Brandon McGraw

I came from a background in brand and so my natural instincts served me most well on the outbound side of product marketing. I had my fair share of imposter syndrom in the early days when I looked at my peers and realized that I'd never done the traditional inbound work of a PMM. I spent more ...more

Hard skills may vary by company, but I think there are two that are critical: * Insights. Know the difference between an anecdote and an insight. This is especially critical when you work on a service at scale. Your best (and sometimes most challenging) users tend to be the loudest, so ma...more

I think typical is atypical in PMM. I come from a background in brand before and have managed team members that came from consulting, manufacturing, advertising, as well as traditional marketers. Many of those past team members have gone on to careers in other parts of marketing, to product, or t...more

I'd consider, where possible, looking for opportunities within your company to hone the skills and make the transition over courses and education. I'd focus on three things: 1. Build Relationships: Growth roles generally put you in the position of being responsible for a key business KPI. F...more

This varies by company and role, but I generally think about the path to promotion on the two key vectors: ownership level and degree of autonomy.  Strong performance against OKRs or KPIs is a core underpinning to that. When considering promotion I start there and then look at how the person h...more

I love this question because I came from brand marketing before. I like to think about it as the distinction between the promise and the proof. The partnership between these two teams is essential. Brand is the promise you make to your customers about your core ethos and what they can expect f...more

Like all things, I think this comes down to trust building. When you're new, focus on building trust with PMs by showing that you can handle the highest priority, high impact problems they bring your way. Use this to show them that you know your stuff and can handle operating at the speed and pac...more

Business customers are all consumers at the core, but there are really important distinctions.  For one, businesses have totally different buying patterns and a myriad of channels to reach them through. When you're working for a traditional consumer technology company you're most often relying...more

I myself come from a less than traditional path to PMM after spending the first half of my career on the brand side of the house. I may be biased, but I think less than traditional backgrounds are really valuable in a PMM and I typically look for a couple of key characteristics: Trust Building...more