Julie Brown

Great question! I have seen customer marketing both within PMM and outside of it. Depending on the organization, it could work either way as long as product and customer marketing work very closely together.  To ensure success, I would suggest that customer marketing be part of product marketing for many reasons. PMMs are expected to be experts on customers and are usually the ones that either lead or highly influence customer-related activities such as:  Increasing product adoption Content for ...Read More

I browse a number of different resources from here on Sharebird, AIPMM, Pragmatic, SiriusDecisions (Forrester), Crayon's blog, Medium (includes a number of different publications I recommend following such as Product Marketing Community, Women in Product, Project Product, The Product Launch, etc.) LinkedIn, Facebook (great Product groups here to join like Women in Product & Product Marketing Masters), and Twitter. So many PMMs have treasure troves of workflows, frameworks, and best practices ...Read More

Great question! I've used one of those vendors in the past and have evaluated various others. I have found a number of reasons why these tools are extremely helpful: They save so much time vs. manually searching through Google (setting up Google Alerts) or scrolling through social media. It is nearly impossible to do your day-to-day PMM work plus keep tabs on your competitors. Having an app that automatically gives you daily updates is a true time saver. I would estimate it saved the PMM team 5- ...Read More

Such a great question! And sadly, a common challenge for product marketing. I've found even when a company hires its first product marketer, not everyone is aware or on the same page. I have struggled with this very same thing at multiple companies and have found creating a team charter to help.  You can check out how I tackled that here: https://medium.com/@julie.ef.brown/how-to-write-a-product-marketing-charter-916d91e53a65  The critical components are: Define what PMM is (and can even say wha ...Read More

Great question! I am a HUGE fan of templates and frameworks. I create templates and then modify them for each company so it better suits the needs of the business. I've written a couple of articles on this topic (see below): Part 1: https://medium.com/projectproduct/the-power-of-a-message-house-for-product-marketers-8b9bfe01e5a4 Part 2: https://medium.com/projectproduct/the-power-of-a-message-house-for-product-marketers-part-2-bca8f3ea9ad7 I have found holding a cross-functional workshop to be v ...Read More

Awesome question and welcome to the world of searching for a PMM role! I have interviewed for more product marketing roles than I can count and have come up with a few observations and tricks/tips along the way. People do not read your resume closely. I have links to samples of my work in my resume, and I am always asked to forward specific pieces of content or send links to my work. So have those pdfs and blog and video links handy. Sometimes companies ask for a project. Be cautious here. When ...Read More

So happy you found product marketing and it interests you! I actually wrote about this topic years ago: https://medium.com/projectproduct/10-skills-traits-youll-find-in-exceptional-product-marketers-12fccfd35e2a Now, today, I can narrow it down to just a few traits I look for as I find these skills very difficult to teach/train in the workplace. I can help and teach those early in their careers how to overcome public speaking fears, how to price and package a SaaS product, or how to go about com ...Read More

I like to utilize a document I call a message house. Having a structured format with each section outlined and definitions and examples at the ready can make for a great workshop experience and help keep stakeholders more focused and aligned. Below are 2 articles I've written on the topic. Might be helpful in jumpstarting your next messaging project. Enjoy! Part 1: https://medium.com/projectproduct/the-power-of-a-message-house-for-product-marketers-8b9bfe01e5a4 Part 2: https://medium.com/project ...Read More

Such a great question because market research is a very important element for product marketing. There are a number of different tools and avenues: Surveys: Always a great way to gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback. Tools out there are SurveyMonkey, Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, Zoho, Qualtrics, Jotform, etc. I personally like Microsoft or Google if I don't have any budget. If I have the budget, I like the tools that have features such as skip logic like SurveyMonkey. (Blog on var ...Read More

Great question! It depends. It depends on how the company defines product marketing, what specific experiences, tasks, and responsibilities are listed in the job description, the size of the company, the industry, the maturity, goals, etc. First, I recommend looking over the job description and company profile. Then try to match as many relevant experiences and skills as you have to those listed in the job post. Key Items to Consider: Do you have experience working in a similar industry? If so, ...Read More