Have you ever been told to reposition a product by next Friday, without a clear brief, no research, no roadmap alignment, and barely anyone in the company even aware it’s happening? If so, you’re not alone. This happens all the time. Repositioning in product marketing gets mistaken for a simple messaging tweak when it’s really a strategic, cross-functional shift. And when that’s not understood, you wind up with missed timelines, misaligned teams, and a whole lot of unnecessary stress. I’ve seen firsthand how PMMs and their teams are thrown into these situations without support, clarity, or time. So I’m writing this guide to help you do repositioning differently – and the right way . You’ll learn: What is repositioning, and when should you do it Common mistakes in repositioning A step-by-step playbook to reposition A real-world example: how I repositioned a product for the U.S. market, and helped grow its ARR by 240% in one year Today’s newsletter is a long one, but stick with me, because it's a hugely important strategic skill for PMMs to develop. Let’s walk through how to do it right. What is repositioning, and when should you do it? Repositioning is when a company wants to change how it’s perceived in the market , usually because its current position is limiting growth, no longer relevant, or misaligned with strategic goals. It’s about answering the deeper question: What space do we want to own? You can think of it as moving where you are on a magic quadrant if you are a B2B product. This isn’t just a cosmetic change; you have to earn this move. So, when should a company actually reposition? Some common reasons are: You’re moving upmarket - For instance, you started with SMBs or self-serve customers, and now you want to win larger enterprise deals. You’re entering a new market - Maybe you’re expanding from Europe into the U.S., or launching in APAC. Different regions can have different competitive dynamics, buyer expectations, and category definitions. Your ICP has changed - Maybe your original customer base isn’t converting like they used to, or your best-fit customers now look very different. You’ve gone through a major pivot, launch, or acquisition - A big change in your product offering or company structure often creates a mismatch between how you’re perceived and what you actually offer. Just as importantly, here’s when NOT to reposition: Your company missed its quarterly numbers and wants a quick fix. Leadership is bored and wants a “refresh”. You’re chasing a new segment without fully understanding your existing one. Repositioning ≠ Rebranding One thing I want to emphasize is the difference between repositioning and rebranding. I have heard people use “repositioning” and “rebranding” interchangeably, but they’re not the same. Repositioning is the strategic shift: who you’re for, what problem you solve, and where you play in the market. Rebranding is the expression of your identity: logo, visuals, voice, and brand guidelines. They can go together, especially if the rebrand helps reinforce the repositioning. But they’re not interchangeable. A rebrand without true repositioning is just a cosmetic update. And a repositioning without any visual or verbal changes might not stick with the market. While in most cases you do them together, it doesn't always have to be the case. Check out the scenarios below. So next time your boss says, “Let’s reposition,” ask: Are we repositioning, rebranding, or both? And what are we actually trying to change? Common reasons why repositioning in product marketing fails Before we dive into what we should do, let’s address some common pitfalls. Here are the top reasons I’ve seen repositioning efforts fall apart: 1. You didn’t do sufficient research and validation Positioning should be built on INSIGHT - customer discovery, market analysis, and competitive mapping. But too often, teams skip this step or rush through it because leadership wants fast results or has established yet untested assumptions. I've heard it over and over from PMMs: “We didn’t spend enough time on validating the new target segment, and moved ahead with incomplete data, which means we didn’t realize some critical insights that would have made us position very differently.” If you don’t understand how the market sees you today and what your customers want, you’re just guessing. And that certainly won’t yield the results you’re looking for. 2. You forgot about your core customer One of the biggest risks in repositioning is chasing a new audience or segment and abandoning the customers that actually built your business. Companies are generally resource-constrained, and if you are chasing a new segment, you have to divert GTM resources to this new area… which means under-investing in the core. 3. You didn’t get internal alignment The product team is on one page, sales is on another, and marketing is off writing new copy. Meanwhile, no one agrees on the “why” behind the change, or what success even looks like. And worst of all, the product roadmap isn’t aligned with the new narrative. If the product itself doesn’t back up the story you’re telling, the market will smell the disconnect. That’s how you end up with fluffy decks and marketing jargon that don’t convert. This is a classic issue of operating in silos when doing a repositioning project. 4. You put a junior PMM in charge with no support Repositioning is a high-stakes, cross-functional effort. It requires exec alignment, clear decision-making, and real strategic judgment. But way too often, I see junior PMMs or solo ICs thrown into the deep end with no guidance, no air cover, and no power to influence product or sales. And when things don’t go well, they get blamed for it. If that’s you, it’s not your fault. But you do need to raise the flag early. This kind of project is bigger than one person, and you deserve support to make it successful. 5. You confused repositioning with rebranding I made this point above, but it’s worth restating because it happens so frequently. Someone says, “Let’s reposition,” and what follows is a visual refresh, new logo, new website, maybe a catchy new tagline. That’s rebranding . To read an in-depth story on a failed repositioning, ​check out this article​ on SurveyMonkey's attempt gone wrong. The 5-step framework for repositioning your product A successful reposition must be treated as a full GTM exercise . Below is a five-step process designed to help you succeed. Step 1: Identify business objectives Every successful repositioning starts with clarity on what you're trying to achieve. For each objective, establish clear success metrics. For example, if you're entering a new market, what market share do you expect to capture in 6 months? 12 months? Work with your manager and leadership on this to drive buy-in and alignment. Pro tip: Create a one-page brief documenting the business case for repositioning, including current state assessment, target vision, expected impact, timeline, and resource requirements. Step 2: Understand your best-fit customers This step is all about customer research. Before you can effectively reposition, you need data-driven insights about who your customers really are and what they actually care about. Key research methods to employ include win/loss analysis, customer interviews, surveys, and market sizing analysis. Once you have this research, you can accurately: Segment your target market based on validated criteria rather than assumptions Define detailed buyer personas with real insights into their priorities Map the buying committee with clarity on who influences decisions Identify their jobs-to-be-done with confidence Remember: Repositioning often means deprioritizing certain audiences to better serve others. Your research should give you the confidence to make these tough choices based on evidence, not intuition. Step 3: Determine competitive alternatives This step answers the fundamental question: "Who are we positioning against?" When you reposition, your competitive dynamics often change. The competitors you thought you were up against might not be your actual alternatives in customers’ minds. This is why determining competitive alternatives is a critical standalone step. It’s important to choose the ONE competitor that most customers compare you against. This becomes your primary reference point for differentiation, instead of positioning yourself across so many competitors or competitive categories. The output of this step should be a clear understanding of who you're positioning against, which informs how you'll articulate your differentiation in the next step. Step 4: Identify unique differentiators and create positioning and messaging This is where all the insights from steps 1-3 come together in a focused workshop setting. Rather than multiple fragmented sessions, I recommend a single, comprehensive (2-3 hour) workshop with key stakeholders from product, sales, marketing, and leadership. In this workshop, you'll: Review research insights - Share key findings from customer research and competitive analysis Complete the positioning framework - Work through these core elements: Who is our target customer? (From Step 2) What category do we play in? Who is our primary competitive alternative? (From Step 3) What are our unique capabilities? What value do those capabilities deliver? What's our evidence? Craft the core narrative - Develop a simple, compelling story that communicates your positioning The real output isn't the workshop itself; it's the formalized positioning brief that follows. This document becomes your single source of truth and should include: Positioning statement (1-2 sentences) Target audience definition Category definition Unique differentiators (3-5 points) Messaging pillars with supporting proof points This brief shouldn't just live in a PMM's documents folder. It should be socialized, referenced in planning, and used to evaluate future marketing initiatives. Everything that follows in your go-to-market should align with this brief. When I work with clients, I find that it’s not just the workshop discussions but also the formalized brief that makes positioning stick. It creates the foundation for all your messaging and becomes the reference point for the internal and external rollout in Step 5. Step 5: Implement promotional and enablement plan Execution is where most repositioning efforts succeed or fail. Going in depth on a promotional plan is outside the scope of this newsletter, but here is the overview: Internal rollout: Schedule dedicated briefings with each department Create enablement resources (battlecards, talk tracks, FAQs) Update sales presentations and establish feedback channels External rollout: Prioritize assets for updates (website, sales materials) Create a content refresh plan and customer announcement strategy Update digital presence and plan launch activities Case study highlight: How repositioning drove 240% ARR growth: JUUNOO’s US expansion story To bring this to life, I wanted to share with you a real case study of a company I advised. When JUUNOO, a European sustainable construction startup, struggled to gain traction in the US, the then Head of Product Marketing, ​Matt Benson​ , brought me in to lead a repositioning effort. Their existing messaging focused on sustainability, but that wasn’t what US buyers cared most about. Using my 5-step framework, Matt and I uncovered what did  matter: speed, minimal