Katie Levinson

First, stakeholders should be involved in your market research before it is even started. Get their buy-in on what the goal is, key learning objectives, and the questions you’ll be asking / data you’ll be uncovering. If you are doing any qualitative interviews, ask stakeholders to be notetakers or just listen in; I’ve found creating a google sign up sheet and then inviting people to the calendar invite has been pretty helpful. Once your research is done, share it out and set up time to discuss it all together. It can also be helpful to give certain stakeholders a preview first to get a sense of implications from different teams. Encourage people to ask questions/make comments in any documents you produce.

Great question, and one we’ve been discussing at Handshake. It’s important to establish a strong collaborative partnership with UXR, ideally with shared goals. Every company is different, but at a startup with limited resources and a lot of work to do, we would outline our needs for the quarter, and figure out who was best to tackle the research needs. We would then share each other’s research briefs and ask for input on learning objectives as well as questions. While both PMM and UXR work on foundational research, UXR also has some pretty specific skill sets that PMM generally does not, such as developing concept tests, creating questions/discussion guides that take users through a product flow, and a keen eye for how research impacts design. UXR typically partners closely with design and PM on research while PMM partners closely with PM and market research - if that function is up and running at a company. PMM will generally also bring in the lens of the market and competitive landscape, as well as conduct quantitative research when there isn’t a market research team in place. A market research team can really help bring quantitative rigor to an organization.

Any VoC insights/data should be shared internally, along with the “so what.” It’s not enough to just share results from a survey or what you’ve heard from your consumers - you have to package it up in a way for stakeholders to understand why it’s important, and what should be done with the information. More practically, we use data like this to help inform strategic roadmap/planning decisions, in board decks to help bring company goals and results to life, and to develop positioning, messaging and go-to-market plans.

You should define the success of your launch BEFORE you actually launch, and even before you finalize your go-to-market (GTM) strategy. This should be done in partnership with your fellow marketing cross-functional teammates, who will be responsible for helping move KPIs, and with the product team, whose strategy and goals will play a major role in your GTM strategy and plan. With that out of the way, a successful product launch really depends on your goals. Are you trying to attract a ton of new users? Engage existing users on your platform? Upsell people from a free version of your app to a paid one? Depending on the goals, you can start defining what a successful launch looks like. Some options/factors are: * Meeting/exceeding your specific business goals and KPIs * Press/awareness/impressions * Smooth technical launch, i.e., minimal bugs and complaints * Sustained engagement after the initial launch i.e., long-term success (you need to define what that is depending on your product/sales cycle) Just as important as the results is the how. Internal alignment to the launch strategy and plan is also a key part of success metrics.

Partnerships can have a great multiplier effect on your product marketing efforts, depending on how strategic the partnership is and also what you’re hoping to get out of it. But, your GTM strategy, your value propositions, messaging and overall marketing and product strategy have to be solid first - if those components aren’t strong, then a partnership isn’t going to help. There are lots of positives, with the caveat that the partnership makes sense strategically from a brand and product standpoint: * Increased reach: you expand your audience size, so your top of funnel should be larger and thus overall conversion numbers (to whatever primary metric you’re tracking) should also be higher * Cross-promotion: you can have opportunities to dip into other people’s audiences and tap a group of people that you may not reach without a partnership via promotions directly through their channels * Consumer experience: partnerships that are driven by product can oftentimes lead to great experiences for your end users (for example integrations of data from one company into another company’s product)

One: talk to as many different product marketers as you can across a wide variety of company sizes and industries. What you’ll hear from each of them is that product marketing means different things at different companies, and they aren’t kidding. It’s good to get a sense of what the role entails/will entail and see what resonates with you. This will also help you to identify any skills/experience gaps you might have. Two: Take on projects that allow you to develop and highlight these skills: * Research (qualitative or quantitative, ideally both) and analytical projects to get comfortable with data and making recommendations from it. * Managing a marketing launch from start to finish. Some of the job can be project manager-esque, so showing how you work cross-functionally to get something off the ground is important. * Partnering with product on a new feature launch or even smaller experiments.

