The Product Marketing Experts: Recent Episodes
Jeffrey Vocell, Sharebird
A deep dive into the craft of Product Marketing with the best Product Marketers in the world. Each week we sit down with Product Marketing experts at some of the fastest growing technology companies in the world. Hosted by Jeffrey Vocell, Director of Product Marketing at Iterable and brought to you by Sharebird.com, the leading Product Marketing question and answer site.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?
4:22 How you and Crossbeam team think about creating successful go-to-market plan?
7:37 how do you lay out the responisbilities and plan across your organization?
10:03 How you think about defining that ownership and gaining buy-in cross-functionally.?
13:57 How you approach different launch sizes or just different launches overall?
17:14 How you think about defining KPIs for a successful go-to-market launch?
19:46 How you've thought about differentiating yourselves and your messaging and ensuring that you retain leadership through launches?
22:06 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
Want more insights from Amanda? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Amanda here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?
4:05 How you think about what is the metaverse in general and how you really look at it through a product marketing lens?
7:35 How is your product marketing team oriented?
12:18 Do you use any data for about prioritizing the roadmap with your product management colleagues?
14:55 How do you think about aligning with your counterparts, who are overseeing other divisions or other product lines and aligning strategy with them as well?
19:53 How do you get leaders all at once in a room and have and have discussions around?
21:26 How do you build your relationship with the broader executive leadership team?
25:03 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
Want more insights from Girija ? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Girija here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?
6:32 How you handle release marketing at Observable and how you think about organizing and planning for releases at your current company??
11:09 how did you work with leadership and your product team to kind of get that alignment initially upfront?
13:27 How you've thought about this and how you've even empowered product marketers on your team at observable?
18:37 How have you thought about as a manager, as a leader, how do you communicate that kind of across the org and up and down the org respectively as well?
22:43 How you've kind of advised pmms on your teams respectively to address some areas that you've seen launches go wrong?
28:21 Can you share a little bit more about your journey, how you thought about it and how you actually took that or ather made the jump to being a PMM leader?
33:34 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
Want more insights from LaShaun? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find LaShaun here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:36 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing?
4:41 How do you think product marketing leaders and teams should start integrating AI into their strategy.?
8:34 What kind of AI tools are you using around segmentation and market research and copywriting?
11:38 How do you ensure that you're writing the right prompt to get the best information from the respective AI source that you're using?
15:26 How you're thinking about or even advising other product marketers to position AI enriched offerings within their strategy or their product?
18:45 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
20:20 As product marketing leaders should we be preparing for over the next few months to move into AI?
Want more insights from Abhishek ? Check out his Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Abhishek here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:27 Opening Question: Tell us about your journey into and through product marketing?
4:06 How you've used the core business metrics to influence your team or your leadership at Klaviyo?
5:37 How have you and the product marketing team at Klaviyo thought about differentiating yourself in the MarTech landscape?
7:50 How have you kicked off the process of repositioning Klaviyo?
10:29 What are some of the success metrics for you and the team?
14:29 What are some ways that you've successfully enabled your internal teams and maybe more specifically your go-to-market teams like sales marketing?
18:45 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
19:22 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing?
11:52 How have you incorporated or planning to incorporate GenAI at Klaviyo?
13:44 How do you work with your GTM partners across sales and CS and how you handle the volume of launches?
Want more insights from Katie ? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Katie here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:23 Opening Question: what's been your journey into and through product marketing?
4:15 What brought you to DigitalOcean and what does your current role encompass?
8:15 During the early stages how do you divide the work and handle all the requests while also handing some of the strategy?
11:33 How do you navigate all of those sometimes disparate priorities and get to a mutually agreed on one point of view?
14:59 How have you successfully developed bidirectional relationships with executives and other functional leaders across the business to achieve not only the goals of your group but drive momentum for the business?
18:19 How do you influence product decisions?
22:39 How have you worked on prioritizing framework and how have you effectively made those trade-offs?
25:51 How has building the product marketing function at DigitalOcean been a little bit different in your eyes than building product marketing at some of the other companies you've been a part of?
30:27 How do you think about getting into a more technical industry or company and specifically into product marketing?
33:16 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
Want more insights from Raman? Check out his Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Raman on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:25 Opening Question: What led Claire and you to start ‘Forget the Funnel’?
3:50 Can you talk a little bit about the book that is derived from your consultancy ‘Forget the Funnel’?
9:10 Where do you recommend even starting with customer research?
18:53 How you've taken the crawl, walk, run, run approach and learning from these insights what survey or interview methods that you've seen that work best?
26:16 How you think about then taking the segments that you're learning from prioritizing some segments versus maybe other segments, and then actually operationalizing that?
32:34 Who you think should be the champion of customer life growth internally within a company. Should it be maybe its own independent team? Should it be a part of an existing team?
36:50 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?
Want more insights from Georgiana? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Georgiana here on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
1:25 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
3:28 How you think about as the product marketing lead at Twilio, about how you think about team structure?
10:50 How you think about really helping truly drive that demand gen engine, from a product marketing lens?
23:52 How the economy and the pandemic has potentially impacted your messaging?
29:54 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing?
Want more insights from Philippe? Check out her Sharebird Profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Philippe here on LinkedIn.
“You should be listening to your customers every day – it should be a fundamental part of what you do because you represent that customer, and you are their mouthpiece.” – Kristen Brophy
Kristen Brophy is a Senior Director of Marketing at the NBA, leading product marketing efforts on NBA’s direct to consumer side, including the NBA app and the association’s streaming service Lead Pass.
Before coming to the NBA, Kristen was part of Uber and Square, where she picked up important lessons on scaling and strategic alignment. When building a strategy, Kristen doesn’t start with a goal – she outlines the outcome first.
In this episode, you’ll hear about the evolution of NBA’s product marketing, ways to maintain strategic alignment with cross-functional partners, and the importance of creative briefs for positioning.
Want more insights from Kristen? Check out her content on Sharebird.
Looking to connect? You can find Kristen on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell us a bit about yourself and your current role at the NBA.
- What are your thoughts on the function of product marketing? How do you approach structuring PM teams?
- In your current position, have you noticed the role of the product marketing team change over time?
- How is your team at the NBA organized? How do you approach their organization in order to reach viewers and new subscribers?
- How do you and your team approach strategic alignment with cross-functional partners?
- As you build your team, how do you equip them for career growth?
Kevin Wu is the Head of Solution and Category Product Marketing at Airtable, where he has been building a product marketing program from scratch.
In his role at Airtable, Kevin has been reinventing the product’s messaging and positioning framework. When it comes to SaaS B2B companies, he says, the messaging should start at the demo.
