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Ross Overline

Ross Overline

Senior Manager, Product Marketing, Fivestars

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Ross Overline
Ross Overline
Fivestars Senior Manager, Product MarketingAugust 16
Asking for a raise is tricky. Ultimately, you need to be driving value, right? That can be broken down quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Quant: What impact are you having on funnels? Run A/B tests to prove that your strategies are driving impact. How have NPS and sentiment changed? Qual: Do you have strong relationships with stakeholders? Are you driving value through strategy, creative, and channel partnerships? I would also recommend using your companies job ladder as a tool, or if you don't have one, job descriptions for other similar roles. If you're a PMM and the expectations for a PMM are X. But you're operating at Y level, which are the epxectations for a Director of PMM, then you should surface that. If you're exceeding expectations for your role, make that known during your review. Comps may be a useful tool as well. Look at what other companies are paying for your role if you think underpaid. You need to have some credible target to aim for.
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Ross Overline
Ross Overline
Fivestars Senior Manager, Product MarketingAugust 16
While there are benefits to both, judging from my experience, I believe PMM reporting into Marketing is more effective. * Reporting into makreting creates stronger ties between PMM and the revenue organziation (marketing, sales, operations, etc.) and can therefore lead to more buy-in from those stakeholders during launch. * Reporting into marketing positions you as a core partner in the revenue org. You have greater flexibility to "lead" the revenue org through launches and strategy shifts, while the PM can then focus more of their time on R&D (product, design, engineering, analytics, etc.). This creates a clean and powerful parternship for leading the entire business through GTM. * Reporting into product can lead to channel conflicts, while reporting into marketing can create easier entry into core channels. For example, if PMM reports to product, you won't be as closely tied to growth or channel owners and may have more difficulty getting slotted into channel calendars. If PMM is in marketing and has a stronger relationship with growth or channel owners, it can potentially make those conversations and processes smoother. * PMM reporting into marketing may make marketing budget more accessible. If you're in marketing, you'll be more incentivized to think in terms of marketing metrics, which naturally leads to the development stronger arguments for unlocking marketing budget. You'll also have closer ties to the owners of marketing budget as well.
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Ross Overline
Ross Overline
Fivestars Senior Manager, Product MarketingJuly 19
This is a great question and I'm excited to hear you're interested in PMM work. * To start, read up on Pragmatic Marketing's framework. That will give you a good foundation to begin studying to be able to confidently and cogently speak "PMM language", if you will. * Start combing through the LinkedIn profiles of PMMs for a few hours one day... What do you see them highlight in their resume? What kind of experience? What kind of content. * Start getting coffee with the PMM team at your company. Reach out and ask to learn from them (study how to make this contact). Start building relationships with that team and ask one, or a few, of them to mentor you. Ask if you can meet with them once every 4-6 weeks for a quick coffee to pick their brains (but of course, hold off on this until you've already met with them once)... * Start asking if you can help on PMM projects as you learn more about their work. Even if you just help with a launch email, or doing a few customer research calls, whatever it is, if you do a little bit for them your relationship building will accelerate, and you'll more quickly be able to start having conversations about moving into their org. * Start becoming close to the hiring managers on that team. Perhaps target them as mentors as they'll ultimately be the ones that decide to bring you over. * Of course, go Alex and Derek's PMM meetup every single time! And find others too as well (but of course remember this one is the most important ;) - https://www.meetup.com/product-marketing/ * Start networking and go deep. Ask people in this channel for coffee. Ask to learn from us. Start asking thoughtful questions (which come from doing your research) and start building relationships in the field * If you really want to take a big step towards the move, reach out to pre-Series A start ups and offer to volunteer to help them do market or customer research, do marketing strategy, positioning, messaging, and GTM planning. Google your way there along with all you'll learn from your new PMM network you're building. Get experience as fast as possible, and wherever possible, even if it's small. Something is better than nothing, * Check out the notes from our last meeting: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s23/sh/0180e78f-e8b6-47dc-bf13-b6ba65d028a2/240803c3fdce20fe4a58b527f55fda0c and read the books listed - they should be able to help too! I hope this is helpful. Cheers, Ross
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Ross Overline
Ross Overline
Fivestars Senior Manager, Product MarketingAugust 16
Not trying to deflect this, but this depends on your role, organization size, team structure, budget, target customer, and goals. That list sounds solid to me if you're a midsize company with some startup bend still. Some other tools to consider: * Leadpages or Unbounce are solid tools for building lead generating landing pages fast. * Mixpanel for instrumentation. * Marketo for scaled lifecycle communications (SFDC integration is helpful) * Mailchimp for scrappy email work. * Redash.io is a solid SQL interface. * Get Adobe suite if you can. Makes content collaboration easier since many designers use it. Hope that's helpful!
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Ross Overline
Ross Overline
Fivestars Senior Manager, Product MarketingAugust 16
There are a few questions here: How do I influence the team, how do I influence the roadmap, and how do I get them to listen to the feedback I'm bringing from customers. First, seek to understand. Approach your product team and roadmap decision makers with the intent to understand their values, motivations, goals, concerns, and needs. Once you've developed this level of understanding of your stakeholders, you can then truly understand what it is they want. After understanding my product team, what I've found most effective is to uncover the intersection between what they need and where I can deliver outsized value. Understand their strengths and your strengths, and then understand where that "Venn Diagram" does or doesn't overlap, in line with what the product team wants. Broadly, for a PMM I'd recommend knowing your customers, category, and competition better than anyone else, and see which of those product is most interested in. It's hard to address the piece about consumer feedback because I don't know the specifics of your situation, but let's assume you're bringing them qualitative feedback from customers from 1:1 interviews. What if they are already talking to customers? What if they believe they already understand that specific segment? What if your team prefers quantitative data over qualitative? Are you asking the types of questions that your product team is looking to answer? Do you have clarity on their top priorities and does the feedback you surface reflect that alignment and support those priorities? The answer to those questions come from understanding the stakeholders. You may need to start with giving them deep competitive insights. Once you build trust and become a thought partner, doors open for you to introduce other kinds of insights. There's a lot to say on this topic, but I'll start there. If you have follow up questions, feel free to message me with more specifics and I can try to offer more tactical advice! There is also a PMM leader named Mike Polner who is worth trying to contact. He taught me all of this :)
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Credentials & Highlights
Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Fivestars
Product Marketing AMA Contributor
Lives In Portola Valley, California
Knows About Product Marketing Career Path, Influencing the Product Roadmap, Product Marketing / D...more