disruption, and ROI. Together, we Clarified business goals : Break into the US commercial real estate market and build a reliable pipeline. Interviewed target buyers : Speed of installation, not sustainability, was the key decision driver. Analyzed competitors : JUUNOO wasn’t competing with other green startups, it was up against traditional construction. Facilitated a positioning workshop : We reframed JUUNOO as “cost-effective construction for adaptable workspaces” instead of “Europe’s most sustainable wall system.” Revamped go-to-market : We focused on the most important marketing and sales assets given limited resourcing. This meant prioritizing paid ads (TOFU), a strong customer case study (MOFU), and sales talk track (BOFU) to shift focus on speed and ROI. These were the results we were able to generate within 1 year: 240% YoY ARR growth in the US 40%+ lower customer acquisition costs 140M+ media impressions (Forbes) Major increase in qualified leads 👉 Same product. New story. Wildly different results. "Repositioning the same product completely changed our growth trajectory in the U.S. The work Matt’s team led was the single most important driver of our sales acceleration." — Jon Agostino, Head of Sales, JUUNOO What’s next I hope this newsletter gave you tangible steps to approach your next positioning or repositioning project with more clarity and confidence. Whether you’re navigating a complex project or looking to level up your strategic leadership, I offer ​private 1:1 coaching to help you tackle PMM and leadership challenges with clarity and confidence. If you need more hands-on support, I also offer embedded fractional consulting and advisory services to drive execution and momentum. Curious which is best? Just hit reply, and I would be happy to chat. Here’s to your success, Yi Lin P.S. Additional ways I can help: Land your dream job — through ​1:1 coaching​ or the ​PMM Job Search System​ ​ Ramp faster ​ — if you’re starting a new role, I’ll help you onboard with confidence

In the past two issues ( issue 1 , issue 2 ), we dug into exactly how to get promoted in product marketing, so if you’re clear that moving up is what you want, those articles are a great place to start. But what if you’re not sure? What if you’re questioning whether promotion is even the right path for you?  Or maybe you’re still figuring out if product marketing is where you want to stay.  Maybe you’re just getting started and haven't even landed your first PMM role yet. If that’s where you’re at, this issue is for you. Today, we’re shifting the focus to something equally important (and often overlooked): How do you actually figure out what kind of product marketing career you want to build? We’re going to walk through: The many alternative paths to growth beyond traditional promotion A simple framework to help you design a career that fits you now, not just who you used to be And practical steps to move forward, even if you’re feeling stuck or unclear Let’s get into it. Promotion is not the only way to grow (in your product marketing career) A few years ago, I was offered a VP of Product Marketing role: $70K more in base salary, a shiny new title, and a clear step up the ladder. And I turned it down. Why? Because I realized... I didn’t actually want  to be a VP. At the time, I was a Director of PMM, and on paper, the next step was obvious: bigger title, bigger paycheck, more prestige. But when I honestly assessed what the role entailed, i.e. the nonstop stress, the constant executive politics, I knew it wasn’t the right path for me. What I really wanted was freedom . Space to breathe. Control over my time. And the chance to build something that was fully mine, where I could coach, advise, and create from a place of meaning. So I made a different kind of move:  I stepped off the ladder entirely. Because I don’t think career growth is a ladder. It’s a loop. A loop that cycles through learning, growth, mastery, harvest, and reinvention.   And when I walked away from the traditional path, I wasn’t going backwards. I was starting a new loop, bringing all my experience with me. And this wasn’t the first time I’d done that. Earlier in my career, I was a civil engineering analyst in a consulting firm. That loop ended when I realized I didn’t want to do that forever, and I took the leap of faith to start from scratch in tech.  Later, I burned out in PMM and became an artist (yep, I learned what “starving artist” really means).  And eventually, I came back into tech, stronger and clearer, by building my coaching business, and having my fractional consulting work grow alongside it. So, I want you to know this: You don’t have to stay on one track just because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do. We’re living in a time where so many paths are open. You don’t need another certification. You don’t need permission. You just need to get honest about what you want, and be willing to experiment your way into it. I’ve seen people make all kinds of courageous moves: My friend Brian  went from insurance adjuster → customer success → product marketer → strategy lead at JPMorgan. My client Robin , a music teacher with FIVE young kids (under 10!), who broke into product marketing and started her new job last week. Other clients have gone freelance, started agencies, pivoted into ops, content, biz strategy - you name it. In fact, here are  some common alternative paths you can take instead of aiming for a promotion:  It’s all possible. But the real question is: What’s right for you? That’s where most people get stuck. Not because they’re lost. But because they’ve never had the space to ask what they actually want . Or what success looks like now , not 10 years ago. So in the next section, I’ll share how to start designing your next loop. A career that fits you , not someone else’s idea of success. Let’s get into it. How to figure out your career path & take action As someone with ADHD, it’s incredibly hard for me to get clarity. I always want to do 10 things at once. I overthink. I spiral. For years, I felt stuck in indecision because I was waiting to figure out the perfect  next step before taking any action. But the biggest transformation in my career happened when I learned about design thinking . Instead of trying to solve for a perfect, linear answer, design thinking taught me to form a hypothesis , test it fast , and then take the next small step . It’s iterative, bite-sized, and rooted in actual lived experience, not fantasy. This is the exact framework I now use to help clients (and myself) navigate nonlinear, purpose-driven career loops. Here’s how it works: Step 1: Write Your Future Vision Story Not the kind of story that’s about your title, salary, or LinkedIn headline. I’m talking about your life , 2 years from now. What does it feel  like? What are you doing during the day? Who are you spending time with? How many hours are you working? What’s your energy like when you wake up? What would make you feel calm, proud, and alive? When I first did this, it was in a workshop with my friend/mentor Keiko, four years ago. I wrote about coaching people I love, empowering others to figure out their own path, traveling, spending time with my family, and not having to answer to anyone. It felt far away at the time, but writing it down gave me the courage to walk away from a path that wasn’t serving me. That story became my anchor. This is the first thing I ask my Thrive leadership clients to do, too. It cuts through the noise and brings you back to you . Step 2: Brainstorm 2–3 different paths that could get you there There’s never just one way to reach your vision. In Designing Your Life , this is called Odyssey Planning, and I love that because it gives you permission to explore. So many of us get stuck thinking there's one “correct” path. Instead, sketch out a few different ideas. For example: What if you stayed in your role but shifted focus to something you care more about (like mental health, sustainability, or accessibility)? What if you went freelance for 6 months to test consulting? What if you pitched a new role internally that’s more aligned with your superpowers? Even if the ideas feel wild or incomplete, it’s okay. You’re not choosing yet. You’re just seeing what’s possible. Step 3: Choose 1 path to prototype and take action Once you have a few paths laid out, pick the path that gives you the most energy  - not the "most correct" one or the one that looks good on paper, but the one that feels  most alive to you. Then test it with the smallest possible real action: Have a conversation with someone already doing it Shadow a friend or colleague in that space Ask your manager to let you try something new Apply for a job you're curious about Create a workshop around that idea Once you take the first small step, you can use anything you learned to then guide the next step forward.  This is how I help clients design their own courageous career path - not by overthinking, but by doing small things on purpose, iterating  and building momentum over time. If this framework resonates, here’s my invitation: What would it feel like to stop overthinking and start taking clear, confident steps - with a guide by your side? My Thrive leadership coaching program  isn’t just about getting promoted. It’s built for moments like this, when you’re ambitious, but stuck. When you know there’s something more, but need clarity, courage, and a path forward. If you’re ready to move with purpose, reach out .  I’d love to support you. That’s all for now! See you next time.  Yi Lin

Today, we'll continue our discussion on getting promoted in product marketing. As a reminder, promotions aren't just about performance . They're about strategy, timing, and visibility . The full Promotion Playbook consists of four critical steps: 1️⃣ Be in the Right Place  (because some companies will never promote you)  2️⃣ Do the Right Work  (don't just "work hard"; do work that matters)  3️⃣ Get in Front of the Right People  (because unnoticed work won't get you anywhere)  4️⃣ Ask the Right Way  (so leadership has no choice but to say "YES" ) In our last newsletter, we covered the first two crucial steps: being in the right company and doing the right work. Now let's tackle the remaining elements that will seal the deal on your promotion. Today, we'll focus on steps 3 and 4  – the two most often-neglected ingredients in getting promoted, because even exceptional work won't get recognized if it's invisible to decision-makers. For your reference, this is part of a multi-part series on career advancement: Part 1 :  Focused on the first two ingredients you need: being at the RIGHT company and having the RIGHT skillsets. Part 2:   Focuses on etting in front of the RIGHT people and asking for promotion the RIGHT way. <— this newsletter.   Part 3:  Beyond traditional promotions - Alternative paths when conventional advancement isn't the right fit for you - coming in April.  P.S. my friend Brian Lee, Director of GTM Strategy at JPMorgan (and former PMM leader), and I have worked closely on this topic. In today’s newsletter, I’ll break these down and share a tactical approach to ensure you get the recognition and career growth you deserve. Step 3: Get in Front of the Right People (Driving influence) The value + recognition equation.  