Ashley Faus

I recommend a tiering system for product vs. feature launches. The tiers include criteria about the impact of the feature that's launching (or series of capabilities, in the case of a full product launch), and the activities associated with each tier. For example:Tier 1:Impact: All customers, market-level, significant company revenueActivities: Press, social media (product and brand handles, personal handles), newsletters, blog (executive byline), Community series, website update, event keynote, ...Read More

In general, it seems that the pendulum is swinging back to more generalist job descriptions. I'm seeing a lot more skills and experience related to traditional demand-generation and content marketing roles showing up in PMM job descriptions. Examples include wording like "manage end-to-end campaigns", "increase organic traffic", and "create content including blogs, product demos, and white papers". While most of these bullets are framed in the context of the product, this type of work is usually ...Read More

Hopefully, there's at least 1 public example of the messaging and positioning (like the company website and/or product tour). You can show the website as it exists today, while talking through the research process to understand why the prior messaging didn't resonate with the audience, steps you took to refine and test the new messaging, and before/after metrics like traffic, conversion, time-on-site, scroll depth, and other engagements on the site as a way to show quantitative success metrics. ...Read More

In most cases, these types of deliverables won't be particularly useful because you don't have enough context to actually make solid plans or recommendations. And, while it's nice to think that it shows initiative, it also leaves a lot of room for the candidate to get something wrong because they don't have all the information. Instead, I recommend focusing on the assignment from the hiring team, using the full context of the interviews and the details of the assignment. Good hiring managers kno ...Read More

This answer differs, depending on the size and structure of the organization.However, there's some common themes, including:- Product Marketing should be the experts in the product, audiences, and messaging. They should be able to articulate WHO we should be talking to, and WHAT we should be talking about that will resonate with those people.- Demand-gen and growth teams should be experts in reaching relevant audiences. This means that they know WHERE we should be talking, and HOW to talk in eac ...Read More

First, messaging shouldn't be so focused on features. It should be about the unique value you provide to your customers. While features ARE part of that value, they're not the ONLY thing that adds value. This is particularly true in a saturated market with feature parity. A few additional differentiators that you might consider: Integrations with other owned products and/or lots of integrations with industry-leading products that your prospects likely have in their tech stack already Ease of onb ...Read More

For folks who are unfamiliar, here's a short note on some key elements of the Content Playground framework:- The traditional funnel struggles to capture the full buyer's journey, since it only starts when the marketing team recognizes that someone is on a journey. Most people are NOT in the market to buy, and they do a lot of their research before they raise their hand to show that they're buying.- Thus, we need to stop mapping content to the traditional phases (awareness, consideration, and dec ...Read More

The biggest trait for me is genuinely caring about the audience and being curious about their needs. I can teach someone how to do competitive analysis or script a product demo, but I can't teach you to care about the people behind the screen. I also get very excited when I see people who can connect the dots across multiple teams and skill sets. PMMs act as the bridge between the audience and the organization, so they need to be able to translate pain-points into product improvements in their c ...Read More

Sales/partner/channel enablement is the biggest differentiator for enterprise-focused vs. startups or SMBs during the launch. I'm coming from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) lens, which means that I have the option to include a variety of self-serve tactics that make it more scalable for smaller companies to get what they need during a launch. Examples include: Product Guides: basic onboarding, core use cases, and templates so that small teams can see fast time-to-value Evergreen articles about p ...Read More

Depending on the size of the launch, we have multiple teams involved, not just Product Marketing and Demand-Gen. I'll also note that Product Marketing and Demand-Gen teams SHOULD be working closely together, all the time. Both teams should be contributing to the short- and long-term success of product sales, and a launch is just one moment in time.For example, for a Tier 1 launch, which means that it's an important launch, receiving lots of marketing support, we break down the following:For up t ...Read More