Yes! There are many reasons why you may want to hold off on launching a feature or product after it’s already been released. This often happens when you want to either bundle a bunch of features for a coherent narrative, or there’s a time in the market when it would be better to capitalize (for instance, if there’s a large tech event where you can unveil your new product or feature to maximize press). To get a bit more specific, here are some scenarios: * Align with Market Timing: A competing product launch, economic event, or company-related factor (like a major news cycle) may make the current timing suboptimal. Conversely, a major event related to your industry or even seasonality. For seasonality, perhaps waiting until the highest number of users are interested, for example at MyFitnessPal that would be January for New Years health resolutions, would help boost your product launch since more people would already be in the mindset of looking for a product like yours that helps them with their problems. * Additional Testing Needed: If user testing or beta feedback indicates critical bugs or negative user experiences, and you’re seeing the same at initial release, you may need to hold back on promoting the product until it's fixed. * Testing Product-Market Fit/Experimentation: Sometimes you don’t know if the product or feature will fully solve the problem or appeal to your target audience, and you may actually roll it back. Oftentimes, features that are released may actually be in experimentation mode and evolving a lot, so it may make sense to hold off on a full launch until there’s more confidence that the feature or product in its current iteration is there to stay. You can also soft-launch a product by making it available to a limited audience for additional feedback while delaying the broader public launch.

First, it’s important to understand what the product team’s goals (and really the company level goals) are, to help you 1) focus in on the insights you need to gather and 2) package those up in a way that is meaningful to the organization. As a PMM, you would own any competitive landscape and market research, and foundational research with your target audience. The main components that you’d want to present include: * Target audience(s) and opportunity size(s), including any qualitative data you might have * Problem that you’re trying to solve * Value propositions/differentiated solution, and why they matter to your audience * Use cases (bring to life how your solution will be used by your audience) * Business goals/outcomes that might be achieved through the launch

I have found that people who come from a customer-facing role in the past, or roles that combine the analytical with the creative, make for good hires. Specifically, I look for: * Consumer-centric mindset and empathy: when thinking about problems to solve, do you put your audience at the center? How does that come to life within your role today? Have you ever pushed for something on behalf of your target audience because you cared deeply about building or communicating something to them that would help them? * Analytical skills: are you comfortable with data and research? How have you used data in the past to come to conclusions and recommendations? * Communication skills, both verbal and written: you have to be a decent writer to be a good product marketer. This does not mean you’re a copy writer, but you have to be able to clearly communicate things like value propositions, go-to-market plans, strategies, etc. You will also be managing up and out a lot in meetings, so being clear in your verbal communications is also important and what I watch out for in interviews (don’t be verbose!). * Creative thinking/problem solving: can you overcome obstacles? How do you take on challenges?

As someone who started in consumer brand, then went to B2B2C product marketing, then back to B2C product marketing, these are the areas of overlap I’ve seen between the two: * Competitive landscape and audience insights: Deep understanding of both the competitive landscape and your target audience (in B2B that tends to be buyers/decision makers in certain verticals/industries, whereas in B2C it’s a broader psychographic/behavioral target) * Cross-functional collaboration: Working cross-functionally, especially in a role of influencer versus direct decision-maker is similar across both * Analytical skills: ability to interpret data—be it business metrics, customer feedback, or product performance—is crucial for driving informed decisions in both B2B and B2C marketing * A/B testing: to optimize strategies, campaigns and messaging effectively * Strategic thinking and written communication skills: help bring teams along to a plan/vision and aligning key stakeholders Some of the gaps that you might encounter when going from B2B to B2C: * Emotional benefits and insights: in the consumer world, you have to hone in on the emotional element and genuine insights in order to stand out. This is really hard to do and a skill that takes time, effort and a lot of feedback to develop. * Brand and creative partnership: PMM plays a larger role here than in B2B. This entails crafting briefs and providing feedback on creative assets. * Channel strategy: because you aren’t working with a sales team, you need to have broader knowledge of different marketing channels, how they work, when to use them, etc, and help tailor messages to different channels.