In this episode, you’ll hear essential questions to ask when building product demos, how Kevin’s experience at Salesforce shaped his later approach to PMM, and how he enables his team to grow.
Want more insights from Kevin? Check out his content on Sharebird.
Looking to connect? You can find Kevin on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Airtable.
- How do you think about the production and messaging around huge events like Dreamforce? What goes into the product side of these events?
- When it comes to product positioning, there is a very specific balance that needs to be struck between the executives’ vision and voice and a PMM’s knowledge of the product. How do you achieve that balance?
- For a company that size, Salesforce moves at an incredible pace. How do you look at your experience at Salesforce overall
- Have you kept the same kind of lens on messaging and positioning once you moved from your role at Salesforce to AppDynamics and Airtable?
- What are the key ingredients for building a great product demo?
- How do you approach your team’s organization and ensure your team members have room to grow?
“Always put on your own personal research hat.” - Jameelah Calhoun
Jameelah Calhoun currently serves as the Global Head of Product Marketing at Eventbrite, where she drives go-to-market and monetization efforts to launch new product experiences for both event creators and consumers.
In her role at Eventbrite, she is working on continuing the evolution of Eventbrite from its roots as a ticketing tool to a platform that covers the intersection of helping creators and small businesses alike thrive.
As a PMM, Jameelah considers market research the bedrock of everything she does. Analytics and UX research are the foundation of understanding the customer and championing their needs – and that’s why the synergy of market research and product marketing is becoming increasingly important in rapidly shifting market conditions.
Want more insights from Jameelah? Check out her {Sharebird profile.}
Looking to connect? You can find Jameelah on {LinkedIn.}
“Don’t launch it and leave it - launch and learn.” -Brianne Shally
In this interview Jeffrey and Brianne discuss what being a PMM leader for a consumer product marketing brand is like as well as Brianne’s path into PMM. Brianne is a former strategy consultant who considers herself a business leader first, and pmm second. What she loves to solve is, how can she and her team accelerate the growth of local businesses and make word of mouth in communities more innovative to serve SMBs? As product marketers, they are passionate about helping small businesses be successful and bringing communities together.
As we know, small businesses are challenged more than ever to grow and tools and products like Nextdoor help to facilitate growth and better serve the community by fueling SMBs, creating messaging and positioning that ties back to the market trends, and using insights to inform their GTM strategy.
Want more insights from Brianne? Check out her Sharebird profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Brianne on LinkedIn.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell us a bit about yourself and your path into Product Marketing at Nextdoor.
- Since you focus specifically on SMB, can you share what that entails at Nextdoor? How do you think about the success of SMB and the strategies of your PMM team?
- What are some of the differences from your strategy to ones Enterprise is executing? And how do you work together with any colleagues focused on up-market activities?
- How have the past ~2 years changed your PMM strategy and SMBs you're working with, or targeting?
- How do you work with, and “power” SMB-focused marketing and GTM efforts at Nextdoor?
- As a leader, what is one key challenge you're facing and how have you thought about overcoming it? (ideally this question will be more specific, but I think we’ll get there through conversation)
- What recommendations would you have for aspiring product marketing experts to level-up their own career or skill set?
Rekha is an engineer turned marketer who has a technical background and fell in love with the PMM craft. Two aspects that she thoroughly enjoys in the GTM process are the naming and positioning of new products and features. She advocates for involving every team in the launch process and both internally and externally creating messaging that clearly states the nuances of new releases. She also discusses how Salesforce tiers their launches on a 1-3 scale and reiterates the importance and value that comes from conversations with customers.
Want more insights from Rekha? Check out her Sharebird profile.
Looking to connect? You can find Rekha on LinkedIn.
Whether you’re looking to break into PMM or have been a practitioner for years, this interview is full of advice on how to further develop your career. We are joined this week by Mike, VP, Product Marketing at ClickUp, who has had an amazing career finding the right roles and ultimately landing him a VP role. Mike and Jeffrey discuss how to gain credibility, evaluate your future role, prioritize the right goals to advance your career, and expand your horizons outside of product.
Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.
Join Mike on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this interview:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What’s one nuance about Developing Your Product Marketing Career that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
In this week’s episode Natala and Jeffrey are talking all about product launches. How do you make the magic happen while getting the organization excited and aligned? It’s not just about storytelling and designing a great narrative for your product, rather it’s creating a product that delivers on those items. Tune in to hear how to create a distinctive narrative and story in a competitive landscape, what it means to “work backwards”, and how to conquer any divisions and fractions amongst teams by serving as the “glue” to repair. Also, Grammarly is hiring. So be sure to check out their available positions!
Connect with Natala on LinkedIn.
Join Natala on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this interview:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What’s one nuance about Product Launches that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
Alex is a former product manager and consultant who has found his way into the adtech world, and specifically measurement. This interview is all about how him and his team leverage research and measurement. When it comes to measurement, he and his team look at how well advertising is working and it’s overall performance. In regards to research, he talks about what it’s like to work for a company that is incredibly data and experiment driven, the importance of talking to customers, and how research informs what they build. Tune in to hear how him and his team build and manage a large ecosystem of products.
Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.
Join Alex on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this interview:
- Can you tell me a bit more about your path into product marketing and also more specifically measurement?
- Can you share a bit more about how you think about Measurement at Facebook?
- How do you use that data you gather at Facebook to influence other activities like the roadmap, marketing strategy/campaigns, product launches, and more?
- How have you gone about segmenting your audience and then use that information to inform content?
- What’s one thing a manager, colleague, or mentor has taught you that’s served you well in your career? Can you share a bit about it?
We’re on a messaging kick! This week we are discussing how Sophia and her team approach messaging and positioning that serves both B2B and B2C target audiences. Sophia and Jeffrey discuss what Glassdoor has done to maintain a position of leadership in a crowded market and how they’ve evolved their messaging while remaining true to the core values of the company that have not changed since day one. They also discuss how to measure the success of messaging and positioning and navigate the competitive landscape.
Connect with Sophia on LinkedIn.
Join Sophia on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this interview:
- Can you share a bit more about your path into PMM and how you got into product marketing?
- Can you share a bit about how you think of the category Glassdoor is in, and how you made some of the tradeoffs in positioning and messaging?
- With a lot of different use cases and audiences, how do you ensure the messaging you and your team are releasing is consistent?
- How are you measuring the success of your messaging and positioning?
- Differentiating from competition is crucial as we know, but how do you think about competitive intelligence and how your key competitors are positioning themselves as a part of your messaging process?
