 Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's product school webinar on breaking into product marketing. I'm Annie and I'm a senior product marketing manager at Pinterest on the brand safety team, working on tools and features to help keep our platform more safe and positive for advertisers. And today I'm joined by a wonderful panel of product marketing leaders, and I can't wait to hear and learn from all of their experiences and insights. To kick things off, let's start with some brief introductions on our panel today. Mohit, why don't you kick us off? Sure, Annie. Hi, everybody. So I'm doing currently product marketing for Revolute Business, the B2B side of Revolute. Yeah, and I'm based in Paris, so happy to be sharing and discussing with you all today. Great. What about you, Miguel? Hello, everyone. I'm Miguel and I work as a product marketing manager doing brand reputation and consumer apps for Google in Spain and Portugal. I've been working with marketing for more than 10 years, and yeah, I'm happy to be here, thank you for inviting me. Happy to have you here as well. And last but certainly not least, Lori, would you like to introduce yourself? Thanks, Annie. Hi, everyone. I'm Lori, and I'm currently based in San Francisco as the lead product marketing manager for WhatsApp's business app products at Meta, and I'm responsible for managing the monetization and growth of WhatsApp business. I've been at Meta for close to four years now, and I've been in marketing in general for over 10 years now, and specifically in product marketing for over seven years. Happy to be here. Great. Thanks, everyone. Well, we have a few questions prepared today for our panel, but please feel free to input any questions into our chat, and as a disclaimer, we want to remind everyone that each panelist represents their own views and not those of their companies. To start, I'd love to know how each of you got into product marketing. I remember when I first started in my career, I hadn't really ever heard of product marketing before. It was a fairly new space, and it took me some exploring to finally land into an APMM role. I'm curious what all of your paths were like to get into product marketing. Why don't we start with you, Lori? Sure. So, as you mentioned, Annie, I think it's safe to say that none of us really grew up aspiring to become product marketers specifically, just because the field is still relatively new compared to other roles in tech. So I personally first learned about the product marketing role when I was job hunting for internships during business school here in the U.S. Before business school, I was working in Japan, and I was in consulting, focusing on advising clients on their marketing strategy, as well as, like, target segmentation based on data analysis. And I would say, you know, when people often pursue an MBA to change their career trajectory in at least one of three ways, that would be geographic location, role, or industry. And so when I was searching for internships and full-time opportunities out of business school, I knew that I wanted to change all three of those. And I was laser focused on pursuing a marketing role in tech in the heart of Silicon Valley. And so I was naturally drawn to the product marketing role as most openings that I was looking at really required or strongly preferred an MBA or a consulting background. And I ended up landing a product marketing internship at PayPal. I really enjoyed it there and was successful to get a return offer. And so I joined after business school, and I've been in product marketing ever since. Thanks, Lori. What about you, Miguel? What was your path like? So I commented on the comment we received. I studied public relations, and I started my career as a planner at an advertising agency because I wanted to work with advertising. And then I spent around two years working with clients doing like general planning for clients in Brazil. That's where I started my career. Then I spent some more time working as a business development for a tech company. And at the time, as well as Lori mentioned, I didn't know what I would end up working with as a PMM. I knew what was advertising. I knew what was marketing in general. So I decided to leave the agency side and started working in clients and companies. And also I wanted to work in the tech industry. So I looked for marketing roles in general. And I noticed there were a few transferable skills I could use to learn this role. And that's when I applied to a marketing role at Pugone in Brazil. I was accepted. And at the beginning, it was a pretty generalistic marketing role working with brand and other topics. But then kind of it started as product got prioritized, projects got prioritized. I was kind of being pushed to product marketing. And that's where I'm now. Great. Thanks for sharing. What about you, Mohi? What was your experience like? Yeah, I think as everybody else mentioned, product marketing is fairly new. And when we started, it was not really a space which we aspired to be in. So my experience is a bit different than you all here. I'm an engineer, a turn market here, essentially. So I started off as an engineer. Then I moved into business as I gained interest into actually understanding the business, how it works and marketing side of things. I actually started as a consultant for SAP. So doing tech consulting for a couple of years before doing another kind of marketing degree to really move into the marketing space. I think this blend of interest and tech and marketing together coupled with education, both sides tech as well as marketing. When I was looking out for my first job after my business school, I was like, this is the space which could fit the best in which I could offer the most in terms of to a company. So the blend of marketing and tech led me to my first internship in a company called Amadeus. So it's a B2B tech company based in France as well. And from there, slowly you progress into the role and I've been doing it for the last eight years now, many in Amadeus and then at Revolute. So yeah, I think I would say that this blend of interest, education along with some experience from different roles as well is very much applicable to you actually being a product marketing manager and especially the side of customers in the city which comes in being a consultant. I've seen plenty of other PMMs also who have drawn from their experience in consulting in various ways into actually what we do today. So I think that's a bit of my story. Great, thanks for sharing. I think as we all heard from the panel here, we've all had different experiences getting