Brianne Shally

Since PMM is the voice of the customer, it is vital to always be talking to customers. Here's a couple of approaches:  - Schedule "Voice of Customer Day": Have day full of customer calls with a specific theme. Bring in cross funcational stakeholders (e.g. Product, Eng, Design, Product Ops, Brand, Comms, etc.) to participate and sign up for roles: notetaker, interview key takeaways, interviewer, etc. Host a kick off in the morning with interviews through out the day and and wrap up at the end wit ...Read More

B2B and B2C are both H2H (human to human) marketing at the end of the day. I’ve seen folks try to say there's a strong distinction and to ‘pick a lane’. I’m of the mindset that B2B and B2C are more similar than different. I’ve found my experience in B2B especially, in demand gen, has helped me with B2C thinking through app store activations and vice versa.  That said, here’s the minor nuances that I’m oversimplifying:  Sales Enablement: You must work closely with the Sales team to ensure they ar ...Read More

It’s difficult to define growth by titles since titles vary greatly by company and company maturity. Also, more and more companies are shying away from title heavy culture. When you consider growth and trajectory, I encourage you to evaluate it based on your goals, what you want to learn, and what you want to do next vs. a title. Focusing on obtaining a title can be short sighted and may result on you being lost after you achieve it. That said, with career progression top of mind, here are some ...Read More

Be a Product Marketer: Understand the marketplace, trends, and competitors. Use the product: Use the product, sign up for emails, check out their SEO and social presence, and interview current users to form a point of view on the product and opportunities (e.g. opportunities in the onboarding process, use cases, etc.). For an interview with a company, I interviewed a handful of their customers to understand use cases, pain points, and their target audience. From these insights, I developed recom ...Read More

Sharing the product roadmap externally is a great way to share the company's vision, investment in innovation, and upcoming features to get prospects and customers excited about the potential. It can be a strong selling tool to get prospects on board and a resource to get current customers to invest more. What's important is that the roadmap isn't standing on it own, but partnered with an overall vision to show how product efforts later up to a great vision. This is where Product Marketing can p ...Read More

Top 3 Soft skills Be collaborative: Be open to new ideas, raise your hand to help, lean in to new areas, and have fun while doing it.   Build strong relationships: Invest in your cross functional partners, get to know them personally and professionally, know what is most important to them.  Develop a point of view, clearly communicate your point of view, and influence others with your point of view Top 3 Hard skills Analytical <-> Creative: Navigate this spectrum to be both analytical and ...Read More

Understand the strengths of each org and what skills and resources they uniquely bring to the table and understand where the skills and resources overlap. Have a healthy discussion of RACI / RAPID to understand who owns what. If there’s resistance, encourage to explore a pilot for a quarter / half to see what works/doesn’t work and revisit it to further optimize it. Usually, folks are less resistant to a pilot since it’s not set in stone.  Capture when to involve who: It’s important stakeholders ...Read More

It’s most valuable to align the PMM team to the Product team structure to drive stronger alignment and integration. Back in the day, when we worked in person, we strived to have Product Marketers sit directly with their product teams. In some cases, this has meant that I’m in a different building than my manager and some of my team members, but I find this integration extremely valuable. Nextdoor is structured by the following Pillars: Member Experience (Consumer), Neighborhood Vitality (Trust, ...Read More

Get creative! Need insights quickly to inform product development, build a survey and put some dollars behind it on Facebook, or have the company share with friends and family that fit into the ICP.  Determine how the insights will impact decision making. Have a deep understanding of how if you know the answer to X, how it will inform Y. If it won’t change decision-making or the output, revisit if you have the right research or if you even need to do it in the first place. Often I find that if w ...Read More

Create an Internal research website / landing page for others to access research by segment, product, geo, theme, etc. If you can create a go/link or have the website have a memorable url for folks to remember it and continue to point to it, so folks have it as a go-to.  Develop Quarterly / Bi-annual Voice of Customers Report before the planning cycle to inform the roadmap. In the report, include tactical and strategic insights tied to specific recommendations. Where you can, quantify the impact ...Read More