 Hello everyone. Welcome to a webinar from Product School. Today we'll be talking about transitioning into product management if your background is in marketing. And I will share some of my experience today. Shortly about me. My name is Tatiana Treciak. I've been in product management for about five years. Prior to moving to product, I was working in email marketing and CRM. And my educational background is actually marketing and management. Currently, I'm working at booking.com where I've been for majority of these five years. Before that, I was working into a group which is a big European travel operator. We're focused on CRM and marketing. And before that, I was working in Google in AdWords support and customer education. So that's the summary of my journey. As you see, I don't have very technical background. However, it didn't stop me from building a career in product. Today we will cover similarities between product management and marketing management. I'll speak about common knowledge gaps of marketeers and how they can be filled if you want to make a transition. And also what you should think about when you think of your next company to join as a new PM. What kind of industries and companies are the best for career transition? So as you probably know, product management doesn't have a very conventional path. And lending and job and product can be pretty hard because you don't really know where to start. There's rarely a very traditional university education that opens your doors in the product management. And that's not because universities are bad at it, but because product management is relatively new discipline and it's also a crossover of many disciplines. And again, I went to university a while ago, but at least back then, even the courses which were called product management were relying a lot more on physical products, be it building a bridge or building address. So digital only start getting into it slightly later. And another reason why there is no kind of big names in education or traditional education is that product management is changing so fast that you can't really keep up with it because changing the educational programs, looking for professors, it all takes time. And this brings me to the point of fast changing job market environment because requirements and needs from PM keep changing, new technologies are coming out, new trends are appearing, something that was in demand five years ago might be a given requirement now and some new things are now hot in the market. So you always have to stay on track and know where to develop next. And last but not least, different companies have different expectations from product managers. It starts with titles, sometimes product managers are called product managers, sometimes product owners, sometimes program managers. There is a very good chapter in the book called Crack in the M interview where the authors actually distinguish out of all of big companies what are the expectations of PMs, not just in terms of naming of roles, but also what skills are expected from them, do they expect them to be technical or they just say be business savvy and focus on communication. So if you want to know more about this part, I suggest to check it out. So all of these things are hard, but likely it also gives opportunities. Over the last couple of years, the demand for product managers has grown immensely. And I think based on the recent survey from a product marketing, product management institute, around 30% of respondents out of over 2000 said that they actually struggle to find talent. So companies really have to find a way to increase their pool to find good PMs. And new PMs is one way to get there. And another good news that since there is no big traditional education have to undergo through or certifications and your hands on experience and desire are more important, it means that if you compare product management to let's say medicine or law, it has pretty low sound costs, both in terms of finance and in terms of time you need. So product didn't always imply tech. And if you're a market here who are watching this webinar, you're probably unfamiliar with this famous 4p by Philip Kotler, where he was saying that for every product to be successful, marketing mix should include four things, product, price, promotion and place. So back in the day, product was just one of the four Ps. And currently these days, in many companies, especially e-commerce companies, price and promotion also becoming slowly part of product. So if you were a marketer learning about four Ps, you can actually say that product management is one of the Ps and you can be focusing on that and building career specializing there. And Philip Kotler is not only famous for four Ps, a lot of actually votes from him, they also very relevant in product management days currently. So things like is no longer enough to satisfy the customer, you might delight them. It's all about being customer centric and bringing value to the customer. The aim of selling is to satisfy the customer need. The aim of marketing is to figure out this need, figuring out customer needs and understanding these needs and fulfilling them is what product managers focus on every day, be it pain points or the likeers. And finally, something that every product manager and product designer would agree with these days, who should ultimately design the product, the customer of course. And this has been the mantra of design thinking, of product management in general. So if you see all these quotes and learnings back from 1960s, 1970s, they are actually very applicable to product management. So it's a lot more common between product and marketing than at first comes to mind. So if you're a marketer these days, you probably already have a set of skills and I would like to briefly cover which of them you can actually bring with you the product to kickstart your career faster. Market research is the first thing that comes to mind. If you remember Mad Men, the group of men watching focus groups and their reactions of women is lipsticks and so on and so forth. This type of research as in focus group, field studies, surveys, they're also extremely valuable in product because most of the new product ideas starts from customer discovery and discovery of their needs, which happens for user research. So if you are involved in market research and talking to your customers as a marketeer, you actually can apply the same skill sets to user research. There is a slight difference though, which can help you bridge the gap is that as a marketeer, all you do with these insights is forwarding them to product team. Next time also try to think what kind of changes would you make based on what you have observed