into product marketing. I know for myself, I started off in marketing for a telecommunications company and I slowly start to see that there is a lot of transferable skills that would apply to the PMM world. And so I think my next question is what are some of the skills or experience that you think was very key in helping you land your product marketing role? Let's start back with Mohit. Yeah, thanks, Annie. I think as I was mentioning, there are a couple of skills which are extremely important for a PMM role. I think the biggest one of them would be customer centricity because everything we do here in this role is about the customer and actually how we can solve their issues, understand them and eventually make the product adapt in a way which answers those needs long term. So that's one of the main skills which is important and a lot of jobs out there offer this skill like sales, like consulting, which you have to be in this position where you actually work with customers very often and understand really their need at the core. Two other things which I'll mention is collaboration. This role sits at the heart of a lot of other functions, other teams. So it's very rarely that a PMM would drive everything by themselves, but rather working with a blend of other teams which are cross functional. So you can be ranging from owners, product managers, to the sales department sometimes, to the social media team, to the PR team. So really at the heart of the thing and you really kind of orchestrate the way there's things with other people. So building relationships with them, connections with them and really managing this collaboration is super important. And the third one is problem solving. Because in this role, I think in my day-to-year job, I'm mostly solving problems for customers or internally how to operate as well in the team in the company as well. So I think the problem-solving part of it is also super important to really be able to solve challenging problems for your customers and build ways in which your product also answers those questions for customers. So it would be my top three skills which would be important in a PMM role. For sure, I think all of those were really important transferable skills. Miguel, did you have anything to add in terms of any skills or experience that you think would be key? Yeah, I agree with Morit. I would also add thinking about in a scenario of people that are trying to start off a career already knowing that this is a role that you can do. I would say that having a general understanding of marketing is something that you should have like marketing strategy in general communication strategy what is a research I don't to start off the career I wouldn't say it's necessary to know how to conduct a research and to end but at least have a general understanding of analyzing data how it plays into my product into my company and as Morit said like a basic understanding as well of I would say product and sales of the industry you are applying to so how does this industry make money how is a general product in this company in this industry structure what are their most important features how can we help users to learn about these features so thinking about I don't think you need to have a specific previous experience in the area to start of course to start a career for example I have many colleagues that came from all the areas the transfers from for example the health industry so perhaps being if you are a red in the health industry you might look for roles in your industry for PMMs and then you already will know a lot about the business a lot about how the industry is a structure so you have a lot to contribute and then you have less to learn in that role so I would say those would be where I would focus if I was trying to start a career as a PMM now and try to look for as many transferable skills as possible because this is not a career at least when we started that you start developing the skills for that career specifically you build from other roles and then you start in that role certainly last but not least what about you Lori what are some key skills that you thought was really helpful to help you get into product marketing yeah I definitely echo what Mohit and Miguel said already but I think for me specifically the role, the skills that really helped me to break into product marketing was really a culmination of my prior work experience so there really isn't I think the beauty of product marketing is that there's really no one way to get into product marketing which because there's so many different sets of skills that really come into play as a product marketer so for example my first job answering customer support phone calls really heightened my ability to empathize with customers and understand their pain points the skill needed when you're trying to understand how to improve products and really deliver customer centric products as Mohit was saying as well and then my consulting role really honed my competitive analysis skills strategy setting, critical thinking skills and then business school prepared me to conduct both qualitative and quantitative customer insights research which is a lot of what we do and also gave me the foundation for understanding marketing frameworks and setting go-to-market strategy and I'll also say the skills that you really need to break into product marketing is not necessarily the only ones that you'll need to succeed in the role so you really need to be able to balance these skills that helped you get into product marketing to execute on like inbound and outbound initiatives but also you really need the ability to drive influence and deliver impact at the end of the day as we are all here to deliver outcomes for our products so if you think about in the 3P framework like product, process and people you really need to understand the product and its customers really well it includes understanding and setting the product vision strategy and being able to influence the product roadmap based on your inbound work and understanding of customer needs and on the process and people side as Mohit mentioned as a PMM you're really collaborating with so many cross functional stakeholders and you act as the quarterback between these teams and so you should be able to identify gaps in the current processes optimize them for more efficiency and help people help different teams speak to each other to deliver these outcomes I think that's a really great point you made about not only focusing on your transferable skills that you had before but also looking to how you continue to develop and grow as you get into further