Imagine you're at the right company, working on meaningful projects, and consistently delivering excellent results. But as we all know, doing great work alone isn’t enough to secure a promotion. If the right people don’t see and recognize your contributions, they may go unnoticed. To advance in your career, you must ensure your work is recognized by those you aim to influence - not just your boss, but also key stakeholder teams. This is especially critical for PMMs, who often operate with limited direct authority. So, how do you build influence with the right people? It starts with understanding the Value-Recognition Equation . In our last newsletter, we covered how to create value. Now, let’s focus on the second half of the equation: getting recognized . Here’s how you can amplify your impact and drive influence in three key steps: 1: Map your circle of influence  The first step is identifying who needs to see your work. These needs to be people who have real power who can actually advocate for you:  Your direct reporting line:  Manager and their manager Cross-functional partners:  Product leaders, sales representatives and so on  Executive sponsors:  VPs and other decision-makers who approve budgets and headcount Quick Action:  Set aside 15 minutes this week to create a simple influence map. Draw yourself in the center, then add everyone who influences your career growth as connected circles around you. Note their roles and decision-making power. 2: Understanding what matters to them Once you've identified your key stakeholders, take time to understand: Their goals:  What they're measured on and what success looks like for them Their blockers:  What prevents them from achieving their goals Their communication preferences:  How they like to receive information For example: Sales teams  are measured by quotas and deal velocity. They need concise, actionable content they can immediately use with customers that actually work.  Product teams  care about driving adoption and championing the product. They want PMMs who deeply understand the product and can articulate its value. Leadership  is focused on bottom-line results. Always ask yourself "so what?" about your work until you can connect it directly to business outcomes. If you feel that your stakeholders won't make time for you to understand their goals, remember you can make time for them. Instead of just asking them to meet 1-1, start by reviewing their team OKRs or public goals. Attend their team meetings as an observer. If possible, shadow them for a day to see their challenges firsthand. 3: Add value consistently  With this understanding, you can align your work to address what matters most to your stakeholders: Match your work to their priorities:  Help solve their problems Be proactive:  Anticipate needs before they arise Plan your socialization strategy:  Just as you would plan a product launch, create a plan for how you'll share your work's impact This last point is crucial and often overlooked. For every major project or initiative, set aside time in your project plan specifically for socializing your work and its outcomes. Don't wait until the project is complete - create multiple touchpoints throughout the project lifecycle: When you create the initial plan At key milestones Before launch ("pre-launch roadshow") After launch results are available During retrospectives Influence is not self-promotion.  With these steps, you'll be well on your way to building relationships and getting recognized. But if you're introverted or feel uncomfortable with "selling yourself," like I am, remember: influence isn't about self-promotion - it's about building genuine relationships through value and education. By shifting your mindset, you'll see that influence is a natural  and essential part of being an effective employee. When the right people step up and drive influence, they create positive ripple effects that benefit their teams and organizations. Meet Dia…  One of my clients, Dia, a PMM at a growth-stage B2B cloud company, hadn't been promoted in four years despite transitioning from lifecycle marketing to product marketing and performing well.  She was frustrated, felt stuck, and it didn’t help that in 4 years she had 3 different managers.  Working together, we identified that she needed to improve how she socialized her work and build stronger relationships with the product team - the most important stakeholder in her circle of influence (instead of only trying to prove her worth to her managers). Understanding this, she focused on a tier-one product launch, actively treating the product managers as partners in the process rather than just stakeholders. She included them throughout the launch planning and execution, created a killer launch plan, sought their input and incorporated their feedback. The results of the launch were transformative. Dia received written praise from the product team (which was shared with her manager), and the lead product manager even told her, "you're now part of the product team :) " – the ultimate validation.  After this successful launch, she got a note from her manager that said “The launch was phenomenal, and I heard positive things from the Head of Product - well done” Step 4: Ask the Right Way (To get promoted as a PMM) So, you've built a strong circle of influence and are thriving in your role by delivering great work. But does that mean a promotion will automatically come your way? No. You have to make the ask. One of the most valuable lessons I learned early in my career came from a VP in my first marketing role. He told me that 99% of the promotions he received happened because he asked for them directly.  Making the ask signals your ambition and holds your company accountable for supporting your growth. But when  and how  you ask makes all the difference. The Biggest Promotion Misconception If you’re asking for a promotion during your performance review, it’s already too late . By the time that conversation happens, the decision has likely been made. Promotion decisions don’t happen in the review meeting, they happen months earlier , during informal discussions and calibration meetings. Your review is simply the final, formal announcement. Think of your promotion like a product launch and work backward from your review date. Since most performance reviews happen annually or semi-annually, you need a strategic approach to proactively shape the decision before it’s made. Here’s a promotion playbook  to help you influence the outcome and maximize your chances of success. When and How to Ask  6-12 months before your review  Start by aligning your goals with a promotion in mind. Work with your manager to create a career development plan : a structured document outlining where you are now, what’s required for the next level, and the steps to bridge that gap. This should include: A current level assessment  of your skills and strengths A target level breakdown  of what’s needed to get promoted A gap analysis  highlighting key areas for growth A clear action plan  with specific projects and initiatives to develop those skills The support and resources  (mentorship, training, coaching) your manager can provide Beyond formal planning, actively identify and take on key projects that showcase your ability to operate at the next level. Schedule career development check-ins  separate from your regular 1:1s to ensure ongoing alignment and feedback. 3-4 months before your review At this stage, start collecting proof of impact. Gather results from your projects, seek feedback from stakeholders, and reinforce your interest in a promotion with your manager. Keeping it top of mind ensures they advocate for you when decisions are made. 1 month before your review Document your key achievements and present them to your manager. This makes it easier for them to build your case during promotion discussions. As a former manager, I can tell you—while leaders are aware of big wins, having everything documented makes their job easier and ensures nothing is overlooked. Proactively sharing your progress allows you to control the narrative. Strategic timing beyond the review cycle  While annual or semi-annual reviews are the most common promotion moments, you can also leverage key career milestones to make your ask: After major wins:  Strike while the iron is hot, especially when you've driven strong results or received company-wide recognition. After taking on new responsibilities:  If your role has expanded but your title and compensation haven’t, it's time to discuss leveling up. When already operating at the next level:  If you're consistently executing at a higher level, make the case that the promotion is simply a formal acknowledgment of your contributions. Final word By following this approach, you take control of your promotion path while ensuring your manager can provide the right support. But remember, promotions don’t always happen on your timeline.  External factors like budget constraints or organizational shifts can delay even the best-laid plans. If your manager is invested in your growth but the promotion doesn’t happen, stay open-minded and adjust your strategy accordingly. Dia’s story.. continued...  After Dia’s successful launch and the glowing feedback her manager received, she seized the moment to ask for a promotion. To ensure a strong case, we crafted a strategic approach that framed her impact as a win for both her manager and the team. In her next 1:1, she made the ask, and her manager responded positively. Within two months, at her next review, she was promoted to Senior Product Marketing Manager with a 17% salary increase. But Dia didn’t stop there. Committed to reaching Director, she worked on a structured development plan, aligning her growth with her manager’s goals. This proactive approach set her up for long-term success and strengthened her leadership impact. Putting It All Together: Your Action Plan Remember, to maximize your promotion chances, focus on these four steps: Be in the right place:  Use the career health checklist to assess your environment Do the right work:  Create a career growth plan to target high-impact projects Get in front of the right people:  Map your influence circle and create a socialization strategy Ask the right way:  Develop a career development plan with your manager and time your request strategically Three Actions You Can Take This Week: Map your circle of influence  – Identify the 5-10 people who most impact your promotion prospects Schedule a career development conversation  with your manager separate from your regular 1:1s Choose one high-visibility project  to focus on this quarter and create a plan to socialize its results In the next newsletter, we will discuss alternative paths to career growth. As you have probably seen on my LinkedIn post, getting promoted is NOT the only way to grow, because our career is not linear, and it’s not just about pursuing going up the ladder.  How I can help  If you read this and thought, Wow, this is great , but you also know that just reading advice isn’t enough to actually get promoted—then my coaching might be exactly what you need. In Thrive , I work with PMMs who want to move up to high IC and Director (or adjacent leadership roles) without wasting months figuring it out alone. This is a highly tactical and effective mix of PMM coaching + career coaching, designed to get you real results. If you’re ready to take control of your career path, let’s talk.  That’s all for now!  See you next time.