- What’s one mistake you’ve found a lot of PMMs make with messaging?
- What’s one thing you’ve learned from a mentor, colleague, or manager that has served you well in your career? Can you tell me a little bit about it?
From startup companies to being at a large scale organization, Jeff has been doing product marketing work since before it was even defined as PMM. In this interview you’ll hear his point of view on the emergence of self serve and how it’s impacted the role of product marketing. He shares how the environment at many companies has made the switch from a sales led environment to product led and why product marketers are earning their seat at the table in making big decisions.
He also discusses the co-creation that exists with sales, how to position yourself in the market, advice on how to conduct listening tours and better serve as the cross functional diplomat to reduce friction amongst teams and champion stakeholders.
Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
Join Jeff on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this interview:
- Can you share a bit more about how you got into product marketing, and also into more of a growth role?
- Product-led Growth is clearly a hot topic everywhere around us. How do you think about product marketing differently in a product-left growth company versus a more traditional sales or marketing led company?
- How have you structured your growth PMM team? How would you say it’s different from a traditional team?
- Beyond just structure, how is the role different for an individual PMM? Are there different traits or skills your looking for that a traditional PMM would need to develop?
- With your focus on growth, how do you draw lines on what you and your team handle versus others in marketing or product development?
- How do you think about driving user adoption at Calendly?
- Is there anything that a mentor, colleague, or manager has taught you that has served you well in your career? Can you share a bit about it?
Messaging is a fundamental aspect of product marketing that includes testing, refining, and a huge amount of internal alignment across the organization. It’s a living breathing process that when done right, equates to an impactful impression left on your market. Tune in to hear messaging frameworks that will help you win deals and make your GTM process that much more effective.
Crisply articulating the unique aspects of your product that you’re bringing to market is key to the success of your GTM process!
Follow Alexandra on LinkedIn.
Join Alexandra on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What’s one nuance about Messaging that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
How do we become product marketers? Pallavi shares her extensive background in marketing and how she’s evolved to lead all marketing functions at a quickly growing company. She also shares her take on the 80/20 rule, how to structure your team, and achieve KPI’s. You’ll also hear why she values happiness and believes that “the success of the company depends on the manager”.
Follow Pallavi on LinkedIn.
Join Pallavi on Sharebird.
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What’s one nuance about Product Marketing Org and KPI's that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
- How do you think of structuring your product marketing team, or just generally?
- Based on the structure, how do you coordinate work across the team and have similar goals with PMs and other groups you’re working with?
- Speaking of goals, as a leader how do you measure the success of your team? How do you set goals differently for individuals on your team who are at different levels?
- What are some mistakes you’ve made and what you’ve learned from them?
Product marketing hasn’t always been recognized as a value ad to organizations, but more and more companies are recognizing the need for the function and therefore more roles in the field are being created. Keeping up on the trends in the market and playing to your strengths will ultimately help you not only land the role you desire, but keep that role and excel in it. This week’s expert shares his twist on the 80/20 rule and how identifying the areas you currently excel in and the areas you need to further develop leads to success in your career. Also, never underestimate the power of kindness and being a nice person.
What makes your messaging stand out from competitors isn’t the simple task of stringing together a lovely sequence of words and putting pen to paper - it’s the constant evolution and iteration, rooted in testing and market research, that ultimately sets your marketing apart. In order to know how to reach your target audience, you’re going to have to get customer insights and collect the data and feedback necessary to prove why your product is valuable, how it differs from others on the market, and what language best resonates with your customer.
In this week’s interview with Andrew Forbes, who directs PMM at Zendesk, him and Jeffrey discuss GTM strategy - from organizing your team, sales enablement, getting internal alignment, to the importance of market research - tune in to hear how to make your product launches bigger and better.
Follow Diego on LinkedIn.
Join Diego on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Can you tell us about yourself and your role at UiPath?
- UI Path recently went public. Can you share a bit about what that was like?
- As the leader of product marketing, what did you need to think about and do during the IPO journey?
- How long before the S1 filing did you and the team start preparing? Tell us about the narrative you created.
- What drove you and the UiPath team to create this narrative? And how did you go about it?
- How have you measured the success of the new narrative? What have been some of the outcomes you've seen?
- How has product marketing evolved from pre-IPO through today?
- What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?
Follow Alex on LinkedIn.
Join Alex on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at ActiveCampaign?
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How do you and the product marketing team at ActiveCampaign think about storytelling?
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When you think about telling a new story or working on a narrative, where do you start?
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When that narrative is drafted, how do you refine and revise it to ensure it resonates with customers and the market?
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How do you ensure your narratives are focused on the customer or buyer?
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What storytelling framework does your team use at ActiveCampaign?
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Once you've created a story, how do you measure it's success?
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As a leader, how do you coach your team on stories?
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Are there any narratives you really admire out in the market?
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ActiveCampaign positions the company around Customer Experience Automation. What went into the decision behind that? We hear a lot about customer experience today, so how did you decide on this category?
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Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have impacted you or your career?
Follow Leah on LinkedIn.
Join Leah on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Gusto?
2. How do you and the product marketing team at Gusto handle competitive intelligence? Do you have dedicated people for it, or is it a part of what every PMM is doing?
3. How do you keep track of key competitors in your space?
4. What reporting (if any) do you provide internally on competitive win rates or details about losses?
5. How do you and the PMM team at Gusto learn and drive change throughout the organization with competitive intelligence?
6. Competitive intelligence is important for product marketing teams to own and drive, yet there's also a danger in following competitors too closely. How do you prevent it at Gusto?
7. Based on the intelligence you're gathering, how do you enable your sales and CS teams around competitors?
8. Are there any assets you've found really helpful (or not helpful at all)?
9. Especially in a time when everyone is remote and spread out, how do you communicate these updates and ensure everyone internally is on the same page?
10. As a leader, how do you ensure that your team is balancing their time on competitive intelligence and all the other priorities that product marketers have?
11. Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have impacted you or your career?
Connect with Becky on LinkedIn.
Join Becky on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Snow Software?
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As a leader how do you set the tone, and build a great relationship with Product?
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At Snow, do you and the Product Marketing team help Product influence the roadmap or provide feedback on the market or competitors?
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What about when it comes to Go to Market strategy. What processes and systems have you put in place to share information?
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What information should PMs be sharing with PMMs (and vice versa)?
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When it comes to GTM strategy, how early should PM and PMM be talking and collaborating?
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How do you show PMs the value of collaborating early-on and treat PMM as a strategic ally?
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In your career has there been a PM/PMM relationship, or process that didn't work? If so, can you walk us through that and what you learned?