product marketing experiences and with that I know you've talked about our experiences in the past our different paths to get into product marketing my next question is what ultimately had you decide to stay in product marketing for now and what do you like or not like about your roles within product marketing why don't we start with Mohit I think why I got into it and why I really like doing what I do there are two principal reasons one is as I mentioned I'm really customer obsessed so I really love this challenge of understanding customers and really doing the process to understand and build things which can really help them at the same time also deliver messaging which is really impactful for those kind of customers at the end aiming for their success so that is something which drives me and along with this what happens is that I really like the impact you can drive in the organization as a PMM so whatever I do is very tangible so you are having metrics which are associated with whatever you do and those things are very tangible so the overall job remains dynamic very dynamic and ever changing which is a bit of the challenge as well to manage I would not say I would hate that that is the challenge which you manage on a daily basis but at the end when you get results out of it which is in terms of customer growth in terms of revenue growth those are the targets which in the end when you see impact which is tangible and really affecting the quality of the company that is where I think you keep getting the motivation and drive to do that better and better over time so that's the idea so I think for me those are two things which really I enjoy doing this customer side of things success of the company and customers together with very tangible outcomes thanks for sharing Mohit what about you Miguel for me it's really like to understand users behavior and consumers behavior in general so that's and understand how we can use what we learn from from our users and then do something with that that is actionable similar to what Mohit was commenting and that possibility of being a role that you are kind of in the middle of many different areas and you can you have in your role the ability and the skills to bring users inside and understand behavior from your users and get to understand what other areas are talking about what are their pain points and activate that with what you learn from the users you want to achieve that's what I like the most about the role so it's like kind of a process you don't do this every day so sometimes you are having having conversations for a month with the product team or the sales team and then when you do some explorations with users you understand something that you can do so that piece of being in the middle and having to understand from every part of the business and activating this in a way that is as Mohit said, tangible also with kind of a marketing magic to the users that translate everything that it's kind of translating everything that comes in a business language that you are getting inside in a way that the user will see and think about oh okay that's the brand I know the brand I believe and look how cool it is that what they are doing for me that job, that task, that process is what I enjoy the most thanks Miguel and what about you Lori why did you decide to stay in product marketing and what do you like and not like about the role yeah I think very similar to what Miguel and Mohit said but what really keeps me in this role is being able to speak directly with customers to understand their pain points and needs and really seeing the joy on their faces when we launch valuable products and features that actually improve their daily lives so for example at my current role I have the opportunity to visit multiple different countries where we are where we have the most presence in our product and literally going to these people's homes or their businesses and seeing how they use our products and understanding how we can improve their products and just hearing their stories about how they use our tools on a day to day basis is really what drives me at the end of the day the other thing is that with the product marketing role you are kind of like the jack of all trades you can wear multiple hats or you need to wear multiple hats and you just gain so much different kinds of experience and skills that you never thought you would be doing for example I had no background in pricing but as my role in figuring out how to monetize the product I've had to understand how pricing strategy works what are some ways that pricing models that we can explore for our product for example and actually setting the price do a lot of content writing for comms or conference type PR work, do a lot of branding strategy, product naming design, you name it literally PMM can delve into any of these areas so you can really lean into your interests and make the role what you want it to be I think I saw a lot of questions also around what is the difference with product manager or product management I think the difference is that well first of all I think product marketing and product management is very closely tied together I would say product marketing in my role at least we act as the right hand man to product management and we really worked hand in hand to figure out what is ultimately best for the product but I think the difference is what is each group or role responsible at the end of the day the product marketing manager you would obviously be influencing the product roadmap with all of the customer insights that you gain through your inbound work but ultimately the PMM is responsible for finalizing that roadmap for example or product marketing we have a lot of cross functional stakeholders who help with the go to market land, the product launch moment but ultimately product marketing is the one who is responsible for making sure we get that word out there setting the value propositions and product positioning and really delivering that narrative out in the market Thanks Laurie certainly I think having a strong relationship between PMM and PMM is very key when it comes to launching features in the market I did see another question in the comment section how is product marketing different from marketing itself Miguel did you or Mohi did you want to jump in on this one Yeah I can go if that's fine I think that there's one key difference between the two which is that on the product marketing side as Laurie was mentioning you're really accompanying the product very closely so you are able to in a way influence where it goes long term in terms of strategy in terms of