and you can share them as a product team. They might necessarily implement it and don't take it personally. What is valuable here is the feedback they give you. Why will they follow up with your idea? Why not? And this will get you into thinking how does the product management mindset works. Another aspect which is pretty useful in both roles is being data savvy. And as a marketeer, you're probably working with some kind of campaign analysis or reporting on particular results in marketing and being data savvy in general is extremely important in product because more and more products are built in a data driven way. And once you transition into product, you can apply the skills and for example, analyzing A-B testing results or building dashboards, interpreting dashboards. So being good with data is something that can be carried over from marketing disciplines to product management. And I got to say a lot of marketeers, I know, they are a lot better in SQL than I am because in their jobs they had to use daily to report on particular client on particular product results. So as a product manager, you stop focusing on one particular query you run. You just run them more often and you also try to ask and answer bigger questions by running those queries and extracting the data. Finally, there are three skills which are crucial for both and as a marketeer, will make you stand out as a PM. Every product manager should know their competition. Same goes for marketing. You need to know who are your competitors, what are they doing, what works to them but didn't, are you behind, are you ahead. So things like spot analysis and others is something that would help you understand who use the competition and they will be useful in both marketing and product. Stakeholder management is something that is universal. The difference is you manage different types of stakeholders depending which role you're in. But things as creating a map of your stakeholders or a RACI framework or just the art of following up and chasing people is something that would easily transition from marketing to product. So if you're doing that, great job. And the last point is a bit questionable. It depends if you want to stay in the same industry you're in and we'll cover that a bit more later. But the main knowledge is obviously important. So if you know a lot about particular industry and it's a specialized industry, then it's really useful that you can transfer this knowledge from marketing to product. And I think for me that's worked well because I worked in a travel operator company and more old school one with actual planes and buses and hotels. So I knew a lot about how travelers behave. So when I went to booking.com I could actually use a lot of this knowledge to have initial discussions on how traveling happens and several booking happens on booking.com. So the main knowledge is not something to be underestimated. So all these things are great. You see that you're already probably a lot closer than you think to being a PM. However, there are some common things that sometimes stand out that people think are blocking them or they are indeed blocking them and they need to work on it. So how do you identify these gaps? Those things also come in from my experience. So maybe it's not applicable for every marketing role or marketing organization. But one thing is definitely a difference in speed of change and agility. Marketing is known for going for a lot of alignment and things, especially if you work with agencies, like some things that you want to create six months from now or a year from now actually should be already excited today. And I remember being shocked when I found out that the Christmas ads that UK supermarkets run around Christmas, they actually take a year. There's a moment at airs, they start thinking about next year Christmas ad. And in tech and in product, things are a bit different. So you still have planning of six, 12 months ahead with the roadmap, but you're actually trying to speed up the development cycle and get the learnings as fast as possible and iterate as fast as possible. So you have a bit less predictability of what's going to happen. And you have to adjust constantly. And it all happens at a lot faster speeds. So it's something that takes some time to get used to. Another aspect that you will be asked about a lot when you interview is prioritization. And if you think of it, prioritization is something we do on a daily basis as humans. You prioritize whether to watch Netflix or go to the gym. You prioritize whether to buy one type of pasta or different type of pasta. And the difference is that when it comes to product management prioritization, it's not about saying, I will do the right thing first, because that's an obvious answer. You need to familiarize yourself with frameworks and more scientific methods of prioritization. I think there are plenty of materials on that in product schools. So I'll let you check it out. But make sure that prioritization is not something you take lightly. And it's something you can give good examples on and start applying it in your current projects. So you actually have good examples to share in your interviews. And last but not least, a lot of people say, oh, I can't go into product management because I can't code. Well, I thought the same. But actually, after working on product for a while, I've heard from many of my peers and tech counterparts that PM Food Doesn't Code is actually a better PM. Because the job of a product manager is to define what needs to build, not how it will be built. Because once you start interviewing into how, then developers think they can't do their own job. Of course, you still need to know the lingo. You need to understand how technology works in general and how your product works from a technical side. So you can make a call, but a particular feature can be built or not, or estimate the right amount of time to make it happen. So you still need basic knowledge, but you don't need to be a coder yourself. So don't let it stop you. So how to bridge the gap? How to actually focus on your strength and make it in addition to product? First item is not a certified product only. It's for being happy with your career in general. Try to think of what are the highlights of your current workday? Like what makes you happy during the day? Which type of activities or type of meetings? So try to kind of make a mini-audit of your work week to understand what brings you most joy and energy in your work. And then try to understand either by talking to people already PMs or just by reading online, if moving into product will actually increase the amount of this joyful thing in your life. Because this type of analysis will help you