John Hurley

When it comes to defining goals for product launches, we tend to consider both short-term and long-term objectives. In the short-term, our goals may be centered around acquisition, engagement, and awareness. For example, we might aim to gain a certain number of new users, or to generate a certain amount of buzz on social media in the weeks following the launch. These early indicators can help us understand whether our product is resonating with our target audience, and can give us some early feedback on potential areas for improvement. Long-term goals, on the other hand, are focused on driving sustained usage and adoption. We want users to not only try our product, but to continue using it over time. This may involve goals around user retention or activation rates, as well as measuring how frequently users are engaging with our product. Ultimately, our goals for product launches are tailored to each specific product and our broader company objectives, but it is important that we consider both short-term and long-term goals in order to create a successful launch.

One approach to proactively identifying areas where PMM can add value is to conduct a thorough analysis of the market, competitors, and customers. This includes identifying gaps in the market and opportunities to differentiate, understanding the competitive landscape, and gathering insights on customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. Some questions to consider when conducting this analysis include: * What are the key trends and challenges in the market? * What are the biggest unmet customer needs and pain points? * How do our competitors position themselves and differentiate? * What are our key strengths and weaknesses as a business? * How can we leverage our strengths to address unmet customer needs and differentiate in the market? By answering these questions, you can identify areas where PMM can make the biggest impact and develop strategies to address these areas. It's important to keep in mind that the analysis should be an ongoing process, as markets and customer needs are constantly evolving.

I like to frame questions in two parts. 1) Walk me through (WMT) an example of...XYZ. I do several of these that each map to the key responsibilities I'm looking for. I want to hear real-life stories – both for experience and ability to articulate. This was inspired by my product partner at Amplitude. Great article here: https://runthebusiness.substack.com/p/wmt-interview-questions 2) Follow the WMT question with some form of why, what did you learn, what would you have done differently? Somethings they answer this in #1. But I want to get into the first principles thinking, self-awareness, and ability to iterate on thinking on the fly. Finally, a fun one. I always ask for "What are your PMM brand crushes?" Who do they look to for inspiration? If they dont have any, they're not engaged enough in their work for the types of highly engaged teams Iike to build.

Align on needs and get buy-in on the program from key stakeholders upfront, otherwise, you will just be reactive and the expectations will be that every request is handled and every asset is up to date. By setting a strategy upfront, defining the set of deliverables and the cadence at which they'll be updated, and creating rules of engagement and set venues / channels for to communicate with teams, you can create a scalable system. For larger orgs, you may have to create SLAs between your team and sales and product. Specifically with competitive, I really believe you need to define ourselves based on problems you solve and value you provide, not your competition. But also equip teams to stand out from competition and win against them. Competitive can become a crutch for not having confidence in your own message and story. Some of the most impactful interactions I've seen between a vendor and buyer is when the vendor says, "I don't work for that company. I work here, I know we do this really well, and I think I understand your problem and how we solve it." That's refreshing to hear versus bashing the competition.

PMM can bring the perspective from beyond the user. What are the markets, influencers, our executives, analysts, and competitors saying. If PMM is the subject matter expert – if they have a mind map for all the places where knowledge lives inside and outside the organization, then PMM again is the hub enabling a team of researchers. An example I recently had was for a maturity model. An internal research was tasked to create a maturity model for our customers. I knew of several other maturity models create by industry experts (some good, some lame) – and had a few customer journey models that we'd been experimenting with for various campaigns and customer pitches. That got her started, and then when she had a solid first version she came back to our team for feedback. Once she got to a final version, we then brought that to other teams to use it for customer success and onboarding, turned it into a thought leadership campaign, worked with community teams to share it with users, and shared to analysts that had create those originals thanking them for their contribution. Hub. Spoke. Flywheel. :)

Here is the competitive intelligence mission statement I've used for several years (repeat from previous post but will add more detail). “Define ourselves based on problems we solve and value we provide, not your competition. But also equip ourselves to stand out from competition and win against them.” Sales: Equip teams with knowledge and tools to win against the competition. Product: Equip teams insight into competitive product sets so we can build better, differentiated product. Marketing: Deep knowledge of competitive brand, message, and product so we can raise above with best in class product marketing and demand campaigns. Executive: Provide regular updates on competitive landscape to inform strategy For the most part, all vendor comparisons do is create confusion. If buyers have 3 conversations, they come away more confused. Shift the focus to ‘If we can show that we can do X for you, would that be valuable? And we’re great to work with, proven by our customer base and success.’ I often see buyers that see vendor comparisons as a big turn off. You also are going to be wrong a lot of the time. Your intel from a company’s website probably wasnt accurate to start with and it has changed. Vendor comparisons frequently slow down sales cycles.

I like to create what I call an Opportunity Assessment. Here is the general table of content for the presentation: - Problem Hypothesis - Target Market - Market Opportunity - Business Metrics / Revenue Strategy - Competitive Landscape - Our Differentiated Solution - Basic Solution Requirements - Go-to-Market Overview (Timing and Concept) If it's an existing market, include - Competitive Feature Comparison - SWOT Analysis for top competitor Looks like the formatting is a bit off, but attached you can find the template. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17WP6mzinluezqh1AF0HMcOFe_ucL7LDApQQJG1HZlno/edit?usp=sharing Opportunity Assessment 

When scaling from 5 PMMs to 20+ PMMs, it becomes increasingly important to have a well-defined team structure and organization. One approach is to ladder individuals into verticals based on their area of ownership and area of expertise. As the team grows, it may be necessary to have discipline leads and managers to help with collaboration and alignment. Here is a simple little progression: How PMM teams grow and mature over time… * Generalists (with some diversity but broad and deep ownership and expertise). Can be SMEs or just great PMMs depending on product. * Generalists with product ownership and disciplines * Product (vertical) and GTM (horizontals) PMMs, each owning some discipline. * Product and GTM and Discipline (horizontal and vertical; ex Competitive, release, AR, P&P). Discipline become a hub for specific work types (shared service). * Product broken into Core and new Products with managers…and rest gets custom from there. The decision to have a manager versus a collection of individual contributors (ICs) depends on the needs of the team. Generally, once a team reaches a certain size, it becomes necessary to have managers in order to provide leadership, direction, and support for the team. However, it's important to consider the specific needs of the team and the individuals involved when making this decision.

Good question. Constant tension. Don't abandon the consumer, but focus on where do we make money (b2b). Find the right investments and channels that will support the consumer (community, influencer, social, specific time-relevant consumer campaigns like 'Back to School' or 'New Year Resolutions'), but we focus 80% of time on B2B audiences and use cases because that's the core of the business. Only once we really feel we have the B2B side nailed do we think about the consumer side. Whenever possible, we look at the assets we develop for say a big launch, and we ask whether or not this product or use case has consumer value and does the asset and message speak to both B2B and consumer.

When working in an Enterprise company's Product Marketing team, it is important to have a clear understanding of how to split up responsibilities. One approach is to divide PMMs (Product Marketing Managers) based on the products they handle. This allows each PMM to focus solely on their product and become an expert in it. Another approach is to split PMMs based on regions. This can be useful if the company operates in multiple regions and requires localized marketing efforts. Alternatively, PMMs can be split up based on projects they work on. This approach can be useful if there are several projects running simultaneously, as it allows each PMM to focus on a specific project and give it their full attention. Another approach is to divide PMMs based on teams, which can be beneficial if the company has multiple teams each working on different aspects of the product. Ultimately, the best approach may be a mixture of these methods. It is important to consider the needs of the company and the product when deciding on the best way to divide responsibilities within the Product Marketing team.