actually what is in the product whereas on the marketing side it can be a lot of marketing you could be doing brand marketing you could be doing comms you could be doing other kinds of marketing but not really influencing where exactly a particular product goes and why it should go there so this is something which is I think a core difference however the skill set you would need to execute both of them is pretty much also marketing you would need to still be able to drive you know create narratives create value propositions create messaging which is I think across the marketing domain but the key difference is that you are really accompanying the product through its development also it differs between different companies how it actually would end up being but it can be the case where you drive product creation from the beginning from the business case of why we build this up to the end taking you to market whereas the other things that could be you know just taking you to market and not really delving type into the product Miguel if you have something to add maybe you can add as well yeah no I agree the only the only thing I would add is that I think about people looking for a new role what I would do is not trust as much in the job title because you can see sometimes a role that says product marketing manager and then when you read the description it is like brand marketing or it is as comes marketing so it depends on what you want to what you want to do so the same for the opposite right if you find a role that you should want to do product marketing and you find a role that says brand marketing looking to it because sometimes as it happens in any industry in any role the person writing down the description sometimes doesn't have the full visibility of each of the the role so just wouldn't wouldn't try to I would try to check the job description and not focus only on the on the title whether you are looking for product marketing manager role or marketing role that is not product marketing manager and that's a great point just to add on that what I've seen also is that in European markets the PMM role is not that evident at the moment so in US you would see a lot of roles which are just say PMM in the heading but in European side of things you might come across roles which are called product line manager or only managing for the product which is only marketing manager but inside if you go in the details you would find there are roles which are actually PMM just that the heading is not the right one because it's not that popular at least at the moment I definitely want to echo what you guys both said there's definitely different flavors of product marketing and it differs by company in my past work experience I had roles that were more focused on the go to market side more heavily on the marketing and launching the product whereas right now my role is more focused on influencing the product being closer to the product manager and understanding customer pain points and so when you are looking at roles to apply to I would definitely ask the hiring manager what is the balance of inbound versus outbound kind of responsibilities some roles are very hybrid where they have a 50-50 kind of outlook whereas others are much more leaning heavily on one side or the other Thanks everyone I think it really speaks to the flexibility of being a product marketer and how you can really flex and adapt your skills to what you're more interested in as you pursue roles within product marketing I know we only have two minutes left why don't we do a quick wrap up perhaps one final question I'll measure success as a product marketer I know we are in touch with so many different teams that we have so many different objectives curious how we measure success for each of you why don't we start with you Laurie? I think at the end of the day because we are such a customer centric role we want to understand we want to make sure that the end user is experiencing the product as you intended to be you want to delight your customers you want to make sure that you're delivering a valuable product so that's how I would set my goals as a product marketing manager but also on more of the B2B side it's often tied more to revenue goals so even as a PMM you know if you're more in a hybrid role as a product being close to product as well as on the sales side I think your efforts are measured with how much revenue you were able to drive at the end of the day through your go-to-market activities Great, Rohit what about you? Yeah I think it really depends on what the company objectives are from my experience I have seen two very different kinds of operations here happening in my company there's a high chance that there's less space for growth and the objective is really adoption and really churning most money from these in customers which is what I've seen in my old company the objectives are really based upon adoption of the product so users who are using it and how they are adopting what you're releasing and how you can make the most revenue as Laurie said from this customer base on the other side of things in a more hyper growth environment what we really focused on today is really growth so we are looking at customer numbers lead numbers, how many leads we are generating which are the indicators of success of the activities we are doing because today our most activities focus really on the outbound side of things to really get people to enter the funnel in various ways so it's about customer growth and number of leads so that's essentially what we do Great, thanks Rohit last input for the day Miguel what about you, how do you measure success as a PMM Yeah, I would say that agreeing with Laurie and Mohit it depends on the product we are working on and what's the goal for the product so I would focus on the key metric of whatever I'm trying to achieve being revenue, being reducing churn anything that we are trying to achieve with our strategy but then as a PMM as well one thing that I measure personally is the quality of my relationships in the company I'm working on because as we discuss here we are in a central role interacting with many different areas so if the relationships are not in a good place doing your job is going to be pretty difficult so as a PMM in the role I also have this regardless of the product of the project I'm on how I'm handling the relationships I need to have for what I'm trying to achieve Thanks Miguel Well I know we're at time but I want to thank everyone and all our panelists for sharing their valuable insights and thoughts and for everyone for tuning in today Thanks everyone Thank you