Jane Reynolds

Market research is 100% necessary, both from a product perspective and marketing perspective, so you're making the right moves! From my experience, most organizations have market research owned by it's own separate team or the product team, but depending on the size of your org, it could make sense to live within product marketing since it serves both sides. For example, market research allows PMs to develop features that retain users while also serving the marketing team in knowing how to best ...Read More

You'll earn buy-in by identifying the hole in your company that product marketing will fill. Do you currently have strategies for how to increase user adoption of features? Do you have a team dedicated to ideating features or offers that can serve both top-of-funnel growth and brand loyalty? Do you have any understanding if a feature could have had more adoption if different language or timing was deployed? If the answer is no to any of those questions, then your organization needs a product mar ...Read More

First off, congrats! The positive impact that can have on revenue and growth is pretty remarkable. When standing up a new function, I always think broadly to start. For example, when considering “competitors”—think beyond your direct competitors so you can cover a more robust scope. A company in a parallel industry can be just as helpful a case study as one in the same industry. At OkCupid, we’re often looking to social media and self-improvement apps for inspiration. Analysis will also be key. ...Read More

It's so important to listen to your consumers and collect both qualitative and quantitative data. When it comes to brand campaigns, we do extensive messaging testing with our core demo beforehand to gauge reactions to the creative. But it's always important to back those qualitative responses up with quantitative data. I find the most effective way to do that is via AB testing through push, email, or in-app notifications—which drove higher engagement in the product? Which generated the most buzz ...Read More

I started my career in editorial, and didn’t transition over to marketing until about six years ago. I can’t stress enough how important sharp communication and collaboration skills are when it comes to product marketing. So I’m incredibly grateful I first had the opportunity to focus on my writing and messaging before I switched to product marketing because it helped me develop the core components of communication, collaborating, and clarity. But since product marketing incorporates skills util ...Read More

The voice of the customer should be what drives your decisions as a PMM, and it reaches you through various channels. In some instances for OkCupid, that is completely data-driven. For example, when Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2021, we saw an 18% increase in users stating they are pro-choice on their profiles, so it was clear that finding a pro-choice partner was increasingly important to our users. Therefore, we launched our I’m Pro-Choice profile badge so users could filter for other users w ...Read More

Messaging is so important, not only when conveying new features, updates, and opportunities to your customers, but also when getting internal buy-in and gathering resources for a go-to-market plan. Start by putting together your message, focusing most importantly on the value, as well as the must-knows and how-tos. What are you providing to the user (or colleague), or trying to get them to do, and why does it benefit them? And see how other companies approach similar topics. Just because a compe ...Read More