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Katherine Kelly

Head of Product Marketing, Benchling

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How do you update stakeholders, and the company as a whole, on the recent activities and achievements of product marketing?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

This is a great question that varies by company size. In a smaller company it may be appropriate to present recent wins in an all-hands from time to time. But at a medium - large company, just like all product marketing, you have to think about your audience first and then plan the message and de......Read More

1448 Views

How do you prioritize the variety of requests and responsibilities that fall on the Product Marketing Manager?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

There's really no perfect way. I'm not sure if you're asking at a broader level, how do you prioritize product's needs against sales or marketing needs, or if you mean on a granular level. I think the first step is understanding what is a short-term ask vs. something that should be owned, and the......Read More

1385 Views

For a new product launch that is under development, when is the right time to start planning and meeting with the different channels?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

When you launch as quickly and regularly as we do, as soon as possible! :) But to be more descriptive - the goal is for these teams to have some visibility and control over planning for their workload, and for you to have all the resources you need for a launch. So I think it's helpful to look......Read More

1296 Views

How do you break down responsibilities and KPI's for product launches between demand generation and product marketing?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

We have partnered with our integrated campaigns team to formalize roles and responsibilites and then we actually aim to share KPIs. I think it makes us stronger to feel like we are succeeding and failing together vs being able to say Product Marketing "succeeded" in a quarter where we didn't hit ......Read More

1269 Views

Do you feel it is necessary to dip your toe in these other orgs/roles (ex. Demand Gen, Product) being a product marketer to fully comprehend your work and excel?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

Empathy is incredibly important for stakeholder management. The more you understand what your stakeholders need, can talk to them in their language, take feedback and get better at predicting and proactively providing the information they need the more trust you will earn from them. I don't think......Read More

1176 Views

What marketing tools (e.g. personas, buyer journeys, sales playbooks, etc) have you found most effective in getting stakeholders aligned on marketing strategy?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

One of the best alignment tools we rolled out in the last two years was a messaging source document. This document includes overview / background on the market, description of the thing we are launching or marketing, details of the audience and related personas, etc. This document can be used by ......Read More

1169 Views

How can marketers be in the driver seat of product launches while managing eager product and sales stakeholders?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

The best way to get yourself in the driver's seat is to know where you're going and how to get there. If you understand the needs of each of these stakeholders and can start to anticipate their questions and put that proactively in your plans and communication I think you will start to feel like ......Read More

976 Views

How do product marketing key stakeholders from other departments change as your company grows?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

Such an interesting question because I actually think it doesn't change that much. My last role was a company that was ~150 employees, Zendesk is now ~3,000 I think. In both companies, my biggest stakeholders were: * CEO * Head of Product * CMO * Head of Sales Often it feels like the job of......Read More

925 Views

How do you approach an environment where there has been no formal launch process and make sure you get the buy-in from engineering and product management?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • July 31

I actually don't have much experience with this, I'm sorry! I wonder if you should just start rolling out / following a lightweight launch process to show-not-tell how it can help? I'm getting an error that my answer is to short so I am typing more but again, I haven't really experienced pushback......Read More

770 Views

What's the biggest weakness you see among experienced candidates for product marketing positions?

Katherine Kelly

Benchling Head of Product Marketing • May 19

I'll tell you a few of the red flags that immediately turn me off a candidate: 1. too many "I" statements. PMM is so collaborative, so cross-functional...if you are making it sound like YOU did all this stuff on your own, either I fully doubt it, or in fact that tells me something was wrong. ......Read More

659 Views

Credentials & Highlights

Head of Product Marketing at Benchling

Formerly ExactTarget (Salesforce Marketing Cloud), Zendesk, Slack, Salesforce