Maureen Sitterson

This is a great question! As a new PMM on a team or new to a company, the most important thing that helps build credibility is trust with partners in product and marketing. Building a strong foundation with your partners is critical in every PMM role. Spend time getting to know your partners and their teams - what are their goals? what is important to them? How do they like to collaborate? After you've established that foundation, the next most critical thing you can do is start to critically ev ...Read More

One of my favorite brands' marketing is Reformation. They lead their marketing with the sustainability of their products and they do it in such a bold way that it immediately grabs your attention. Their marketing is clear, provocative, and consistent - you always know without a doubt who and what they stand for. Their tone also evokes a sense of personalization at scale - it feels like they truly know their customers and are talking directly to them in a way that shows that. In terms of Product ...Read More

This is a great question. When a solution doesn’t address the same need that competitors’ solutions do, I’ve found it most effective to anchor the messaging in the value it delivers to the user. Leading with customer value is always a strong strategy, and it becomes especially important when the solution isn’t competitively differentiated on features. A structure I’ve found helpful is: Clearly define the user need or problem the solution addresses. Articulate a strong value proposition that expl ...Read More

Leaning on research and data to project the impact of new messaging and show internal teams why it will matter to customers is most effective. This could come in many formats - showing the potential size of the business opportunity or showing how customers are currently responding to messaging are a few different ways that can help others clearly see your point of view and why you believe a change is necessary. Without a clear articulation of the "why" behind what you're proposing, it's much mor ...Read More

Unbundling requires articulating the specific value of a feature -and why it's different and special. Asking yourself questions like, how does this ladder up to the brand? How does this align to our corporate and company narrative? How does this feature solve a specific user challenge? What magic does this feature create for the user? If you can ask and answer those questions, it will help you to unbundle a feature and position it on its own. Showing the unique customer value that a feature deli ...Read More

Yes, we always create a risk and mitigation plan for a GTM strategy. For instance, if we expect that our audience may have feedback about a particular feature launch, we will give our audiences an opportunity to provide feedback. If there is a problem with an element of a feature, our seller community in particular is quick to let us know, and we can make improvements quickly! We also always develop reactive communications for our customer service agents to use so that we can quickly respond to ...Read More

Post-launch analysis and adjustment/pivoting is key to being a successful product marketer. If we aren't seeing expected results post-launch, it's critical that we first understand why we're not seeing expected results. After we dig into why we're not seeing expected results, then we can develop a plan to pivot. One example of this was when we launched the Gift Mode feature on Etsy to help buyers give better gifts. After launch, we saw that buyers weren't easily finding the feature which was res ...Read More

This happens a lot as a Product Marketer! While it's great to take multiple stakeholders opinions into account, product marketers have a unique vantage point in their organization that enables them to see the broader company context in a way that not all teams have access to. To manage conflicting opinions, I like to ground teams in what we're communicating, why we're communicating it, and the outcome we want to drive. Usually grounding conflicting voices in those 3 things - and aligning togethe ...Read More

I don't have a specific formula for re-iterating on messaging, because I firmly believe that it's important to critically evaluate messaging through multiple lenses with several stakeholders throughout the messaging development process. Landing a strong brief and aligning on it with all key stakeholders as the foundation is the first and most important step - that way, you can challenge whether the messaging is aligned to the brief throughout the development and revision phases. Without a strong ...Read More