Lisa Dziuba

When working with C-Suite executives, there are a few key habits that can help you build strong working relationships and effectively communicate your ideas: 1. Be prepared: Make sure you have thoroughly researched and thought through your ideas before presenting them to C-Suite executives. This will help you make a strong case and answer any questions they may have. 2. Be concise: Executives are busy and often have limited time, so it's important to be clear and concise when communicating with them. Avoid using jargon or unnecessarily complex language, and get to the point quickly. 3. Be respectful: Treat leadership with respect and professionalism at all times. This means being polite, listening to their feedback and concerns, and addressing any issues in a constructive manner. 4. Be proactive: Executives appreciate employees who are proactive and take initiative. This is especially important for startups. So if you see an opportunity to improve a process or solve a problem, don't be afraid to bring it to their attention and offer solutions. 5. Be adaptable: C-Suite executives often have to make quick decisions and adapt to changing circumstances. Show that you are adaptable and able to handle change by being flexible and open to new ideas. By adopting these habits, you will set up yourself for success in every company :)

User empathy helps put the customer at the very center of everything product marketing does. It's about living through the customer's experience during all the marketing touches, website experience, onboarding, and day-to-day usage of the product. For product marketing teams having user empathy is an essential soft skill to succeed. Embracing empathy comes to motivating all teams to listen to users and learn how they feel while interacting with your product. User empathy comes as a by-product of almost every PMM program and deliverable: 1) User research The research will result in a better understanding of users' needs and pain points. It will provide the team with customer insights and a sense of purpose when it comes to building the product and improving the lives of users. 2) User personas Visible personas ensure that all the stakeholders — researchers, designers, product managers, engineers, marketing, and sales teams — are on the same page and know the customer and their expectations from the product. 3) Building empathy maps Empathy maps are a visual tool used by design teams that put users first (human-centered design approach). After filling in the empathy map, the team experiences customers' struggles firsthand, causing them to form a stronger connection with users. 4) Customer journey mapping Customer journey mapping is another design tool that allows teams to gain empathy by understanding a user's behavior during all stages of their journey. 5) User stories User stories put focus on the user's needs. It's a feature used mostly by product managers or engineers to describe how a product feature brings value to the customer. 5) A day in customer support Having a practice of working in support at least one day a quarter can give any team member a huge boost of user empathy. 6) Using your own product Not all products are possible to use internally. But if your company is a user of your own solution, then this option is essential for you, as it will allow all the team to see how it feels to use your product firsthand.

Usually, team members explore empathy maps at the beginning of the design & product dev process, after the research has been conducted. After filling in the empathy map, the team experiences customers’ struggles firsthand, causing them to form a stronger connection with users. If empathy mapping happening for a released product, the most effective way is to make it after user interviews. An empathy map has four quadrants, which account for what the customer says, thinks, does, and feels. So PMMs fill those quadrants after aggregating all user research learnings.

Great question! Before going to your PMM interview absorb all available information on the role & company & product, run several mock-up interviews with PMM peers and draft your portfolio. Let's cover all these in more detail: 1. Learn from product marketing communities, like Product Marketing Alliance and Sharebird. 2. Review the PMM job description and requirements to understand the specific skills and experience that this company is looking for. This will help you identify your strengths and areas for improvement, and will also give you a better sense of what to expect in the interview. 3. Practice interviews with other PMMs or mentors. This will help you get comfortable with the types of questions you are likely to be asked, and will also give you an opportunity to receive feedback and improve. 4. Get together your PMM portfolio and case studies. So you will have practical examples from your part experience for many potential questions. In terms of the types of questions you can expect in a PMM interview, these might include (but are not limited to 😃): * Questions about your experience and qualifications, including any experience with positioning, GTMs, content, sales enablement, analytics + much more depending on the PMM role focus. * Questions about your product marketing approach, including your process for positioning and promoting products, your approach to market research, and your strategies for driving product adoption. * Questions about your communication and collaboration skills, including how you work with other teams, how you handle feedback and objections, and how you present and sell ideas to others. Some of the typical questions you can train to answer could be: * Can you provide an example of a product that you have successfully launched or repositioned? * How do you gather and use customer feedback to improve your product marketing efforts? * Can you describe a situation where you had to handle a difficult objection or challenge in your product marketing work? * How do you work with other teams, such as Product Management, Sales, and Marketing, to drive user acquisition? * Can you provide examples of how you have used data and analytics to inform your product marketing decisions? * Tell about your failed GTM and what you have learned. This was a very long answer. In short: prepare, prepare, prepare.

Growth product marketing managers (PMMs) and growth product managers (PMs) often work closely together to drive adoption and growth of the product. The primary duties of each role are different, but they are also complementary, and the handoff points between the two roles can vary depending on the specific product, market, and business context. * The primary duties of a growth PMM are to understand the needs, challenges, and preferences of the target market, and to develop growth marketing strategies and tactics that are tailored to founded insights. Growth PMM can run experiments in the domains of positioning, messaging, content, email marketing, sales enablement, and cross-functional marketing campaign based on insights. * The primary duties of a growth PM are to define and prioritize the product roadmap, and to ensure that the product features and capabilities are aligned with the needs and preferences of the target market and support growth. Growth PMM can run experiments in the domains of micro-features, micro-copy, CRO practices for registration flow, onboarding, product adoption flow, self-service flow, pricing pages, etc. I think both roles can work very closely together, helping each other depending on the skillsets of growth PMM <> growth PM. I'm building our growth PMM function with deep cooperation with our PMs and it works for us :)