Connect with Axel on LinkedIn.
Join Axel on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and Datasite?
2. At Datasite you oversee product marketing, content marketing, and pricing. Can you share how that came to be?
3. How did you come to own pricing?
4. For PMMs interested in owning pricing, what skills or attributes should they be looking to build?
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I'm noticing a trend in product marketing where there's more specialization and even some teams bringing on a PMM dedicated to pricing. What do you think of that trend?
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There's been a trend in product-led growth. How do you think about pricing and the future of that trend?
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What are some mistakes product marketers are making when it comes to pricing or trying to influence pricing strategies?
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Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have really had an impact on you or your work?
Connect with Kavya on LinkedIn.
Join Kavya on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
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Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Sprinklr?
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Can you share a little bit about how you got into product marketing and what interested you about it?
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For a product marketer looking to get into leadership, how do you advise they approach it?
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Are there any skills or areas of opportunity you see a lot of product marketers need to address at this stage?
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As you grow, and as the company grows, eventually you need to learn to manage another layer and add managers to your team. How do you develop this skill as a leader?
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Looking back, is there anything you'd do differently on your path to leading product marketing? Any particular situations you learned a lot from?
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One of your favorite questions to ask is what a candidate's superpower is. Can you share a bit more about why you like to ask that?
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What's your superpower?
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As a leader, how do you develop great relationships with other leaders across marketing, sales, and product? Certainly there's 1:1s, but beyond that?
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What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?
Connect with Gregg on LinkedIn.
Join Gregg on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?
2. How have you structured the team at Zapier?
3. What do you think about structuring product marketing teams? Why did you decided on the structure you just mentioned?
4. As a leader, how have you balanced scaling yourself and your team/resources?
5. We're seeing more specialization in product marketing lately. With specific roles for pricing, competitive intelligence, research, and more. What do you think the next few years of this looks like? What skills should aspiring product marketing leaders look to develop?
6. A lot of product marketing leaders and experts alike are looking to make a leap similar to this. What skills should we all be thinking about?
7. Have there been any mistakes you've made while growing or establishing the PMM function? If so, can you share with us what you've learned?
8. What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?
Connect with Grace on LinkedIn.
Join Grace on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Udemy?
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As product marketing leaders, we need to build credibility with so many other groups such as product, demand gen, customer marketing, and more. How do you do this effectively, and how does your team build upon this for launches?
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How do you and the team at Udemy think about quarterly or yearly planning and how do launches fit into that?
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Does product marketing drive content or market themes that the broader marketing team should be focused on?
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With planning, how do you and your team prepare for launches and execute them cross-functionally?
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Can you tell us about what kind of internal marketing you do in the lead-up, and during a launch?
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Talk us through the week or two leading up to a major launch. What does that look like for you and your team?
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Do you have any memories or lessons you've learned recently from a launch that went well? Or didn't go according to plan?
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What are the check-in milestones you as a leader setup to ensure your team is on the right track?
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Are there any books you've read, or maybe podcasts you've listened to recently that have taught you new things?
You can connect with Francis on LinkedIn.
Join Francis on Sharebird!
Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?
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You've held a number of product marketing roles. Tell us about what product marketing should look like in an early stage company?
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As a company evolves, maybe series B, or C, what does product marketing look like and how does it change from the earlier days? What skills do leaders, or senior members of the team need to relearn or focus on as the company grows?
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How about when a company IPOs or is public, what does product marketing look like and how does it change?
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Can you tell me a bit about why you decided to make this leap into an overall marketing leadership role?
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What skills should we all be thinking about in order to transition to general marketing?
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What do you think of the career path for product marketers?
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A number of leaders believe product marketing will come to own brand marketing, or that brand marketing will merge with product marketing. What do you think?
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As you've now taken over leading marketing, what are some of your key priorities in the coming months? What trends or resources are you paying attention to that we all should be aware of?
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What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?
Connect with Jasmine on LinkedIn.
Join Jasmine on Sharebird.
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM.
- So you work in one group with multiple PMMs- How do ensure you're telling stories that are aligned?
- Do these stories align to your personas and differ based on seniority or segment you sell into?
- How have you successfully built relationships across teams? Or what are some secrets you've seen work well?
- What’s one nuance about Stakeholder Management that you only know now because you understand it deeply?
- Question from your AMA: Responsibility without the authority - that seems to be the position of quite a few Product marketers. How do you manage people who don't necessarily report into you?
- How do you get your team, and other teams, to align around customer priorities?
- What's been one time where a launch or a campaign didn't go to plan? How did you work with stakeholders to fix that?
- How have you built deep and productive relationships with product and proven your value?
- What's your outlook on the career of product marketing? Is it a good place to be?
Connect with April on LinkedIn.
If you haven't already, you can download April's book Obviously Awesome here.
Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkuperman/
Join Daniel on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/daniel-kuperman
Book recommendations:
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Obviously Awesome - by April Dunford
- Crossing the Chasm - by Geoffrey Moore
Connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbayuk/
Join Lindsay on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/lindsay-bayuk-1
Questions covered in this episode:
- What’s your elevator pitch for Pluralsight?
- How did you come up with that?
- Did you use a framework to write it?
- When do you know it’s working?
- How do you know when your positioning is ready to ship?
- How often do you update the positioning for your company?
- How do you keep new features/products organized within a larger positioning framework?
- How do you research when working on positioning?
- Have you ever launched new positioning and realized it failed?
- What’s the one book a product marketer must buy if they’re going to own their company’s positioning?
- Who is another product marketing leader we should interview for this series?
Connect with Tamara on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamaraniesen/
Join Tamara on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/tamara-niesen
Questions covered in this episode:
- What’s your elevator pitch for Shopify?
- How did you come up with that?
- Did you use a framework to write it?
- When do you know it’s working?
- How do you know when your positioning is ready to ship?
- How often do you update the positioning for your company?
- How do you keep new features/products organized within a larger positioning framework?
- How do you research when working on positioning?
- Have you ever launched new positioning and realized it failed?
- What’s the one book a product marketer must buy if they’re going to own their company’s positioning?
- Who is another product marketing leader we should interview for this series?
Connect with Christy on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christy-roach/
Join Christy on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/christy-roach
Questions covered in this episode:
- What’s your elevator pitch for Airtable?
- How did you come up with that?
- Did you use a framework to write it?
- When do you know it’s working?
- How do you know when your positioning is ready to ship?
- How often do you update the positioning for your company?
- How do you keep new features/products organized within a larger positioning framework?
- How do you research when working on positioning?
- Have you ever launched new positioning and realized it failed?
