Anna Startseva

There are several skills that help Product Marketers excel in their careers - helping them reach the coveted Head of Product Marketing and even CMO positions. These are: cross-functional influence, quantitative fluency, and operationalizing AI. Cross-functional influence Product marketing sits between many teams—product, sales, marketing, customer success, finance. If you only understand your own role, you'll constantly be surprised when projects stall or stakeholders push back. The skill is und ...Read More

Hello! Here is how I'm using AI for competitive research & updates. I've set up a Skill in Claude to run periodic competitive updates from public information. Eventually, I'd love for AI to publish new updates directly to sales channels. My system is not perfect yet, but it saves me a ton of research and analysis time already. What helps most: feeding your AI (I use Claude Ent) with your base messaging, positioning, competitive documentation, and examples of outputs you'd like. Items I inclu ...Read More

This question really hits hard. I once got a very specific 2-page assignment like this where the expectation was a deck with a complete GTM plan with messaging, positioning, plan per engagement channel, and more. I received this assignment before I was even invited to interview with the team. Huge turnoff. To answer your question, I would research the product, category, buyer group, competitors. Thankfully, this is a breeze with AI. Where I would really spend time, is coming up with a unique POV ...Read More

AI is a great strategic tool for PMMs and the broader GTM organization. Here are a couple of ideas in addition to the great insights shared by other contributors. Synthetic persona creation Pressure-test messaging in real time, spot gaps, refine positioning before anything goes to market. The real unlock: share these personas across GTM. Sales rehearses objection handling against them. Demand gen tests campaign angles. Quick to create, multiple teams benefit! Feed your existing persona research, ...Read More

Here is how to create storytelling for b2b companies with multiple personas. Creating one broad persona for multiple audiences rarely works. Generic messaging doesn't address what specific buyers care about—their problems, their priorities, their role in the decision. The companies that do this well use a two-level approach: a unifying story at the top, then tailored messaging for personas underneath. Level 1: The unifying story Find what all your personas are trying to accomplish together. Oper ...Read More

I love this question! The best resources to stand out in a Product Marketing Lead are anything you can demonstrate that tell your story in a memorable way. When hiring, I prefer candidates that go the extra-mile to show their experience with visual portfolios that highlights their big and quantifiable wins. 1. Did you launch a product - show me your messaging and sales metrics; 2. Did you speak at an event - show me topic and audience; 3. Did you enable sales - show me sales velocity improvement ...Read More

Great question - how to get a rounded set of skills when scope is limited. The strategy that works: a product marketer delivers consistently in current role, they show they have bandwidth and appetite for more, then point to specific areas where they are curious and/or can add value. Many managers will help product marketers grow if they've proven they won't drop balls and are specific about what they want to learn.Ask to shadow someone whose work a PMM want to learn. Sales enablement, competiti ...Read More

Pre-mortems work well when they're set up for success. Here are a couple of ideas that work for me: 1. Align on what you're going after before the pre-mortem. Circulate the definition of the new focus area, who you're pursuing, and what success looks like ahead of the meeting. Get sign-off. If people see it differently, sort that out first. The pre-mortem itself should be spent identifying risks and gaps, not debating step zero.2. Bring in the Customer Voice. Start the pre-mortem with the ideal ...Read More

I've spent the last year thinking hard about whether AI will replace PMMs. My short answer based on a year of leveraging AI to product market as hard as I can: AI makes us more strategic and productive, but it won't replace product marketers. Here's why. Product marketing is more than data sheet creation In great companies, PMMs do far more than create a couple of assets for product launches. We project-manage launches, align stakeholders, enable sales, create competitive, and work directly with ...Read More

When competitive research misses the mark, it's often because it stays too close to feature comparisons. CEOs and product teams may need to understand why customers pick one product over another — and that answer rarely lives in a feature matrix alone. Bring in the voice of sellers and customers The biggest gap I see in competitive research is missing what the people closest to deals are hearing. Win-loss analysis is really helpful here (bonus if you have budget to get a 3rd party to interview b ...Read More