Why PMM Promotions Don’t Happen (Even When You Deserve One) It’s Friday at 5 PM, and Colleen is still working. She’s knee-deep in the new repositioning work - one of her team’s most critical strategic projects. Her manager told her she was the only one trusted to handle this kind of work. She should feel valued. But she doesn’t. Because despite getting great performance reviews  for three years in a row , despite taking on the hardest projects , and despite working late…she still hasn’t been promoted. She’s wondering: Should I stick it out just a little longer? Maybe my career switch from content marketing is the reason I keep getting overlooked. Maybe I just need to prove myself more. The truth is, Colleen’s story isn’t unique. Every week, I hear the same frustration from PMMs at high-growth companies: “I hit my goals. My manager praises my work. But somehow, I’m still not getting promoted.” "I'm always the one ready to pitch in on a project, but I feel constantly overlooked." It’s frustrating because it feels  like you’re doing everything right. You’re taking on tough assignments. You’re delivering real impact. You’re a trusted voice in meetings. So what’s actually happening here? Here is the truth: promotions aren’t just about performance . They’re about strategy, timing, and visibility . So how do you ensure leadership sees you as the next obvious candidate for promotion ? It comes down to four critical steps: 1️⃣ Be in the Right Place  (because some companies will never promote you) 2️⃣ Do the Right Work  (don’t just “work hard”; do work that matters 3️⃣ Get in Front of the Right People  (because unnoticed work won’t get you anywhere) 4️⃣ Ask the Right Way  (so leadership has no choice but to say “YES” ) Today, we’ll focus on the first two steps . In the next newsletter, we will focus on steps 3 and 4. Step 1: Be in the Right Place Before you even think about proving yourself, you need to ask: 👉 Am I even in an environment where promotions happen? You can be the best PMM in the world, but if your company doesn’t prioritize career growth - or your manager doesn’t advocate for their team - you’re already fighting an uphill battle. So when it comes to selecting the right company, it’s important to consider two important factors: the company’s health and your manager. Signs of a good company What to look for in the right company First, you want to join a company that's on a solid trajectory. No one can succeed by being the captain of a sinking ship. This means looking beyond the flashy perks or temporary extras and digging deeper into the company's fundamentals. Ask the following: Financial health:  Is the company financially stable and experiencing growth? Cultural alignment:  Does the company's culture resonate with your values and work style? Skills alignment:  Are your skills and strengths a good match for the role and the company's needs, and are the skills needed for the role realistic? Growth opportunities:  Does the company have a clear path for growth and advancement, even if it's a startup? Caution:  There are many roles out there that masquerade as PMM roles, but are not actually  PMM roles; for instance, roles that require you to spend 80% of your time on content creation, or running campaigns. It’s extremely important to verify whether the ​responsibilities are true PMM​  (research, positioning and messaging, product launches, enablement). What to look for in a manager Just as crucial as choosing the right company is finding a manager who will champion your growth and advocate for your success.  A supportive and influential manager can make ALL the difference in your career trajectory. Here are some qualities to look for in a manager: Prior track record:  Does your manager have a track record of promoting their team members and helping them develop their careers? Competency/skills:  Does your manager possess skills and expertise that you can learn from, whether in product marketing or general business acumen? Compatible work styles:  Are your work styles complementary? While your styles don't need to be identical, they should be compatible enough to foster a productive and collaborative working relationship. Influence and advocacy:  Does your manager have a strong voice at the table when it comes to promotion decisions? Can they effectively advocate for their team members and ensure their contributions are recognized by senior leadership? The last point is perhaps the most important. If your manager is politically weak  within the organization, it will be 10 times harder for you to succeed, as they will not be effective advocates for you or your team. Pro Tip:  You can learn a lot about the manager and the company by paying attention to how cross-functional partners talk about your potential manager during interviews. In addition, don't underestimate the power of networking and gathering information from sources outside of the formal interview process. Back-channeling, which involves connecting with ex-employees or other individuals within the company, can provide invaluable insights  into the company culture, management styles, and growth opportunities. Assessing your current environment If you're already working in product marketing, it's important to periodically assess your current environment to ensure it's still conducive to your growth . I have developed a worksheet for my clients to conduct this check regularly, and it’s been a game changer. The goal here is not to quit immediately if things don’t look great, but to pay attention to decide what factors are good enough, and which ones are deal breakers. Colleen’s Story (Continued) After realizing her company and manager weren’t setting her up for success, Colleen knew she needed a change. She reached out to me, and we worked together to conduct a health check on her role. It became obvious her manager did not have her best interest at heart and she needed to leave. We then worked on a job search strategy, one that positioned her as a senior-level strategic PMM, not just an executor. Within two months, she landed a Senior PMM role with a $50K salary increase. Here is the thing: no good manager wants to hold you back, even if it means having to find a replacement for you. The work Colleen had been doing at her old company was keeping her stuck. Deciding to quit, and positioning her skills at the level she deserved unlocked her career growth. Step 2: Do the Right Work Being in the right environment is important, but it’s just the starting point. If you want to stand out and position yourself for promotion, it’s not about doing more - it’s about doing the right things. Yet, here’s the biggest misconception I see: Many PMMs believe that “career growth” means mastering every skill  on the PMM career ladder. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I cringe every time I see massive career matrices—those exhaustive checklists that seem structured and impressive but are impossible to execute in real life. I often coach Heads of PMM to redesign these frameworks because they create a false sense of progression. They push PMMs to become generalists, when in reality: 💡 PMMs who get promoted aren’t the ones trying to do everything. 💡 They’re the ones who excel in a few key areas that drive impact. The key to career acceleration isn’t checking every box - it’s mastering the specific skills that move the needle. If you’re feeling stuck in your growth, ask yourself: Are you focusing on what truly matters, or just trying to do it all? The T-Shaped and π-Shaped PMM Rather than spreading yourself too thin, focus on one or two key areas of deep expertise while having broad exposure across the rest of product marketing. Depth:  You have deep expertise and proficiency in one or two core product marketing skills, making you a go-to expert in those areas. This could be in areas like product launches, competitive intelligence, or messaging and positioning. Breadth:  You have broad exposure and a general understanding of all other areas of product marketing, allowing you to collaborate effectively with different teams and contribute to a wide range of projects. And instead of waiting for leadership to define your strengths, you need to define them yourself. Ask yourself: 💡 What do I want to be known for? 💡 What work do I consistently deliver at an exceptional level? 💡 Which projects have I worked on that created measurable business impact? Here are examples of high-impact skills areas for PMMs: Positioning & Messaging  → You own how your product is perceived and differentiated. Product Launches & GTM  → You drive strategy that leads to revenue impact. Research and insights  → Your insights influence executive decisions and roadmap strategy. Sales Enablement → You build materials and processes that help sales close more deals. The goal is to be the “go-to” person for one or two of these—and make that expertise undeniable. Three Fundamental Areas to Master in Product Marketing You might be thinking, "Great, I’ll just focus on developing those core skills, and I’ll be all set, right?" Not quite. While core PMM skills are essential, they’re only part of the equation. To truly stand out, you also need to build your visibility, influence, and strategic thinking.  