketing, which is where we
currently sit. All of this is to say, being thoughtful about how you position
your product marketing team within the company, regardless of where you
officially report, is paramount to earning trust and establish...more
Director, Product Marketing at Datadog | Formerly Mparticle
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 reasons for moving into Product Marketing
from Product Management was to alleviate the lack of technical know-how within
our marketing team that contributed towards unclear messaging.
One of the biggest challenges that PMM's face is that they have to influence
other people's work. Sales Enablement, Marketing and Customer Success for
example rely on the PMM for delivering the product trainings,...more
VP Marketing at Cameo | Formerly Uber, Fivestars, Electronic Arts
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 Product Market,
Product Marketing...This starts with a very clear and differentiated
articulation of our value. For example, I made it very clear from Day 1 that PMM
is the primary POC to Product within the Marketing organization and built teams,
hired people, and reinforced with KPIs that story. Over time, that continued to
build and we eventually built up a reputation (a brand!) that we were t...more
Vice President, Product Marketing at AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart
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 marketing. If we don't get a handle and
drive the definition of role as product marketers and clearly write down what we
own, and just as important what we don't own, we will be working against the
grain. You may be doing a lot of great work, but that is always relative to
expectations. In a nutshell, setting expectations is everything.
And it's not just with your boss and the exec team. It's ...more
Sr. Director and Head of Product Marketing at Gem
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 naturally come your way.
When it comes to positioning the PMM team within marketing, it ultimately comes
down to influencing the head of marketing. They want nothing more than for the
marketing team to produce great work and achieve its goals. Whether marketing
metrics are tied to pipeline, LTV, brand awareness, or all of the above, if the
numbers aren’t going up, it reflects poorly on the whol...more
Director, PMM - Support & Platform at Intercom
* 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 teams, and agree on
how you'll handle it.
* Building relationships with others across the marketing org - both leaders
but also at the IC level - and communicating openly, sharing your goals and
plans, developing processes together, and getting buy-in as you plan
* Having a clear framework for prioritising requests that come in to the team,
so others know how and why we p...more
VP of Marketing at Privy
Great question. Yes, been there & struggled there before. Think ultimately the more you can make product marketing a group of strategic thinkers and enablement gurus to marketing, the more clout your team will build. If demand gen wants to parnter with PMM to understand how to market features for a campaign, if content looks to product marketing for competitive intel or market insights to build content, those are all signs you've built a PMM with real value to the marketing org.