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Melinda Chung

Melinda Chung

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Credit Karma

San Francisco, CA

I am an entrepreneurial and people-first marketing and business leader with over 15 years of experience growing and scaling businesses across startups and SaaS companies including Yahoo!, StumbleUpon, Locu (acquired), GoDaddy, Adobe, and VSCO. For new and aspiring marketers, I also run the Product Marketing Bootcamp, an online course that teaches the essentials of strategic product marketing. I’m currently advising businesses and marketers to achieve their growth goals as a fractional marketing advisor. Learn more at melindachung.com or pmmbootcamp.com.

Content

What are some key attributes that an experienced PMM has or needs to get to SPMM?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

The key differences in Sr PMMs and PMMs come down to ownership, self-sufficiency and complexity.

As a Sr PMM, you will be expected to self-sufficiently drive projects on your own without significant guidance from your manager. You will also be expected to be able to lead and own more complex initiatives than as a PMM and to work amongst more ambiguity to figure situations out. You are influencing at higher levels, not just contributing and taking orders.

1,397 Views

How do you get into a saas based company if you have no experience working in one and what are some of the core competencies you need when you are starting out?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

People often say that you can get into organizations by either function or domain. If you haven’t been in SaaS before, get into a SaaS company through your functional expertise - perhaps marketing, demand generation, or operations, for instance. From there, you can move around. The core competencies for operating in SaaS as a PMM are not that different from any other company, but I’ll highlight one difference - you should definitely understand the business model and how the company makes money. ...Read More

1,288 Views

What are the most important soft and hard skills Product Marketing Managers can build to become successful in their field going forward?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

Required Hard (Functional) Skills: Analytical — both quantitative and qualitative. From financial modeling to behavioral analysis to awareness campaign tracking to focus group findings, you’re going to need to be able to dissect data, interpret it, and figure out what the implications are. Strong communicator — can clearly explain rationale for decisions as well as tell stories to persuade Able to influence — can shift mindsets in peers as well as senior leadership. This includes peers and leade ...Read More

1,204 Views

What pointed recommendations do you have on gaining influence as a new member of an organization or as a junior product marketing team member?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

With every new job, you have a period during which you need to prove yourself. As PMMs, we gain influence and prove ourselves by knowing the customer, market, business, and product better than others in the company. Figure out which one of those matters most to your company and your leadership, become an expert, and drop it anecdotally in your conversations.

Also, align yourself with the people who have influence and power and make sure your contributions are valuable to them.

1,080 Views

What are some of examples of ways you have been able to get promoted or support your colleagues to get promoted at the same company?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

Here are two opposite examples of people getting promoted to more senior product marketing roles: “Nancy” was extremely motivated and driven to get promoted. She proactively raised this in our regular check-in’s, and I asked her to create a plan with milestones against her annual objectives that would demonstrate her ability to be at the next level. She regularly achieved against the plan, I put together her promotion case, and she was promoted. I recognized during our work together that “Linda” ...Read More

1,033 Views

How, particularly during the pandemic, have you been able to network & develop your career given traditionally a lot was offline/in person?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

Great question. I haven’t focused on this, but here are three actions that I’ve intentionally done:

  1. Show up on video in meetings where important leaders are present so I get visibility (literally)
  2. Set up virtual 1:1’s with people I haven’t seen or connected with in awhile
  3. Comment and interact with more people’s posts on LinkedIn
1,006 Views

How do you prepare yourself to become a Product Marketing Director and manage a team, without any experience managing anyone previously?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

Yes, this is a tough one. I would suggest doing the following to gain some more recent “management” experience: Hire an intern - either summer or part-time Manage agencies or contractors If side projects are possible at your company, see if anyone wants to work on a PMM side project with you While you do need to acquire management experience somehow, you’re more likely to get the opportunity to do it (with less experience) if you go to a small company. And don’t completely discount your cross-fu ...Read More

959 Views

How do you define success leading PMMs? What are the KPIs you track?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

For myself, I track based on completions of specific milestones (specific deliverables we planned for - i.e. sales play development, enablement, strategy completed, etc) that were led by myself and/or my team.

I also track my team’s engagement score in our annual surveys and work towards improving against the opportunity areas that I’m not as strong on.

886 Views

The job of a PMM can vary greatly from company to company, industry to industry, and even based on where they report to (Product vs Marketing). What have you found to be successful in defining your career as a PMM?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

1. Ensure that your focus areas are aligned with what is most important to the company. For example, if Enterprise is the core segment, you might not get the support and interest you need/want if you are focused on B2C. Doing what is most important to the company means that you are delivering value where it matters and where people have investment and attention paid. 2. Ensure that you are doing what you are most passionate about. I always say that we manage against two objectives in any job: do ...Read More

680 Views

As a b2c product marketer, how best move into SAAS industry/b2b?

Melinda Chung
Melinda Chung

Credit Karma Senior Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startups • 4y

People often say that you can get into organizations by either function or domain. If you haven’t been in SaaS before, get into a SaaS company through your functional expertise - product marketing.

I would recommend moving into a SaaS company that does both B2C and B2B. You have the product marketing functional expertise to land in B2C there, and then you can network and move into a B2B function from there.

578 Views
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