"Good OKRs" answer on the question of where Product Marketing can bring the most significant positive impact on the company's growth. It really depends on the stage of your product’s life cycle. Is your product in the introduction (development, pre-MVP, validation), growth, or maturity stage? If the startup is working on delivering the first Minimum Viable Product (MVP), then the main focus should be on defining Product-Market fit, value for target users, and launching the product itself. In this case, the company Objective could be “Launch MVP and receive meaningful learnings in quarter 1” with 3-4 Key Results for the PMM team. The good practice is to make Key Results measurable, for example: * MVP launch with 5000+ signups at the end of the first quarter. Note: on-schedule MVP release will be owned by the Product Team, while MVP Go-to-Market launch by PMMs. * 40% MVP adoption rate (new engaged users /all signups) via smooth onboarding and UX. Note: this can be shared KR between PM < > PMM teams. * Validate 10 Product-Market fit hypotheses to learn if the MVP solves users’ needs. Note: PMM team can own hypotheses about user segments, problem domains, and value propositions. While the PM team can focus more on how current features solve needs or how usable they are (discoverability and usability hypothesis). If the startup has passed the Product-Market fit stage, Product Marketing OKRs can be centered around building Competitive Intelligence programs to constantly stay ahead of the competition, both from positioning and product features perspectives. The positioning aspect can be owned by marketing leaders and features differentiation by Product Leads. Another example of post-PMF Product Marketing OKRs could be bridging the gap between Product and sales which comes to various sales enablement projects. Let me give you a practical example here.

For everyone looking to learn more about Product Marketing, these are awesome free resources: 1️⃣ Advanced Product Marketing by Jon Chang (Linkedin course, short, easy to digest, free, and with certificate): https://lnkd.in/dVQWj69h 2️⃣ What is product marketing: A great guide by Product Marketing Alliance that covers: - The Product Marketing Framework - What does product marketing do? - What is the role of product marketing? - Does the perfect product marketer exist? - Why is product marketing so important? - How do you get into product marketing? 3️⃣ Product Marketing Getting Started Guide by RocketBlocks: covering: - What are the key aspects of the PMM job? - What does the career path of a PMM look like? - What's the difference between B2B and B2C PMM'ing? - What's the day-to-day of a PMM like? - What type of skills are tested in PMM interviews? - Will PMM interviews have case interview questions (hint: yes!)? - How should I prepare for PMM interviews? 4️⃣ Product Marketing Metrics and How to Measure Your Business Impact by Diana, formerly at Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvO3-KFVa9M&feature=youtu.be 5️⃣ Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): How To Create A Comprehensive Customer Profile: https://www.mykpono.com/ideal-customer-profile-icp-how-to-create-a-comprehensive-customer-profile/ Enjoy learning!

The product marketing portfolio could be: * Messaging: key messaging on the products you worked on * GTM: links to your part launches (landing pages) * GTM: launch brief which you can share * Content: links to case studies you have prepared * Sales enablement: sales presentations, personas, sales emails You can also share articles explaining your work approach. For example, I talked about incorporating user empathy and it explained how I actually did it. You can see it here 

Interesting question, I will answer it from the experience working in fast-growing startups. Choosing the right features to develop is hard for new products & startups. It's caused by limited resources, a probability to be biased, not enough data, lack of alignment, absence of product strategy, and high uncertainty: • High uncertainty Startups are constantly in the process of searching for fit: Market x Product x Channel x Model fit. So, while the founding & new business unit team is busy with testing and figuring out how to find all those fits, the product team is busy with choosing the right features to build to empower those fits. • Limited resources that add pressure Startup PMs don’t have the time to slowly build many small features and test which of them brings the most value or bet on a huge feature, risking months of development. The less funding a startup has, the fewer product dev iterations it can have. • High probability of bias Startup teams tend to be very biased towards features they believe in, especially when big-name users tell “we will pay for THIS”. So product prioritization can be influenced by biased opinions, based on promises of future purchases. • Not enough data Not having enough data to prioritize one feature over another, both from the impact or difficulty to building perspective is a typical problem. How could it be easy to prioritize if it can come up to basically guessing based on several clients' feedback? • Lack of alignment Different teams will have varying opinions as to what is “important” to build. It adds even more pressure on prioritization, so sometimes the roadmap is filled with what executives want but not what users needs. • Absence of Product Strategy Sometimes product strategy with a clear roadmap does not exist at all, so features will fill urgent needs rather than help achieve strategic goals. Chaotic product growth is something many startups have. All above makes prioritization a difficult process with a high level of possible mistakes, when not "the best" features go in the roadmap. I hope, it helped.

Self-serve monetization models are business models that allow customers to purchase products or services without the need for direct interaction with a sales team. Some examples of self-serve monetization models include subscription-based, freemium, pay-per-use, and marketplace models. While it's widely used, it will work not for all businesses and products. Consider 4 key factors when choosing to go for self-serve monetization: 1. Your target audience. Consider the needs and preferences of your target audience. If your audience is primarily composed of small businesses or individual customers, a self-serve monetization channel may be a good fit. However, if your audience is primarily large enterprises and b2bs, a more traditional sales approach may be more effective. Examples: Upwork for the mass market and Turing for large enterprises. 2. Your product. Consider the nature of your product or service. If it is complex or requires significant customization, a self-serve monetization channel may not be the best option. In this case, a more personalized sales approach with a demo will be more effective. While for b2c consumer apps serve-serve is a norm. Examples: educational apps, wellness apps, and games are self-serve because that's how users expect them to be. 3. Your business model. Consider how a self-serve monetization channel would fit with your overall business model. If your business model is based on recurring revenue streams, a self-serve monetization channel may be a good fit. However, if your business model relies on high-touch sales and support, a more traditional sales approach may be more effective. 4. Your resources. Consider the resources that would be required to launch and maintain a self-serve monetization channel. This might include technology, personnel, marketing, and support. If you do not have the resources to support a self-serve monetization channel, it may not be the right option for your business. I hope, it was useful!