These are the skills that, over time, will set you apart the most once you’ve mastered the basics. At every PMM level, the key is to focus on the most important skills within these buckets to grow. When I figured that out, my career took off. Here’s how that looks: 🌱 PMM (Entry to Mid-Level PMM): Core Skills: Gain broad exposure across the 4 foundational areas, while delivering high-quality work in at least 2 areas. Visibility & Influence: Build strong, two-way relationships with key stakeholders with minimal supervision. Strategic Thinking:  This is still a developing skill at this stage, as PMMs typically execute plans set by leadership. 🌿 Senior PMM (Highest IC Level): Core Skills: Demonstrate experience across all core PMM areas with exceptional proficiency in at least one (e.g., the go-to positioning expert). Be truly T-shaped or π-shaped and operate with little to no supervision. Visibility & Influence:  Beyond stakeholder relationships, senior PMMs excel at making business cases and managing up effectively. Strategic Thinking: While you may not own the full team strategy, you actively contribute to it and propose opportunities based on insights. 🌳 Director (People Manager Level): Core Skills:  Guide the team to success by coaching and leveraging a deep understanding of PMM fundamentals rather than doing the work themselves. Visibility & Influence:  Be a trusted advisor to peers and C-suite leaders and contribute significantly to cross-team projects (e.g., a market entry initiative). Strategic Thinking: Own the strategy for the entire PMM team and influence company-wide direction. Creating Your Career Growth Plan Now that you have a clearer understanding of the skills you need to develop, you need to put it into action and track your progress. For that, I recommend the following steps: Define your target level:  What level do you want to reach in your career? Identify the skills and experience required for that level, using the chart above as a guide. Assess your current state:  Honestly evaluate your current skill set and experience. How would you rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 for each of the required skills? Identify skill gaps:  Determine the areas where you need to develop your skills or gain experience to reach your target level. Develop actionable steps:  Create a list of specific actions and activities you can take to close those skill gaps. This could include taking courses, attending workshops, volunteering for challenging projects, or seeking mentorship from experienced professionals. Below is a career development plan that I use with my clients. What’s next? Getting promoted in product marketing isn’t just about hitting milestones - it’s about building lasting influence and positioning yourself for continuous growth. In the next newsletter, I’ll dive into how to build influence, advocate for yourself, and time your ask strategically to land your next promotion. But why wait? You can take action NOW, and you don’t have to do it alone. Through my ​Thrive Coaching Program​ , dozens of PMMs have secured promotions - such as the client below: Here’s how I can help: ✔️ Personalized growth plan tailored to your goals ✔️ Custom resources to sharpen the skills needed for your next level ✔️ Influence-building strategy suited to your personality ✔️ Self-advocacy techniques to help you push for what you deserve I can even help you make the case to your employer to use L&D or professional development funds. Schedule a Free Consultation Today! Thank you again for reading! If you have feedback for my newsletter, please reply anytime - I read and respond to every email! To your success, Yi Lin

Hey, it’s Yi Lin! 👋 Welcome to my monthly newsletter on how to land, grow, and thrive in your dream product marketing roles. Today’s issue is inspired by my newest program, ​ The PMM Dream Job System ​ ,  designed to guide you step-by-step through every stage of the hiring process - from application to offer. 👉 Join the waitlist now and get 3 exclusive bonuses! Bonus 1: The perfect mock interview answer on how to introduce yourself Bonus 2: Interview insights and tips delivered to your inbox Bonus 3: Exclusive early access to The PMM Dream Job System What Hiring Managers REALLY Want (and What You Need to Ace the Product Marketing Interview Process) I’ve helped over 200 candidates land their dream jobs, coached dozens of hiring managers, and designed multiple hiring processes myself. Here’s what I’ve learned: Most candidates work incredibly hard but don’t always focus on the right  things. Why? Because they don’t truly understand what hiring managers want. It’s like studying for an exam without knowing the test material. With layoffs increasing and the end of the year approaching, it’s more important than ever to get this right. That’s why I’m here to help. In this newsletter, I’ll share: What hiring managers are really  thinking at each stage.  The mistakes that quietly cost candidates their chances How to stand out and land the job - by tailoring your approach Now, let’s dive in. Step 1: Define the role and source candidates Good hiring managers don’t start with a job description - they start with a problem. They ask: What’s missing on the team right now? What skills will make the biggest impact? What kind of candidate fits our growth stage and budget? The job description (JD) is the result of these questions. For PMM roles, it’s often broad - listing general requirements - but the priorities are specific. Hiring managers want a T-shaped marketer : someone with a range of skills but deep expertise in areas like messaging, product launches, or customer insights. Once the JD goes live, hiring managers don’t just wait for applications. They’re: Tapping into their networks (sometimes reaching out to me). Searching LinkedIn for candidates who’ve solved similar problems. As one hiring manager told me: “I needed someone to refine positioning and messaging for our platform product. The JD mentioned other responsibilities, but the main focus was on someone who could solve this specific problem for the complex ecosystem we are in.” What You Need to Do: To stand out, you need to think like a product marketer and position yourself as the solution to their problem. Here’s how: 1. Identify Your Ideal Company Profile (ICP) Pinpoint companies that need your unique expertise - whether it’s messaging, product launches, or a specific domain. Craft a clear, differentiated positioning strategy that shows you’re the perfect fit for their needs. 2. Don’t Be a Jack-of-All-Trades The biggest mistake candidates make? Applying everywhere and presenting themselves as “I can do everything.” Hiring managers rarely hire generalists. Instead, focus on showcasing your specialized value proposition. Read between the lines of the JD to highlight how your skills align with their priorities. 3. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Use keywords that hiring managers and recruiters are searching for (e.g., B2B SaaS, Platform, Ed-tech). Highlight measurable achievements and be specific about the value you bring to attract the right attention. Remember: clarity and focus will always stand out over trying to be everything to everyone. Step 2: Screen Applications Once a JD is posted, applications flood in. A typical PMM role can attract 300+ candidates in just a few days. Hiring managers need to narrow it down quickly—often reviewing hundreds of resumes to identify the top 10–20 candidates for interviews. Here’s how it breaks down:  ❌ 80% of resumes are rejected in the first pass.  ❓20% make it to the “maybe” pile.  ✅ Only half of those move forward to interviews. What are hiring managers skimming for Relevant experience  aligned with the role’s priorities. A clear narrative  connecting your skills to the company’s challenges. Signals of effort , like tailored resumes and thoughtful cover letters. As one hiring manager put it: “When I get a hundred applications, I skim quickly to separate the ‘no’ from the ‘maybe.’ If a resume doesn’t connect the dots for me in one paragraph, it’s a no. I need to see clear, relevant experience at a glance.” At startups and scale-ups, hiring managers often screen resumes themselves. At larger companies, HR may handle the first pass, but hiring managers still review the final shortlist to ensure alignment with their team’s needs. Either way, the process is the same: stand out or get overlooked. What you need to do: 1. Tailor your resume: Your resume isn’t a list of responsibilities—it’s a solution to their problem. Highlight relevant achievements:  Choose 2-4 standout accomplishments that directly solve the company’s challenges. Do not stuff the resume with more than 5 bullets per job. Add a strong summary statement:  Position yourself as the ideal candidate right at the top. Example Summary Statement: “Product marketing manager, ex-consultant with expertise in GTM strategy, positioning, and messaging for B2B SaaS products in [industry]. Increased adoption by 30% through data-driven campaigns. Excited to bring similar results to [Company].” 