Surachita Bose

Let’s talk about the path of the industry-specific PMM. I’ve had the privilege of leading both, industry-focused and full-stack PMM teams—at Twilio (deeply verticalized hybrid GTM that paired core PLG offering with SLG for enterprise), Iterable (industry-agnostic platform focus, selling to mid-market & enterprise), and previously at Uber and Intuit. Along the way, I’ve learned a few truths about what makes this path rewarding, challenging, and—let’s be honest—occasionally frustrating. Let's ...Read More

There are a gazillion tools (free ones if you’re budget-constrained) out there. The choice of tool is a function of what you’re looking to accomplish. But nothing beats sitting with the customer and listening to them. Some of the tools and platforms I keep going back to: User Testing, Loop 11, Userlytics: UserTesting has been a very easy and useful tool for my teams for audience recruitment, message testing, usability testing, and even generating live video-based customer narratives. As they say ...Read More

Boosting the Product Marketing (PMM) function to be a strategic powerhouse, not just a product launch pad, is JOB #1 for any leader worth their salt. Ever feel like your Product Marketing team is the high-energy friend who’s always planning the parties but never invited to strategy meetings? Let’s change that narrative and elevate Product Marketing to the strategic rockstars they’re meant to be! 🎸 Here are some ideas from my toolkit (7-step power play) to elevate PMM to the next level: Align wit ...Read More

Love this question and I’m often surprised by how underutilized customer research is within companies. The issue is that research takes time which explains why a lot of companies shy away from it. But the right intel can accelerate your business multiple orders of magnitude by informing - priority product bets, competitive differentiation, geo expansion, pricing strategies, strategic narratives, validating personas (and so much more)! First, tie the research hypotheses to defined P0 business pri ...Read More

Hey PMM tribe - We all know launching a new product without buyer personas is like throwing a party without knowing who’s on the guest list! You can always hire a research agency to do this for you (if you have deep pockets!) but here is a scrappy guide to building personas yourself to get the job done in this new “era of efficiency”! Step 1: Research, Research, Research: Start with comprehensive research to understand your market. Dive into demographic data, customer surveys, and industry repor ...Read More

Ah the cross-functional socialization challenge! I've answered this in another section but adding my two cents here again just given how critical this is for value casting. Socialize: Schedule time (e.g. quarterly cadence) for “Lunch and learn” sessions that anyone across the org can join to hear directly from customers/prospects (ideally) or for a shareout by PMMs. This could serve as a beta version of a future ‘Customer Advisory Board’.  Synthesize! Not everything you learn will be of value. D ...Read More

My bias is towards conducting in-house research first to establish the foundations and get crisp on the business subjective, research questions, target personas … what we need to learn, who are we targeting, and why. I’ve found that you can get a reasonable distance with a structured approach to customer research and the process can be a good gauge for formulating the research agenda before you bring in an agency and/or purchase industry reports. Your output is only as good as the clear framing ...Read More

Hmm, if you've done work on the brand side including gathering customer research and insights, you already know more about PMM than you think. Start by stepping back to understand PMM as a function more deeply. Explore its various facets—different PMM specializations, core skills, and how the shape of PMM differs between consumer vs B2B, startups vs larger orgs, PLG vs SLG, SMB vs mid-market vs Enterprise. There is a plethora of resources online on product marketing as a function - network with ...Read More

I’ll be honest: cracking the code for being a high performer while maintaining work-life balance in PMM—especially in B2B tech—feels like hunting for a unicorn. When you find it, do me a favor and send me the coordinates :-) PMM roles often feel like you’re juggling flaming rings while everyone around you is throwing more into the mix— sales wants a deck yesterday, product needs messaging for a Tier 1 feature launch, feature adoption is lagging and PMM is tasked with cracking the code, and marke ...Read More

Being active on LinkedIn can elevate your visibility, but if it feels forced or inauthentic, it’s okay to approach it differently. Also, most discerning readers can see through it if someone is posting just to stay visible and in my opinion, it's much worse to show up with empty PMM platitudes and appear vapid. There are other ways to build engagement and "find your voice" and it can be done through thoughtful commentary on other people's posts, connecting with peers directly or reposting articl ...Read More