Nina Seth

MBAs are definitely great if you are switching fields. They are also great from a networking perspective.  

There are plenty of people who studied business or marketing as an undergrad who have gone on to have successful PMM careers.

I have used a number of applications in the past to project manage product launches. You can use Trello, Kapost, or even Excel.

The key to driving sucess is alignment across marketing groups and other teams. I set up weekly meetings where we go over set agenda items and deliverables. Frequently touching base with team members allows you as the launch manager to find out if there are bottlenecks that will affect the launch.

You need to have strong writing and communication skills. A huge part of this job is communicating information across teams. In all product marketing roles, you will be evangelizing your product to sales teams. You need to clearly articulate the value of the solution you are marketing. The first have to convince sales that your product is worth pitching to customers. This true regardless of company size.

You can't stop competitors from copying your product messaging.  That will always happen in highly competitive markets.  But organizations can focus on building differentiated products.

I have used Excel, Trello, Confluence, and Kapost. Honestly, a sharable spreadsheet works the best especially if you are collaborating with teams outside of marketing. Kapost is work-flow management but this requires a bit of training and is license based.

It's best to use a tool that all stakeholders have access to.

It takes a great relationship between sales and marketing to systematically contact customers. In my experience at small companies, you can much more easily contact customers without sales being the gate-keeper. With easier access to customer lists, you can set goals for customer calls (feedback on a new product or feature, feedback on promotions, or messaging).

If sales insists on being the gatekeeper, then I ask them to ask the questions that I want answers to.  

Existing customers should be your product champions. You should be getting them involved in betas, cusotmer advisory panels and the like.  They can help shape product direction and help you understand messaging that will resonate in the market.

Many organizations have customer advisory boards or customer councils. These are great venues to validate messaging and even directly ask key customers how they view your message.

I generally work closely with product management and sales as I'm crafting messaging. Both organizatons along with product marketing spend a lot of time in front of customers.