Marcus Andrews

Product marketing is often defined as the people who position the products, but I think it's as equally important (especially as you grow bigger) that Product Marketing is also the most cross functional role in marketing. Creating alignment, securing buy-in, and building momentum around a launch is just as important (if not more) as any positioning work you've done. After all what good is a great narrative if no-one put it to use? If you want to ace this there are two things you need to do reall ...Read More

Going to cop out on this one a little bit (all the parts are important!) and just tell you how we did it at HubSpot. There are many ways to slice it but our approach has worked really well for us. We always start with the change in the world. How people are different today, where they are headed and why. This is a great set up and will quickly give your positioning context and root it in a specific market and audience. We then talk about how businesses (or whoever your persona is) has to adapt t ...Read More

Great question!  First and foremost your launches have to have substance and that should dictate the cadence more than marketing need. I've seen some companies try and do a launch every week and it starts off great but then loses momentum quickly because people stop caring. Thats a bad situtation to be in. The launches just don't have enough substance and people are overwhelmed.  You may have lots of different updates happening all the time, but the trick is packaged them up into a bigger more i ...Read More

I think to be a great PMM leader, it's really important to have done the work. So to have owned massive product lauches, designed narratives, led sales trainings, etc. PMM can be an ambigous job so a leader that hasn't been there done that usually isn't succesful.  The hard skill then left to learn is management. Coaching, support, leadership, alignment. That's a hard skill that you can't overlook. Just becuase someone is a great PMM doesn't mean they will become a great PMM leader. It takes kno ...Read More

There are a number of ways we keep everyone up to date on the progress during a launch. Luckily at HubSpot we also have project managers to help us. I’ll say it, I’m not a good project manager. It’s another level of organization that I was just not born with. These people really help during this process, bless their meticulously organized souls. We usually have a bi-weekly or weekly meeting as we run up to a launch with everyone who is part of the DARCI model. The key stakeholders. This is a ser ...Read More

There is less written about marketing a platform or suite of products vs individual products so I'll start there. There are two things I think work really well when marketing a platform. The Platform should unlock use cases or outcomes you can't achieve with the individual products alone. Like Captain Planet (sorry non-90's kids for the reference you can google it) is an amalgamation of a smaller team of individuals - your platform must feel like a single powerful entity made up of the individua ...Read More

I don't really run structured tests to test messaging very often, but I'm constantly trying to understand if our messaging is working. Here are a few things I'm always doing. This approach really works for me and my teams. I'm always trying to figure out if things aren't working or if they are. Sales adoption and specific calls with prospects / customers. Simply put if it's good sales will use it if it's not they won't. Good sales people don't waste their time with bad messaging or collateral. I ...Read More

Not sure if these are "technical skills" Product Marketing isn't a technical job, it's a communications job. But the three biggest hard skills that will help you succeed in PMM and that I interview for are.  Creative Generalist: Does the candidate bring a strong generalist marketing background. Do they understand the basics of demand gend, design, brand, video, etc. PMM is one place having a broad set of experiences is truly helpful.  Excellent Storyteller: Can the candidate tell a persuavie pro ...Read More