understand if product is right for you and if you actually enjoy the job or not. Another aspect to taking into account as to mentally prepare for the switch is which stage of product development are you more familiar with? And by product development, I mean not the technical product development, but product life cycle. Is your current company focusing more on MDPs and the growth at all costs? Is it more a mature product that needs iteration and maintenance? Or maybe it's a declining product and you focus a lot more on the retention. So you would be probably not surprised that in a lot of job descriptions for PMs, a lot of these aspects actually mentioned. Some are particularly interesting people who have experienced the fastly growing companies, someone someone who had a very big experience on high traffic websites, some more mature examples. So think which bucket do you fall in? And this way you'll understand which transition will be a bit easier to make. And another aspect is which market segment do you have most experience expertise in? How are you currently working in B2B or B2C? Or maybe a marketplace? Knowing business models in theory is important, but having an experience in particular type of business model is super valuable. And if you are changing a career and you are changing the type of job you're doing, you will actually make the transition smoother if you stay in the same type of business as you were in terms of B2B or B2C or marketplace. Because you have to change a lot of things at once, which means that it's better to keep something stable so you can focus on things that you are not so good at and need to improve on. So once you know your strength, it's time to identify the right company. And for the transition, I personally observed three common steps. Option one is transition within your own company. And this sometimes sounds like an easiest thing, but it also comes with some drawbacks. Obviously if your company has some kind of junior product management programs or any type of training for aspiring PMs to recruit from within, that's the first way to go. You already know the product, you already know the company, the culture, sometimes even the stakeholders you'll be working with. So a lot of things already know. However, if you don't have any kind of formal way to get in the product, simply applying for open internal vacancies is often not the most successful approach because just your CV, you'll not show all your motivation and skill set that you have. So if you want to transition from within, try to do it by talking to hiring managers and actually showing your interest and engagement and how you can contribute. Option two is transitioning within the same industry. And of course, if you work in a giant of an industry as a marketer and you want to become straight a PM in the equal sized companies, that will be a bit trickier. However, if you work in a very big company and there is a challenger company around, I think banking can be a good example. If there are challenging companies around who are smaller and they want to conquer the market, if it is allowed by your non-competes, a good way could be to move to the smaller companies, use your expertise and knowledge about the market and the business, and transition into PM in there. And option three is transition on the industry's overlap. This is where I put my case in. I've worked in travel, which is more traditional than was travel. These shops to buy through packages and also some online presence, but still more traditional company than a lot of e-commerce these days. And I worked at Google, which is a tech company. Yes, I wasn't doing a technical role, but I knew what the working tech companies like. I knew the expectations, the culture, and things like that. So when I put together tech and travel, what came on my radar is booking.com, which is the biggest OTA in the world. So look for your experience and your CV to see if you can find this type of overlaps in industries to work in before. And if there's any company that needs expertise in both. And this way, you'll be able to kind of sell yourself better in the interview and also know a lot more once you go into the job. And the last piece of advice I'd like to give in the defend right company is not just type of product or type of business or seller range. Other aspects you should consider when moving from marketing to product is that you know, from any discipline to product is that you still have a lot to learn. So probably joining as a first PM and a startup is not going to be an easy feat. Being a second PM and a startup will not be so easy either because the first PM will be so busy, they will have no time to actually train you and help you. So the first thing I suggest is look for companies with strong PMP network. This way you can learn from your colleagues and also observe different styles of product management to see which one fits you best. And the good way to gauge it during interview process is just asking at record a stage, how big is a product organization? Do they have one team, five teams, 2050, it gives you an understanding how big is product community there. The second aspect is look for companies that match your values. And this is extremely important because as a product manager, you often have to evangelize and promote your product internally and externally. So if you work for a company that doesn't match your values, doing so will take a lot of mental effort and also can confuse you in terms of do I not enjoy product management in general? Or do I just not enjoy the product I work on? And this can be a life-changing question because if you made all this effort to move the product just to realize you don't like it, this can be pretty disappointing. But it's also okay. And last but not least, companies with flat structure, I personally find a better kickstart for your product career. Not because you can grow faster, flat structure is there for a reason, but flat structure and lack of bureaucracy is a signal that you can actually spend more time on your product management craft and less on paperwork and other things which are not that much related to product. It can be a medium-sized company or some big companies actually preach having a flat structure. So if it's something very hierarchical and very traditional, you probably will not learn at such a fast pace as you could. So this is the tips I wanted to give. I hope you now know that transitioning from marketing to product is not something impossible and some of the myths or concerns you had are now a bit less scary. And I hope it was helpful. If you have additional questions or want advice, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I'll see you then. Thank you. Bye.