2. Make your application stand out: Write a thoughtful cover letter:  Use it to connect your achievements to the company’s challenges and demonstrate your communication skills. (Hint: Cover letters are NOT dead. Reach out thoughtfully:  Don’t rely solely on your application. Contact hiring managers or advocates directly. This shows initiative and highlights your unique value. Even if not every manager replies, those who do can significantly boost your chances. Remember: hiring managers are looking for clarity and relevance. Show them you’re the perfect fit, right from the first glance. Step 3: Interview Candidates Once a candidate passes the application screening, the product marketing interview process begins. A strong hiring manager should design each step with a specific purpose to narrow down the best match. For example, I typically create a detailed interview plan for every hiring process. This includes identifying the right stakeholders to involve, defining the areas they need to evaluate, and outlining the key questions they should ask. Involving key stakeholders ensures alignment and builds buy-in from the teams the candidate will work closely with. Unfortunately, many interview processes today are excessively long, often due to poor planning. A well-structured process should take no more than two months—dragging it out signals inexperience. After every stage, there’s a team debrief. Hiring managers ask:  Can this person solve the problems we need addressed? Do they align with the team dynamic, culture, and role? Will they bring energy, ideas, and be a strategic asset? Why “good answers” aren’t enough Here’s the truth: even good candidates can fade into the background. As one hiring manager told me after eight back-to-back interviews, “I couldn’t remember who said what—most candidates gave the same cookie-cutter responses.” The issue? Candidates focus on what  they’ve done without explaining the why . Most answers are forgettable, even when they’re technically correct. What you need to do instead Standing out requires thoughtful preparation and structured responses. This isn’t about overloading your answers—it’s about making them memorable. Here’s how my clients prepare using a tailored interview prep workbook: Study the company and role. Research each interviewer’s background. Craft a personal story that highlights your most relevant experience. Tailor responses to match the unique demands of every interview stage. How to take your responses from good to great in 4 steps: Use a structured framework like PSAR that I created (Problem, Solution, Action, Result) to organize your answers. Focus on the “why” behind your actions. Hiring managers care about your thought process. Refine your delivery. Confidence and authenticity make your answers stand out. Ask thoughtful follow-up questions to demonstrate curiosity and engagement. Here’s the thing: mastering interviews is one of the hardest skills to learn. It’s not just about what you’ve done—it’s about aligning your experience and messaging with the company’s needs. That takes preparation and practice. A hiring manager I coached told me: “I remember a candidate who had never been a dedicated product marketer but had a strong related background in content marketing. What impressed us was how they discussed collaborating with sales and using customer feedback to refine messaging, with very detailed examples that didn’t get lost in the weeds. It showed they understood the bigger picture.” Stage 4: Evaluate with an Assignment Ahh, the dreaded assignment stage - the most time consuming round in the interview process. While I don’t agree with overly lengthy or poorly designed prompts, assignments give hiring managers a deeper glimpse into how you’d perform on the job. In fact, I’ve seen candidates who were just “okay” in interviews blow the competition away with their assignments—and vice versa. So, while this stage can feel daunting, treat it as your opportunity to shine. Assignments are typically crafted to mirror key tasks you’ll handle in the role. For PMM positions, common assignments include: GTM launch strategies Sales pitch decks Positioning and messaging exercises This is what hiring managers are really looking for: Strategic thinking:  Does your solution directly address the company’s challenges? Creativity:  Do you bring fresh, innovative ideas? Storytelling:  Are your ideas clear, compelling, and easy to follow? One of my clients, for instance, delivered an outstanding GTM launch assignment that not only answered every single step logically but included additional “wow” components, including a real customer video he made by interviewing a customer to articulate the value of the feature. He got the offer within the same day. 4 things you need to do instead: 1. Understand the goal: What is the hiring manager really  asking for in the assignment? If anything is unclear, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. Most hiring managers are happy to provide additional context. 2. Create an outline first: Map out key story points or themes before diving into the details. Many candidates skip this step and end up with disjointed work or missing key information. Starting with a solid structure ensures your narrative flows logically. 3. Research and build content thoughtfully: Focus on quality, not quantity. Include one or two standout elements that showcase your creativity or unique perspective. 4. Edit, review, and practice: Polish your work for clarity and conciseness. Practice delivering your assignment if it involves a presentation. Confident delivery can elevate even a solid but unspectacular idea. Step 5: Make the Offer Congratulations—you’ve made it to the final stage! At this point, the hiring manager wants to close the deal. They’ve spent time and energy finding the right candidate, and now they’re ready to secure you quickly. What you need to know: Sometimes the process stalls - don’t panic. If you haven’t heard back, reach out to the recruiter or hiring manager with a polite follow-up. Delays often happen due to internal discussions or evaluation of other candidates. If you’re in competition at the final stage (likely), set yourself apart with something extra: Send a thoughtful follow-up email sharing actionable ideas or insights. Reinforce your value with creative, specific contributions. (This is how I landed my first tech role!) When you get the offer, always negotiate.  Companies expect it, especially from strong candidates. This is your moment to secure the best package, and good hiring managers will advocate for you. Pro tip:  Negotiation isn’t just about salary. Look at the full package including benefits, equity and perks. Make sure the role aligns with your personal and professional goals. Stay professional and focused. Negotiation is about ensuring the role works for both you and the company. Closing the deal isn’t the end - it’s the start of your next big chapter. How can you land your dream job faster? Here’s the truth: landing your dream PMM role is an entirely different skill set than being a great PMM. It takes strategy, focus, and support. Even confident VPs struggle to stay motivated and consistent in today’s volatile market. So over the past months, I’ve put everything I’ve learned from years of coaching, student feedback from my previous courses, running my community, and industry changes into creating my newest program - the ​ PMM Dream Job System ​ . This is a proven program to help you: Navigate the entire job search process with 30 impactful, bite-sized lessons across 9 actionable modules, packed with exclusive PMM job search content, templates and guides. Stay motivated with monthly  live group coaching,  a daily-active job search community , and a buddy accountability system . This is truly my best work yet. Ready to take the next step? Join the waitlist today and start building the career you deserve. As a reward for those who take action, you’ll get access to 3 exclusive bonuses 🎁 : Bonus 1: The perfect mock interview answer on how to introduce yourself Bonus 2: Interview insights and tips delivered to your inbox Bonus 3: Exclusive early access to The PMM Dream Job System To your success, Yi Lin

Product marketing is on the rise. According to the ​most recent data shared by MKT1​ , PMM is currently the most popular role within marketing hiring. This means many companies are hiring product marketers for the first time, and many of these successful PMMs will go on to build the first PMM team. If this is you, that’s amazing! But how do you ensure your success, and how do you build your team? This is part four of my newsletter series, How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy, and we’ll be diving into just that. ​​Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy framework ​​ ​​Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the business stage ​​ ​Part 3: Operationalize product marketing through growth tactics ​ Part 4: How to thrive as a founding PMM and build your first team ← today’s newsletter 🎉 Section 1: How to be a successful founding PMM Before we discuss building a team, let’s discuss how to be a successful founding or first-time PMM. First, you want to ensure you are in the right role and environment to succeed. I recently wrote ​this post​  on 3 recommended profiles and anti-profiles for founding PMMs. This is not meant to be prescriptive but a general guideline to help you ensure you are set up for success. Once you are in the right environment to succeed, here are 4 tips that are essential for you to drive early (and sustained) success: 1. Pick the key strategic initiatives first.  The biggest failure mode of the founding PMM is you get spread peanut butter thin against a backlog of everyone’s “we want this from you” needs. Don’t serve all masters. Pick one area of strategic importance and pilot  how the function should work for that initiative. Then you have an example of what success looks like rather than getting buried under a pile of to-dos that don’t let the function act with the strategic purpose. To identify the highest priorities, I recommend: Get deep into the company's business model (e.g., how it makes money), its key goals/metrics, and audit the GTM motion across key funnel parts. Examples of initiatives you might uncover could be a need to revise pricing and packaging or get better messaging tested by sales. Align with founders and key leaders. Understand how they view the biggest challenges and blind spots. Most importantly, ask, "How do you want the company to be perceived 12-18 months from now?"  