Establishing Product Marketing

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5

I don't split it out into 30-60-90 day increments, but within that period, these are the things I'd suggest doing: Get to know your product - get demo certified, the same as your AEs Start building k

165 Saves

Natalie Louie

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • January 11

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,

200 Saves

Kashyap Patel

Sr. Director, Product Management at Druva • February 7

Here is what mine looked like roughly when I started about 9 months ago: 30 days: Product onboarding and learning Meet key people in PM, Sales, Marketing Get introduced to tools used in the org Under

43 Saves

Sina Falaki

Head of Industry, Segment, and Solutions Marketing at Motive | Formerly Procore • June 23

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 workin

21 Saves

Christine Sotelo-Dag

Director of Product Marketing & Customer Marketing at Mode Analytics • January 19

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

20 Saves

Jeff Hardison

Head of Product Marketing at Calendly • March 23

Years ago, a VP of product management made a joke while asking me about the status of my 30-60-90 Day Plan: "Let me guess, it's 30 days of studying, 30 days of planning, and 30 days of finally shippin

What has worked well (or has not worked) as far as positioning your product marketing team within a larger marketing org?

9 answers

Carrie Zhang

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

142 Saves

Patrick Cuttica

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

82 Saves

Shabih Syed

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

36 Saves

Mike Polner

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

95 Saves

Harsha Kalapala

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

41 Saves

Jeff Beckham

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

30 Saves

Jasmine Jaume

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

Daniel J. Murphy

Marketing Strategy Consultant at • June 8

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 y

Louis Debatte-Monroy

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

2 Saves

How does product marketing differ between a small and large company?

6 answers

Gregg Miller

VP of Product Marketing at Oyster® • October 8

Regardless of role, there's a universal tradeoff between small and large companies and it's about what kind of impact you find most motivating. Would you rather have broader impact across the business

53 Saves

Andy Schumeister

Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8

The biggest difference is the level of specialization. At a smaller company, PMMs should be generalists. One quarter they may be working on bringing a new feature to market and another quarter they ma

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • October 12

Product marketing is different at every company, large or small. In my own experience, at every company the product marketing function tends be very fluid and flexible to the needs of the business or

5 Saves

Jasmine Jaume

Director, Product Marketing at Intercom • October 26

I'll caveat my answer here by saying that I haven't worked in PMM in a really large (1000s of employees) company - my experience has been mainly within startups and mid-sized companies. When I joined

Adam Kerin

SVP of Marketing at Truework • January 18

While a large company will have a dedicated individual or even team to a particular function, like competitive analysis or social media, at a startup you may be the one-stop-shop for all things market

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

The biggest difference in my experience is that most PMMs are smaller companies that are full-stack PMMs and very early learn how to do a little bit of everything. They often need to wear multiple hat

What is your 30-60-90 day plan when you go into an org with the intention of setting up Product Marketing function for the first time?

6 answers

Andy Schumeister

Director of Product Marketing at Sourcegraph • June 8

30 days: Prioritize understanding your customers, your product, and your company: Shadow customer calls (or listen to recordings if they exist). Get to know your cross-functional partners - schedule

19 Saves

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • October 12

Whether your a product marketer or just a new employee, the most important thing you can do is to ASK WHY + LISTEN.0-30 days - Talk to everyone. Ask Why 5 times. Don't make any assumptions and ask lot

9 Saves

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5

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:

12 Saves

Angus Maclaurin

Director of Product Marketing at BILL • February 2

I’ve come in as the first PMM at several companies. My experience has been different every time, and I’ve learned a few hard lessons on rushing in too quickly. A large chunk of the first 90 days cente

19 Saves

Meredith Davis Shields

VP, Product Marketing at LendingClub • July 26

My first 30 days at Chime was all about team. I needed to spend a lot of time listening, observing and reviewing learning agendas to see how they think and what value they were adding to the organizat

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

your 30-60-90 day plan will really depend on where the company is focused for the next 12 months and where they really need the most help. But in general, you want to look at a few key areas: - Build

When building a team, how would you ideally split responsibilities? By product line? By PMM function (CI, enablement, GTM, etc)?