- What’s the one book a product marketer must buy if they’re going to own their company’s positioning?
- Who is another product marketing leader we should interview for this series?
Connect with Dan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-danieljmurphy/
Join Dan on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/daniel-j-murphy
Check out Dan's Masterclass here: https://www.theproductlaunchmasterclass.com/home
Connect with Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegerhardt/
Join Dave on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/dave-gerhardt
Questions covered in this episode:
- Why do so many B2B technology companies look and sound the same?
- What is the company story - what does that mean to you? Like a mission statement?
- Why design a narrative, why invest in this today as a CEO or CMO?
- How is product marketing involved, how do you and Dan your Director of Product Marketing work together on this?
- Let’s say you’ve built an amazing product, and that is going to be how I win. Do I still have to do this?
- How do you work on the story? What’s the collaboration between the CEO and CMO look like - are there others in the development?
- How does a great company story come to life? What’s important to get right?
- Why does the old way vs the new work so well in a story?
- So Drift invented Conversational Marketing - was the goal always to create a category? Or was it more just about having a new story?
- A lot of people now also do Conversational marketing - you had to know that would happen, is that a scary thing? Are you helping those companies?
- Your companies always have a clear identity, people know who you are what you care about. Is this a result of that strong story?
- How does that create an advantage?
- How do you build a voice to get attention in social?
- What’s going on with DGMG and the vault? What things are changing?
Connect with Tamara on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamaragrominsky/
Join Tamara on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/tamara-grominsky
Questions covered in this episode:
- How’d you get into product marketing?
- What is segmentation?
- Why should you do it?
- Why does it work?
- Why can it be applied? How does it come to life?
- how can a PMM lead this exercise at their own company?
- What kind of tools do I need to do this well?
- What teams do I partner with?
- What does good look like how do I measure it?
- What mistakes do people make?
- How can people learn more about this?
- What’s your outlook on the career of product marketing?
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenbarraco/
Join Lauren on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/lauren-barraco
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What does your team look like at Sendoso, what all do you own?
- Any advice for people looking to break into product marketing? What roles make for good product marketers?
- What are the most important skills for PMMs to develop and master?
- How have you done built those skills?
- What should people be prepared for in a product marketing interview?
- What’s most important to keep in mind when joining a new company and onboarding?
- Where do you think product marketers have the biggest impact at a startup?
- What does the career path of the PMM look like? What kind of doors does it open?
- What’s a mistake product marketers make when growing their career?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sararosso/
Join Sara on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/sararosso
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- So you did you Sharebird AMA on how product marketing works at Remote companies? What’s your experience working with remote companies?
- We’re all remote now, but are their noticeable differences in a 100% distributed company?
- What are the biggest challenges or things you don't like as much?
- How did you all organize product launches?
- How do you onboard and build relationships with new team members?
- How do you build relationships and create excitement for campaigns?
- How do you work with products and build those relationships?
- How do you deliver a good pitch or narrative virtually?
- So the vaccine is rolling out, what do you think the future of work will look like?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicawebbica/
Join Jessica on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/jessica-webb
Career Opportunities at Trello: bitly/growth/pmm
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- So you’ve been at Trello for a while now. And you joined right before being acquired by Atlassian. What was that transition like?
- Who are your closest partners at Trello?
- How is the GTM unique at Trello and Atlassian? Those companies are sort of famous for product led growth. Or a product fist GTM.
- So you also worked at HubSpot, and you weren’t in product marketing, why’d you switch to PMM? How’d that happen?
- You were at HubSpot before we were really doing the PLG thing. How is marketing fundamentally different between the two companies?
- What are the biggest challenges you’re trying to solve in product marketing?
- Are brand, and narrative, and methodology important at Trello? Is that product marketing work?
- What’s something you see people get wrong when marketing a product first company?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Christy on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christy-roach/
Join Christy on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/christy-roach
Check out careers at Airtable here: https://airtable.com/careers
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- Airtable is a really interesting company, you’re product led, and encourage a self-service, bottoms up approach to growth and adoption. Is that right? Tell me more, what does all that mean, how do things work at Airtable?
- So you lead “self-serve” product marketing at Airtable, what does that mean?
- Do you think this is a larger trend? That product led companies like Airtable are the future?
- What does the larger marketing team look like? What teams are there? How many pmms?
- How is product marketing at Airtable different than at a more traditional enterprise saas company?
- What don’t you do?
- Where do you focus your energy?
- How do you do in-app marketing or messaging?
- What do product launches look like?
- What teams do you partner closest with?
- What’s something most companies get wrong when trying to be product led?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with JD on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdprater/
Join JD on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/jd-prater
Find JD's Podcast (Thrills and Chills) here https://sharebird.com/shows/thrills-and-chills-establishing-product-marketing
Questions we cover in this episode:
- How’d you get into product marketing?
- So you pretty recently switched jobs? You’re at Amazon now, specifically Amazon Web Services. And you’re in the middle of the on-boarding process. What has your first 90 days looked like?
- Why was this role a good fit?
- Did you do anything to prepare for this new role before you started?
- How does it work being remote and on boarding? Like do you get your computer before you start?
- Tell us about your 30/60/90 day plan?
- What are you trying to accomplish in each phase?
- Who have you been meeting with and why?
- What kind of expectations does your team have for you during on boarding?
- What is particularly important for PMMs to do in the first couple of months?
- What mistakes do people make when they are on boarding?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Meghan on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghankeaney/
Questions we cover in this episode:
- So, we of course worked together for a while at HubSpot! And now we’re both onto new things. Tell us about what you’re working on now.
- One thing I think everyone who has worked with you would say about you, is that you’re a great writer. Is that something you were born with, or how did that happen?
- When did you decide that you wanted to make that such a strength?
- What do you think makes someone a great writer? It can be thrown around, can we just unpack that a little bit?
- How has it helped you in your career? How might it help others?
- Why is it important for product marketers to be strong writers?
- What can we do to improve our writing and thinking? What are things that help the most?
- How do you think about feedback? I think most people don’t get enough, but too much or bad feedback can also be bad. What’s your take?
- What writing mistakes to marketers make early in their career?
- Anything great that you’re reading right now?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Find Thomas on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomdong/
Join Thomas on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/thomas-dong
Heap is hiring! Check out career opportunities here: https://heap.io/careers
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- How is the marketing team structured at Heap?
- So you’re building out the product marketing team at Heap right now. What does that mean?
- What did you do first? Did you need to learn about the product/customer/market to figure out how to build out the team?
- How will you structure your team? Aligned to products? Industries?
- What do you look for in new hires?
- How will you measure success and evaluate your team?