Remember, PMM's unique purview is to keep the long-term and short-term POVs together so the short-term better serves the long-term position the company should hold. Come up with a gap analysis/opportunity assessment of the biggest needs, categorizing them according to different growth levers (to read more on growth levers, ​check out this article​ ). Then, prioritize your opportunities and communicate them with a framework. The ​Action Priority Matrix​  from product management can be helpful here. 2. Say what you won’t do. This is as important as what you do take on. Being strategic means there has to be a “no” or “not now” bucket, as again, there is an endless list of things you could do. Draw a firm boundary. This is precisely where the Action Priority matrix can also help you. You can always make pragmatic exceptions if you need to, but without the hard boundary, the pile on your virtual desk will get too high to be successful when you’re a team of one. 3. Evangelize the role of product marketing.  As you are the sole PMM, take time to educate others on how product marketing will function at YOUR company. No two companies draw all the lines around it exactly the same way, because the range of what’s important and the market situation shifts over time, how it can add value across business metrics, and how you expect it to work with your partner teams (product, sales, marketing) to deliver results. Creating a PMM team charter with stakeholder input can be really useful, as can regular feedback loops with stakeholders. A PMM charter should include information on the scope and goals of the product marketing function, ​ the strategy​ , how it works with other departments, key projects, and focus areas. 4. Introduce processes and plan for scaling the function over time. As you start getting wins under your belt, and have better understanding of the role (could be anywhere from 3-12 months), you can start thinking about building out standard processes (e.g. a standardized launch process). In the model where you launched this as a pilot , you can define the standard for launch process by example, then roll it out to other areas. Section 2: How to build your product marketing team As your company grows, and as you build more value, you will need to grow your team. How do you set them up for success? While no two teams will look exactly alike, this is a framework I built and evolved to help you guide you on building your first PMM team. I use the 4Ps framework (not the one you are thinking!):  Purpose, People, Process and Performance  to do this (from the seminal book “The Wisdom of Teams"). Purpose This is about setting up a clear understanding of why the team exists and what it aims to achieve. It means having a clear mission and vision for the team and clearly articulating the team’s objectives, goals, and highest priorities. This should be a more refined version of the founding PMM charter you have created, aligned with the most important company objectives. People With clarity on the team strategy from step 1, the next step is to identify the hiring strategy. Based on the team's specific needs, break down the areas where you need help and then determine what kind of help you need and the profiles of each hire you need. Here are 5 tips you need to keep in mind when hiring: 1. Build the smallest team first. One of the common mistakes I see first-time hiring managers make is over-hiring. I recommend mapping out the responsibilities of each role for at least 12 months (it’s really hard to see past that, presuming these are less mature companies–since, after all, this is their first time building a PMM function). If you can do that confidently, then it’s likely a full-time hire is justified. Let us not contribute to the terrible culture of hiring and firing (and mass layoffs due to poor planning). 2. Consider part-time and third-party hires ALONG with full-time hires.  Given limited resourcing and point #1 above, it’s important to consider all types of hire. Inspired by Peter Mahoney’s framework shared on Exit 5, here is my version of it to help you choose which type of hire is needed. 3. Hire based on gaps and strengths.  Instead of focusing purely on the skills and excellence of each individual, also consider how the skills will complement your own gaps/weaknesses. E.g. if you are amazing at sales enablement but are weaker on positioning, you may consider hiring someone whose primary strength is positioning. This also means hiring someone who aligns intrinsically with the culture of the team and company. 4. Hire T- or π- shaped generalist PMMs first. Early hires should be more full-stack PMMs with special expertise (like analyst relations or partner marketing) in one or two core areas. This provides you with flexibility to meet changing demands, while also allowing each team member to own a specific area in more-depth. The specializations could also be domain expertise, especially in highly niche or technical industries (e.g., cybersecurity). 5. Don’t hire in a silo.  One highly overlooked yet common mistake is hiring in a silo. It’s important to review your hiring plan and requirements with adjacent teams, such as product and sales leaders to ensure the hire will align with their needs. So much of the work of PMMs is to enable OTHER teams to succeed, so getting cross functional buy-in is so important. Below is a table that shows possible roles and division of labor for the first PMM team. Note that no two teams look the same, so please adapt to your own needs. This is also I area I frequently advise my coaching clients on. In this example, there are two full-time hires, each mapping to 3 PMs across several product pods. Each is also responsible for special projects within their expertise. This does not mean they are the ONLY people who get to do that particular work, but they are the go-to person and main owner of it. This team is also hiring an agency to perform critical pricing analysis–a skill missing from the team. Make sure you also assign projects that allow intra-team collaboration, so they don’t each work in a silo. For instance, all members could contribute to a positioning project for the entire product. I have also seen leaders hire a dedicated sales enablement manager early on. While sales enablement is extremely important, in the early days, enablement responsibilities should be handled solely by each core PMM, which will allow them to truly understand customer needs and build relationships with sales. Only consider a dedicated enablement role past the tens of millions in ARR mark. When you start to feel the need for dedicated partner marketing, customer marketing, solutions marketing etc., that means your GTM motion is evolving. Your organizational structure should reflect this as well. In the next (bonus) part of this series, my collaborator and 30-year PMM veteran Martina Launchengco will focus on how you layer in this vertical/market/solution/partner expertise–its purpose and where it can live–depending on the shape, scale, and market challenges you're trying to solve. ​Follow her on LinkedIn​  to receive the next part when it drops! Process Going back to our Ps, the next one is process. Process should be developed based on the foundation you build as a founding PMM through the pilots  you have ran/will run, or co-developed with your team based on the actual context within the company. I strongly caution against building processes using cookie-cutter frameworks without having piloted them within the company. Death by rigid process without testing is exactly the opposite of what is needed at this stage. Examples include feature launch, positioning, messaging, sales enablement, and research processes. What's most important to make this work is to get feedback from the adjacent teams along the way. Are we working as well as we could? What could be better? Performance Finally, define success for the team and each individual. Success should include both quantitative metrics and qualitative metrics (such as feedback from stakeholders). Create individual development plans for each team member and coach them to succeed and monitor their growth and performance. Don't shy away from feedback that could be hard to hear i.e. “ I think this messaging isn't clear enough.” As the founding PMM leader, you're setting the example and the standards by which all future work will be measured. Don't be afraid to set the bar high and coach your team to meet it. With that, you should be well on your way to building a high-performing first PMM team... ...but you also don’t have to do it alone. Whenever you need, here are two programs I offer that can help: ​ Grow: A program to help you onboard fast while keeping stresses low​ ​ Thrive: A program to help you find your career path and reach your career potential​ ​With these signature coaching programs , you can confidently step into your new role or become the leader you’re meant to be. And if you are a startup looking to hire your first PMM, reach out to my directly for custom services directly at hello@courageous-careers.com That's all for today. See you next time!