6 answers

Suyog Deshpande

Sr. Director | Head Of Product & Partner Marketing at Samsara • June 30

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" a

14 Saves

Amanda Groves

Senior Director Product Marketing at Crossbeam | Formerly 6sense, JazzHR, Imagine Learning, Appsembler • September 6

A bit of both. My ideal PMM sqad has a set of core product marketing folks that are organized by product line. In addition to core product marketing, my team owns customer marketing, lifecycle marketi

Jennifer Kay

Product Marketing Expert & Mentor at | Formerly Homebase, Angi, The Knot • November 8

In my own experience as an individual contributor as well as a leader of a pmm team, I've consistently had better results when pmm is divided by product line rather than function. This allows for grea

7 Saves

Kristen Kanka

Head of Product Marketing, Enterprise Solutions at Morningstar | Formerly CaptureX, Medline Industries • January 26

I love this question – and I am going to take a different approach to my answer here. One of the things I think product marketers can struggle with is responsibility versus authority. To be effective

Sahil Sethi

Senior Vice President, Product Marketing at BetterUp | Formerly Klaviyo, Qualtrics, Microsoft, MckInsey • February 14

My ideal PMM team is split on both dimensions. There are vertical PMMs who are aligned by product/segment/audience. Then there are ‘horizontal’ PMMs who lead launches, CI, enablement, campaigns, etc.

8 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

PMM Org design really depends on a few different variables. You want to consider: the maturity of your product You GTM strategy How your cross-functional teams are structured What the biggest company

Whenever you are new to a PMM role, what are the top 3 things you look for in the work that has been done before you arrived? (e.g. personas, messaging templates)

4 answers

Fiona Finn

Director of Product Marketing at jane.app • March 4

- Retros on strategic projects, especially those with cross-functional teams so you can identify previous learnings and opps for improvement, and quickly get up to speed on legacy experiences - Centr

Natalie Louie

Product Marketing, Senior Director at Replicant | Formerly MobileCoin, Zuora, Hired, Oracle, Responsys • January 11

Positioning Messaging Personas / Competitors Always focus on the top 2 first, as this will impact how everyone talks and writes about your company – which ultimately brings in users and wallet share

Jameelah Calhoun

Global Head of Product Marketing at Eventbrite | Formerly Amazon, Ex-Amex • February 10

As I mentioned in the question regarding your first 90 days, the first 30 days are all about establishing a baseline and assessing the current product marketing status. The first 3 things that I look

12 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

Outside of the core PMM assets like messaging, or buyer personas, here are a few other things I'd look for: Existing sales pitches or sales assets to understand how the product is positioned Gong cal

How long do you think you should wait, as the very first Head of PMM, before you hire your first team member?

3 answers

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5

It's hard to give a specific answer here because every company is unique, but here are some things to think about: How experienced are you as a PMM?If you've built and managed multiple PMM teams in t

Nicole Gallow

Group Product Marketing Manager at Cisco | Formerly Splunk, Quest Software • December 21

Get that headcount ASAP! I kid, I kid.... kind of. My selfish, well, self, wants to say ask for approval as soon as you start -- first 30 days. Hiring someone doesn't happen overnight so you want as m

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

There is no generic rule of thumb for this, but i'd focus on company growth as an indicator. If your company is growing fast and you realize that there are too many initiatives to support and that y

5 Saves

When establishing the PMM function in an org, how can you manage expectations and change perception if leadership (CEO, Founder, CMO) have a different interpretation of the role?

4 answers

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue • January 5

Assuming you were hired for this role, I think that this type of conversation should ideally happen before you accept the job. Asking a question like "what vision does the CMO, Founder, CEO, executive

Nicole Gallow

Group Product Marketing Manager at Cisco | Formerly Splunk, Quest Software • December 21

This question is great and so very relevant. I've been companies where leadership has had 3 very different thoughts on the PMM org. PMM IS AMAZING What the heck is PMM and why am I paying their sal

Julie Brown

Product Marketing & Event Leader, Strategist, & Consultant at 56th Street Productions, LLC | Project Product | Formerly STANLEY Security (Securitas), Conga (Apttus), SAP, Aprimo (Teradata), Salesforce (ExactTarget) • January 31

Such a great question! And sadly, a common challenge for product marketing. I've found even when a company hires its first product marketer, not everyone is aware or on the same page. I have struggled

2 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

It's important to understand what your C-suite wants and needs from PMM. Product Marketing is a versatile role and often looks different at every company, and you need to be somewhat flexible in what

8 Saves

What are the challenges one should be aware of when setting up a new PMM function inside the org? How can one overcome them -- any tips?

3 answers

Meredith Davis Shields

VP, Product Marketing at LendingClub • July 26

If PMM is a new discipline within your org chances are other teams were "covering" PMM unofficially. This could mean product managers trying to wear marketing hats or lifecycle / brand marketers pitch

Tracy Montour

Head of Product Marketing at HiredScore • August 2

Standing up a new Product Marketing function is both a great opportunity and a great challenge. Over the last year, I have been standing up the PMM function at my current company. I can share that is

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • February 22

One of the biggest challenges I always see is internal education. Most companies where PMM is new will not understand what PMM can and should do and how to work with them. One of the most important

What are the top 3 potholes to AVOID when establishing or building out the Product Marketing function at a company?

2 answers