- Tell me about your product marketing philosophy?
- What mistakes do people make when building a new PMM team?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Yannick on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannickkpodar/
Join Yannick on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/yannick-kpodar
Check out Yannick's upcoming masterclass here: http://www.careerhackeracademy.com/
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- Should product marketing own pricing? Why?
- Who are your key partners for pricing development?
- How’d you approach it when you first started working on it?
- How do you make sure it’s on track today?
- What tools or systems do you use?
- How do you research, codify, and present pricing intel?
- How much does the competition matter?
- What’s one nuance about Pricing for Growth and Profitability that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Agustina on Linkedin here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/agustinasacerdote/
Join Agustina on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/agustina-sacerdote
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What are the areas PMMs should be experts in?
- How do you go about acquiring that info?
- What does this look like at Square?
- How do you record and codify that knowledge?
- How do you think about personas?
- How is a good one structured?
- Issues with personas?
- What teams should use that research and how?
- What are the top issues you face when rolling out research or personas? How do you tackle them?
- Where do people go wrong with research? What does bad personas look like or what mistakes have you had to overcome?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing?
Connect with Natalie on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalielouie/
Join Natalie on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/natalie-louie
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What does product marketing look like at Zuora - what teams are you key partners?
- How do you think about goals? Do you have product and marketing goals?
- How do you work with sales?
- What are the biggest challenges about being so cross functional?
- How do you build a strong relationship with fellow directors and leadership?
- I liked this question and answer from you Sharebird AMA, how do you work with demand gen?
- How do you help your team build strong relationships and work well cross functionally?
- Working cross functionally, do you try and get consensus around decisions? How do you build that?
- What’s a mistake everyone will make early in their career here when trying to get good at cross functional work.
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- Anything you’re working on that you want to share with listeners?
Connect with Robin on Linked in here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinpam/
Join Robin on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/robin-pam-2
Questions we cover in this episode:
- I’d love to hear about your journey at Optimizely, you’ve been there for over 6 years and have gone from IC to Sr. Director, what's that been like?
- So like I said in the intro, awesome topic to dive into today - why is, getting closer to revenue, something you’re so passionate about?
- When you figure it out, when you know how product marketing impacts revenue what does that do you for you and your team?
- Lets talk about the launch treadmill, how does that happen. Why does our work become reactive like that?
- How do you get off it? If the treadmill is moving really fast?
- What are the best ways to measure success so it ties to revenue?
- This can happen with sales too, how do you pull back from chasing sales needs and get more strategic and tied to revenue?
- Are their specific tools you used to help?
- What mistakes are people going to make, trying to get more strategic?
- Anything you want to share with listeners?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Jon here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonrooney/
Join Jon on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/jon-rooney
Follow Jon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rooneythesis?lang=en
Questions covered in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming the VP of PMM at new relic?
- So you own product and solutions marketing? Are those two different teams? If so, what are the goals of each?
- What are the teams responsible for?
- Who do they work with?
- How do they collaborate on something like a product launch?
- Why did you all take this approach? Is this the right structure for others?
- What kind of resources do you think are critical for this team? A CI person, market research tools, etc?
- What’s the biggest impact this team has on the business?
- As your company grows, what kind of issues pop up with this team or structure? Have you had to change goals, or work based on company evolution?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Because it’s a holiday I wanted to take a break this week and hang with the fam, so we’re not doing an episode this week, but I still wanted to give you something to listen to. So I’m going to share the top 5 episodes of the podcast based on downloads, and tell you why I enjoyed that chat. Feel free to go back and listen or re-listen to those episodes.
In reverse order of popularity.:
- Pricing and Packaging with Chris Mills, VP of Product Marketing at SalesLoft
- Messaging with Kevin Garcia, Director of Product Marketing, Segment
- Product Launches with Mary Sheehan, Head of Product Marketing at Adobe
- Product Positioning with April Dunford, Author of Obv!ously Awesome
- Brand & Product Marketing with Diana Smith, Director of Brand & Product Marketing at Twilio.org
- The Product Marketing Career Path, with Teresa Haun, Director PMM, Zendesk 744
Connect with Jeff on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckhamjeff/
Join Jeff on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/jeff-beckham
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- So today we’re going to focus on working with sales and sales enablement. Working with sales can be tough, and for some PMMs it’s the worst part of the job. But you enjoy sales folks?! Why is that?
- How do you work with sales, at a macro level what is the structure and what are your SLAs with them?
- What kind of goals are you measuring enablement on?
- How do you balance solving for individual deals vs finding scale that will help the whole team?
- Are you still creating broader positioning that turns into specific materials?
- What does being close to sales do for you? How does it help you?
- What type of content works best vs what hasn’t worked with your team?
- How do you capture sales attention and make them care?
- How do you build a great relationship with Sales leadership?
- What’s the relationship between sales and product and what role do you play in that?
- What’s something about enablement you had to learn the hard way?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing?
Connect with Susan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-j-park-2ab2a58/
Join Susan on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/susan-j-park
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- How has your job changed since Covid? Did you all have to adjust your Go-to-market?
- So you’ve been doing the whole remote thing long before 2020. How do you think all this has changed how businesses think about remote?
- Product marketers have a really cross-functional role. How do you build relationships when you can’t connect in person?
- What about working with product and engineering. I’ve found it’s nice to physically sit with those folks to help learn from them, build a relationship, and influence the roadmap. Can you do that remote?
- What’s your advice as a human and as a people leader on work life balance and mental health right now?
- How do you build a great relationship with your boss when you’re remote?
- How do you deliver a great pitch or excel in a big important meeting when remote?
- How do you on-board new hires, and build a team remote? Help make people included and welcome and excited?
- What’s one nuance about Remote PMM teams that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Madeline on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelinen/
Join Madeline on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/madeline-ng/activity
Questions we cover in this episode:
- How much do you miss the MK’s right now?
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- What’s product marketing like at Google maps? Big company obviously, but you’re marketing a really important, and visible product used by “millions?” of people everyday.
- How was your experience at Sloan? What was most valuable for you from that time?
- What are the skills you see consistently in best PMMs?
- What is your favorite product marketing interview question and the best answer you've heard?
- As a PMM leader, how do you grow your team and get the resources you need when I’m sure there are lots of competing priorities?
- You’re building out a marketing team and PMM team from scratch. How do you think about the right way to structure that team? What do they focus on first?
- How can you pivot from account management or a different marketing position into PMM?
- What do PMMs need to watch out for as they are trying to grow their career? Any traps you see more junior folks fall into?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing?
