Teju Shyamsundar

This is a really hard question as it varies from company to company, and your specific situation within that company. The short answer and what's worked for me is - Be willing to do the things that others won't do Prioritize execution over strategy a combination of those two things will help to make yourself invaluable, and people will naturally start seeing you as a leader. Of course, there's more to it, like you have to let your management team know that you want to be in a leadership role. do ...Read More

I've seen that marketing teams are generally structured in this way - Corporate Marketing - includes comms (press, analyst relations, internal comms, customer marketing), content marketing (defining a content strategy for each stage of the funnel, social media, blogs), brand (out of home ads, logos/colors, video production etc). This team is generally responsible for getting your company's name out there, make sure everyone knows who you are and what you do. Some of the relevant KPIs for this te ...Read More

Keeping this short and sweet - it should align with your company's (or at least your marketing team's) goals. If the focus is to prevent churn, increase CSAT, and upsell to existing accounts >> your work should lean towards end users. You can do this via - enabling your Customer Success teams on product updates and roadmap creating best practices type of content create "value of your product" type of content for execs who may need validation to continue renewing your product enabling your ...Read More

The simplest and fastest way is to talk directly with your reps! Not sales managers but the reps that are actually having the daily conversations - ask them (this is from the lens of B2B/enterprise SaaS sales) - 1. what deck do you use for first calls? Second calls? (ask them to send it to you - is there messaging in that deck that didn't come directly from PMM but is still working? Or is there messaging in that deck that doesn't align with the company's strategy) other than that -  2. check you ...Read More

It's fairly common to launch a product before it's baked. In my experience, PMM should drive the launch but bring in different teams within marketing at different stages of the product's maturity. Here's how I've done this in the past at each stage of the product - Ideation - this is largely about bringing your customer insights back to your product teams and ensuring they're building what's relevant for your audience. as the industry and subject matter expert, your guidance is critical in influ ...Read More

It’s tough to describe how you approach messaging and positioning without showcasing past work. I’d try to show real examples, even things you may feel are smaller projects. For example, web pages you’ve put together, datasheets, customer stories, videos, sales enablement material are all great options. While interviewing it’s generally assumed that the company you’re interviewing with isn’t going to share internal only docs that you send them for references, but if you’re worried about it, you ...Read More

It's a combination of PMM, Product, and your Customer Success teams. Product Marketing should continue to evangelize and advocate for adoption of the product through sales enablement, content creation, web landing pages, analyst influence. A combination of PMM and Product should promote adoption and usage through in-product notifications and guidance, making it seamless for customers to learn how to use the product. And, your Customer Success teams should have the relationships with their accoun ...Read More

In my experience, virtual vs live (in-person) varies a lot by segment and seniority. There's really not a one fits all answer. for our smaller segments (SMB, emerging), we find that virtual events work well, for both leadership and practitioner/manager audiences. This is especially true when you're able to tie the virtual event in with an "experience" (like a drink mixing class, white boarding style sessions). And, for our smaller segments, we generally see more interest when we have very practi ...Read More

There are a ton of launch-specific templates you'll stumble upon, but here's some of the more tactical guidance on launch strategy - Collaboration with Product Management Sizing - it's highly likely you'll have to compromise with PM on what constitutes as a Small vs Med vs Large vs XL Launch. I recommend putting together a "t-shirt" sizing based approach in identifying what a launch bill of materials actually looks like for each, get buy-in from PM, and stick to that for every future launch. thi ...Read More