Connect with Daniel on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-danieljmurphy/
Join Daniel on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/daniel-j-murphy
Interested in theThe Product Launch Masterclass? Find out more here: https://www.theproductlaunchmasterclass.com/home
Questions we covered in this episode:
- So I think you launched a product this week! Right? How’d it go?
- So you worked at Drift for a little over two years. You and DG and others built out quite the brand and launch machine. I’d love to hear about that time.
- What did you guys get right?
- What did you get wrong?
- What are you most proud of from that time?
- What’s Privy like? We know everyone is buying more online right now, but what’s happening in e-commerce?
- Any favorite launch examples?
- Why do a “launch” at all? What’s the point?
- How often do you have a launch?
- How does a well run launch operate?
- How do you measure the results?
- How do you keep momentum going post launch?
- Things go wrong during launches, how do you deal with it in the moment?
- Advice to someone early in their career about to take on their first product launch?
- What's your outlook on the career of product marketing?
Connect with Sunny on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunnymanivannan/
Join Sunny on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/sunny-manivannan
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a product marketer.
- Can you tell me about some of your lessons learned from your time as a product marketer?
- I’ve heard Product Marketing described as the glue that holds companies together. What are your thoughts on that?
- Do product marketers have to be a jack of all trades? How well do you have to understand all the other functions at your company to be a great uniter?
- Question from your Sharebird AMA: What's your advice on improving a historically tense relationship between functions, specifically between Product Management and Product Marketing, as well as between Sales and Product Marketing?
- What’s one nuance about Stakeholder Management that you only know now because you understand it deeply?
- Let’s move on to metrics. How do you measure the success of the product marketing team at Braze?
- How do you measure the success of sales enablement efforts, given that product marketing plays a major role in this area?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Check out Jeffrey's article here: https://www.hubspot.com/careers-blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-getting-a-job-in-product-marketing
Connect with Jeffrey on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jvocell/
Join Jeffrey on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/jeffrey-vocell-1
Questions we cover in this episode:
- Alright JV, we worked together for 5 years but I don’t think I ever asked you, how and why did you get into product marketing?
- OK, so let’s say you’re a fast growing tech startup, when is the right time to hire a PMM?
- What is that person's responsibility?
- At what point do you bring on a director who can run the program?
- What should be the expectations of that person?
- Coming in as a new director what are the first things to figure out?
- What product marketing things do you have to get people bought into?
- How do you structure the team if you have a small team?
- How do you report on success?
- What resources do you have to have? Budget, support, buy in etc?
- What mistakes do people always make along the way?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Krithika Muthukumar here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krithix/
Connect with Tanya Khakbaz here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-khakbaz-a725732/
Join them on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/krithika-muthukumar-1 and https://sharebird.com/profile/tanya-khakbaz
Questions we cover on this episode:
-
Tell me about Stripe - Krithika you’ve been there for 7 year, right? What is stripe all about and how are things going?
-
So Stripe is not exactly sexy Martech or fancy consumer facing software, how do you describe it?
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How do you simplify technology like that? How do you understand it first of all, then how do you communicate it in a way that people will understand?
-
What were the challenges in the early days? What was your focus? Especially as the only marketer, how did you prioritize?
-
Tanya, you came in right as Stripe was hitting an inflection point of scale. How have you tackled that challenge and with the type of scale you all are at, what are the biggest challenges of your product marketing team?
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[Tanya] With a developer product, does Stripe value marketing? How do you earn that seat at the table?
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What’s that next chapter of PMM at Stripe as you look ahead 2-3 years?
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What skills does it take to be successful as a PMM at stripe?
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What’s your advice to other Product marketing leaders in industries that may be regulated or not that “interesting or sexy”?
-
What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
-
What’s one nuance about the evolution of Product Marketing at a hyperscale company that you only know now because you understand it deeply?
Connect with Chris Mills on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisamills-sf/
Join Chris on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/chris-mills
Questions we cover on this episode:
- What does product marketing look like at SalesLoft? How did you make your way to VP there?
- What happens when you get pricing wrong? And what happens when you get it right?
- What’s the relationship between product positioning and pricing? Do they influence each other? If so how?
- What are the questions the business or Product Marketing leadership should be asking?
- Who should “own” pricing? And what’s the role of product marketing?
- Let’s say you are embarking on a major pricing overhaul, you’ve done this. Where do you start?
- What tools or resources do you use to figure this out?
- How do you bring sales in?
- What’s your take on discounting and pricing transparency?
- How is pricing and packaging changing? Any trends in what buyers expect from pricing pages or in the sales process?
- Do you “launch” it if so how?
- What mistakes do people always make along the way?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Mary Sheehan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryshirleysheehan/
Join Mary on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/mary-shirley
Questions we cover on this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- Basics: Why is a launch valuable in general? Why not just release as it happens?
- What the launch you’re most proud of in your career and why?
- What’s the product marketers role in the launch?
- How do you measure a launch? What’s a good one, what’s a bad one?
- Real talk: Are launches fun or terrifying?
- What’s a good launch cadence for a young growing software company?
- From AMA: How do you get creative in your product launch, and not feel too templatized?
- How do you secure alignment between product, marketing, and sales as part of a launch?
- What’s something people have to learn the hard when launching a product for the first time?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Mary Sheehan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryshirleysheehan/
Join Mary on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/mary-shirley
Questions we cover on this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- Basics: Why is a launch valuable in general? Why not just release as it happens?
- What the launch you’re most proud of in your career and why?
- What’s the product marketers role in the launch?
- How do you measure a launch? What’s a good one, what’s a bad one?
- Real talk: Are launches fun or terrifying?
- What’s a good launch cadence for a young growing software company?
- From AMA: How do you get creative in your product launch, and not feel too templatized?
- How do you secure alignment between product, marketing, and sales as part of a launch?
- What’s something people have to learn the hard when launching a product for the first time?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with April Rassa on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arassa/
Questions we cover on this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- Why is it so important for PMMs to be tightly integrated and on the same page with product?
- How can PMMs build a strong mutually beneficial relationship there?
- What are some issues that get in the way?
- What if your product team is bad with scoping features, sharing timelines, or other aspects that impact the GTM? How do you fix that?
- Tips and tricks to create great communication between product and marketing?
- At a more technical company, how do you get people onboard when it comes to marketing and storytelling?
- How do you influence product roadmap as a product marketer?
- What role should a customer advisory board have in influencing your product roadmap, and why?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What’s the one thing you had to learn the hard way when working with Product? Something that is bound to happen to others.
Connect with Diana Smith on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianaharlansmith/
Join Diana on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/diana-smith
Questions we cover on this episode:
- Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
- So in your role now you’re the Director of Product Marketing and brand. What does that mean?
- What is good brand marketing? Any examples?
- What’s your approach to do that at Twilio?
- Capital B brand, has a lot to do with what your company stands for, and the emotional responses you give people, what does that have to do with product?
- What advantages does having brand and product marketing together give Twilio?
- Has owning both changed how you think about product marketing?
- What’s one nuance about Brand that you had to learn the hard way?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Naike Romain on Linkedin and Twitter.
Join Naike on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/naike-romain
Question we cover in this episode:
- Let’s start way back, when you were a kid, what did you want to do when you grew up?
- What did you go to school for, when you were in school did you know you wanted to go into tech?
- When did product marketing come on your radar?
- How have past jobs and experiences helped you in product marketing?
- How did you learn the craft and build your skillset?
- What sets you apart as a PMM?
- What’s interesting about product marketing to you, as opposed to other marketing roles?
- What's your advice for companies trying to build diverse teams?
- What is your advice for people early in their careers looking to break into product marketing?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
Connect with Anthony Kennada on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akennada/
Join Anthony on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/anthony-kennada
Questions we covered in this episode:
- Lakers vs Celtics
- How Anthony got into marketing and his journey to becoming a CMO
- How does product marketing fit in at Front? What value does product marketing bring to your org?
- Why is it so important for an early stage company to invest in brand?
- Are product and brand marketing connected?
- What role does the product play into the brand story in your mind?
- Introducing a new category the risks and right approach.
- How you "will a market into existence"?
- Why communities are at the heart of category creation.
- How do you name a new category? How much did you guys fret over the name customer success?
- When it comes to category creation, how do product marketers come into play?
- What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now?
- What he's launching next at Front.
One of the things Alex and I set out to achieve with this podcast, is to champion product marketing. And a huge part of that is not only making product marketing more popular but helping standardize how we work. That's important, being a pmm today is a little to much of an art. Shrouded in mystery. That's a big problem when a CMO is trying to decide what to invest in. Or if you're trying to create repeatable outcomes, or if you're trying to teach the craft to a new hire. All other industries have this. You wouldn't go to a self taught surgeon would you? We have to get better at positioning our selves! And building a common language and laws of product marketing. We should be very well suited for this!
My guest today believes strongly in this, and has a big idea. What if we already have those laws? A science to apply to product marketing, for the most part we just don’t know about it. Our product marketing expert today is Phill Agnew, Director of Product Marketing at Brandwatch.
Connect with Phill Agnew on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phill-agnew-22213187/
Connect with Eric Keating on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickeating/
Questions we covered in this episode:
- Kids and Zoom
- How Eric got into Marketing
- What is Product Led Growth?
- Why is it growing so fast right now?
- What should PMMs doin at a PLG company?
- PMMs working with Sales at PLG companies?
- Growth vs Product Marketing at a PLG company?
Interviews are pretty pressure packed situations. You have a very limited amount of time to make an impression on a small group of people who will decide if you get the job or not. You’re trying to show you know you stuff, impress them, stand out, all while maintaining your cool and showing that you’d be a good future co-worker. Woof right. On top of that, product marketing can mean different things to different people, and the skills you need to show off are broad and nuanced. You can be a really talented product marketer, but just be a bad interviewer. This can totally sink your chances at that job you really want.
Abdul Rastagar : https://www.linkedin.com/in/rastagar/ is a Director of Product Marketing, a self taught interviewing expert, and the host of the Linkedin Show Up Your Game. We sit down and break down how you can become a great interviewer and ace your next PMM interview.
Join Abdul on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/abdul-rastagar
Connect with Dan Laufer on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dlaufer/
Join Dan on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/dan-laufer
Questions we covered in this episode:
- How do you add value to PMs and the product team?
- How do you build a good relationship with Product?
- How do you partner with them on the product roadmap?
- How should customer feedback play a role in roadmap development?
- At what point should PMMs come into the product development process?
- What if you disagree on the approach to a feature or tool?
- Where should PMM report into, product or marketing?
April Dunford, Startup market strategy + positioning. Author - Obviously Awesome. Connect with her here:
Questions we covered in this episode:
- How did April develop her positioning skills? (3:19)
- How did she develop her method? (10:33)
- Examples of positioning in the wild (13:10)
- Product Marketers as Market Managers (19:50)
- We bash positioning statements for awhile (20:53)
- Positioning as the underpinning of marketing (27:37)
- Ways to enter a market? (30:27)
- What April is working on next (40:00)
- Sourdough starters (42:04)
Marcus and Mike Polner, Global Head of Product Marketing | Uber Eats, discuss:
- What's it been like working at Uber Eats through this pandemic?
- How are B2B and B2C similar, different, and what can B2B learn from B2C? Product led growth, and the consumerization of software.
- Why do B2B marketers fall into the trap of being overly corporate and dry?
- Why marketing should be "fun" and why the best marketers take risks.
- What Mike learned from Nikki Neuburger at Nike.
- What skills do you need to be a great B2C marketer?
Join Mike on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/mike-polner/knowledge
Connect with Kevin Garcia on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kgarcia001/
Join him on Sharebird: https://sharebird.com/profile/kevin-garcia
Connect with Patrick Cuttica on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcuttica/
Join him on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/patrick-cuttica
Navigating and taking control of your career as a pmm is really really important. I LOVE product marketing but growing your career as a PMM can be a struggle. Product Marketing is often different at different companies, the scope is often ambiguous, it’s hard to measure the impact of our work, and you're stuck in the middle of at least two teams. This means we are often overlooked, and underappreciated. So you have to fight for budget and headcount and career progression. I really want to help you figure out how to get a job as a PMM, stand out from the pack, progress in your career, and become a PMM leader and manage up.
To help us out and really dive into the topic - we’ve got Teresa Haun with us. Teresa is the Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk - A company that has exploded in the last several years and tells really great product driven stories. At Zendesk she manages a team that oversees several key products in the Zendesk portfolio. Her team is part of the broader Producing Marketing team that is 45 people strong!
Teresa has been working in product marketing for only 4-5 years but has been able to grow into a director role relatively quickly. She has some of the best, tangible advice I’ve heard on growing into your next role, managing up, and leading through influence.
Connect with Teresa on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresahaun/ and view her Sharebird profile here: https://sharebird.com/profile/teresa-haun-1
In this episode Marcus and Alex introduce you to the show. Who we are, what we're trying to achieve, and what you can expect to learn from The Product Marketing Experts. Next week we'll rollout our first real episode with Teresa Haun, Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk.
Don't forget to check out Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/