Hello, and welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter, read by 4,000 professionals looking to land, grow, and thrive in their dream product marketing roles. Want to sponsor a future newsletter or learn more about other sponsorship opportunities? Email hello@courageous-careers.com . I recently returned from a much-needed family vacation in Switzerland, which was refreshing (to say the least!). I want to emphasize to everyone that taking time off is both possible  and essential . Don't get caught up in the hustle; take a step back and recharge. Today’s content covers part three  in a four-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy : ​ Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy framework ​ ​ Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the business stage ​ Part 3: Operationalize product marketing through growth tactics ← today’s newsletter 😍 Part 4: Scaling the strategy to action by building a team With that…let’s dive in! How To Build Your PMM Strategy Part 3: Operationalizing Product Marketing Through Growth Tactics Growth is all the buzz. Companies want to grow again, and they want to do it smartly. ​Lenny’s​  latest hiring data shows that growth-titled roles are growing faster than all other roles. ​ Source: Lenny’s Newsletter ​ While the data is mostly from product roles, the same applies to marketing. I recently helped a startup hire its first marketer. The profile we determined? A combination of product marketing and growth marketing skills—the golden combo. Why is this the golden combo? If you think about it, the best marketer needs to know strategy AND how to execute tactics. But the challenge I see with PMMs is they can be too much in the silo of their world. The result? They can’t tie what they do to their results and have a harder time proving value. Key point: To be a great PMM (whether you want to be a CMO or not), you must understand growth tactics and how they relate to strategic planning. So, let’s dive in to help you understand growth tactics and planning. Step 1: Understanding Growth Tactics Growth expert ​Elena Verna​  describes growth as “your ability to predictably, sustainably, and competitively answer the question of how you acquire, retain, and monetize customers.” So, to drive growth, we need to consider these three levers: Acquisition lever:  The company acquires customers through awareness (top of the funnel), interest (middle of the funnel), and activation/purchase (bottom of the funnel). Retention lever : The company retains and expands existing customer revenue through feature expansions, reliability, and services. Monetization lever : The company charges customers to optimize for revenue and profit. While these concepts are PLG-focused, they apply more broadly to every type of business. Most businesses, no matter what kind, use a combination of tactics across these three levers across sales, marketing, and product. Understanding the most common tactics is extremely important for PMMs to inform their own strategy and determine which efforts require collaboration with different teams. I built the tactics table below to use as a guide. Note that this is not exhaustive and some tactics will fall into multiple buckets across teams. A word on monetization—many PMMs have not worked on monetization, as it can be owned by other teams like product management or sales, depending on the business model. However, because monetization relies on a thorough understanding of personas and customer research, PMMs should have experience with it. In my private client community, I did training on monetization and pricing 101 and how to get involved in pricing as a PMM. Source: Yi Lin Pei, Courageous Careers Section 2: Operationalizing the tactics to drive marketing Now that you understand the common growth tactics by growth lever and business model, it’s time to use it as an input/consideration when you create a marketing plan. According to the book LOVED by Martina Launchengco , product marketing work gets embedded in larger marketing plans that cover all marketing activities. So, it’s essential to ensure the GTM strategy and PMM foundation research work are covered in the larger marketing plan. No matter who PMM reports into, ensuring marketing plans encompass details of GTM will help bring it to life through the GTM engine, and connect marketing with product. If you are trying to figure out how to do this, this is the process I used to go through every quarter to ensure our team’s plans are embedded in the marketing plan. Step A: Determine the key growth lever to meet the business goal It’s usually very hard to focus on multiple growth levers simultaneously and achieve the best results. Instead, I recommend prioritizing the most important lever and funnel stage first. For instance, if your company’s key goal is to reach $20M in revenue by driving pipeline and increasing conversion rates, then it’s important to focus on the Acquisition lever. Then, evaluate which stage of the acquisition journey has the biggest drop-off and therefore the most significant room for improvement. For instance, if your company consistently hits their top-of-funnel goals and captures a lot of leads, but they are not converting well into accepted opportunities, it makes sense to focus your efforts on this middle part of the funnel to drive better lead → opportunity conversion. Step B: Use the PMM framework to map out product marketing strategy and tactics Before jumping directly to growth tactics, it’s important to run through the key gap/challenge from Step A through the ​ PMM framework in Part 1​ . This ensures the foundational issues are addressed. Using the same example above, let’s say you are now trying to understand why leads are not converting to opportunities. You found two key reasons: The lead quality is low.  In this case, it’s important to define the audience, better define the ICP, and set better qualification criteria to select the leads. The lead quality is good. In this case, leads are not properly nurtured and segmented so the messaging sent to leads is generic. You need to segment the ICP and create more appealing segment-specific messaging. Step C: Choose the growth tactic to double down as a bit bet. With a solid strategy in place, it’s time to pick a growth tactic that fits the company’s business model. If the company has a history of being marketing-led and boasts a strong lifecycle marketing team with a good email marketing track record, a key growth tactic could be to create a segmented email nurture sequence. Even if product marketing doesn’t directly own this tactic, you’re in a great position to suggest co-owning it with lifecycle marketing. You can offer valuable insights on your ideal customer profile, segmentation, and messaging to help them develop effective email sequences. Step D: Complete the rest of the marketing plan with additional tactics. Once that tactic has been determined, you can use a similar process to complete the rest of the marketing plan and show the final result in a funnel, which could look like the graph below. Source: Yi Lin Pei, Courageous Careers Congrats! You’ve now used PMM fundamentals and growth tactics to build a strong PMM team plan that feeds into the overall marketing activities. You've pinpointed the highest-impact strategies for growth based on your market insights, customer understanding, and growth levers. Implementing this approach every quarter will shift you from a passive role to a more proactive and strategic PMM, whether you're an individual contributor or a team lead. Let me know what you think! You don’t have to do it alone. If these ideas sound exciting but a bit overwhelming, you’re not alone—I’m here to help! With my signature coaching programs , you can confidently step into your new role or become the leader you’re meant to be. Together, we’ll tackle any tactical or strategic topic that will help you achieve the best results for your team and hit your career goals. ​Learn more about both programs here.​ ​And schedule time with me to get set up here.​ “Through working with Yi Lin, I was able to identify my priority and craft an action plan that I was able to immediately put into action and deliver impact. Yi Lin also had the right resources and answers to all of my questions and customized our coaching to fit the specific challenges I faced at each juncture - from product activation, launches, to goal setting and more. I highly recommend Yi Lin's coaching if you are looking to level up!” How Susan Landed A Senior PMM Job in Just Five Weeks I’m thrilled to share Susan's inspiring journey from layoff to landing a senior PMM role at Semble! As a client of my Job Search Membership Program, Susan transformed her job search techniques and her career: She went above and beyond to "show vs. tell" in her assignment She honed her communication skills and other pinpointed areas of improvement identified in her interview process And she stayed positive. Her strategic efforts and my program’s support helped her overcome final-round rejections and land a dream role. Susan's story highlights the power of resilience and the right guidance. Learn more about how you can achieve similar success here (click on the membership program option).

Hello, and welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter, read by 4,000+ professionals looking to land, grow, and thrive in their dream product marketing roles. Today’s special edition features some of the most frequently asked questions I get on job search and career development. I share: What to do when you feel stuck in your career 🪨 What to do when you keep getting denied a promotion 💸 How to ace stakeholder/loop interviews 👩‍💼 If you are looking for part 4 of the series “How to build your product marketing strategy,” don’t worry - it will come out next month. You can read the previous three articles here . With that…let’s dive in! Let me work directly with your startup… Recently, on LinkedIn, I announced that 🌟 I'm growing! 🌟 After years of helping individuals excel in product marketing, I'm expanding my focus to empower startups in building strong PMM functions. Building a successful product marketing team in a startup is hard- especially now. The role's ambiguity, limited resources, and pressure to deliver quickly have left many young PMM teams struggling and founders doubting PMM's value. That's where I come in. Over the past year, I've helped startup PMM teams: Build a GTM launch process and hiring strategy. In 6 months, the PMM team grew from 1 to 4, significantly boosting conversion. Develop US-market positioning in 2 weeks, enabling confident market entry. Streamline team strategy to 3 key priorities, improving funnel metrics while keeping the team's sanity intact. 😂 Whether you need team coaching or fractional PMM advising, I'm here to help. Please email me at peiyilin09@gmail.com if you'd like a free consultation. Best of My Product Marketing Career Advice Question 1: I've been at my current company for four years, and I feel stuck. It's not terrible, but I fear I'm just letting time pass. I'm unsure about my next steps or how to make a change. How can I create a career plan? Deciding what to do next in our careers can be daunting. Many common fears hold us back, such as “What if I make the wrong move?” or “What if my next job isn’t perfect?” Early in my career, I felt the same way. Despite feeling stuck in my consulting job, it took me nearly six years to make a change because I feared making the wrong decision. So, the first step in any career planning is to let go of the idea that there’s only one perfect path. Instead, embrace the concept of a winding career journey with multiple possibilities—most of which are reversible and could lead you to exciting, unforeseen opportunities. Once you've embraced this mindset, you can follow these steps to create a career plan: Write your future vision story: ​ This isn’t about a specific job title or salary. It’s about envisioning your day-to-day life and how you want to feel. Do you want a work-life balance that allows for deep work in the morning and family time in the evening? Or do you see yourself leading strategy in a fast-paced company, working on high-stakes projects? Your vision should capture the essence of your ideal life. Identify 2-3 potential paths: ​ Once you have your vision, identify a few potential paths to achieve it. Assess whether your current role aligns with your vision. For instance, if you imagine a 35-hour work week but are currently working 80 hours, you’ll know a change is needed. Your options might include switching jobs, changing teams, learning new skills, or exploring something entirely different. Prototype your potential paths: ​ After identifying your options, test them as much as possible. The beauty of career paths is that others have walked them before you. Reach out to people in your network who have the roles/careers you’re considering. Conduct informational interviews to understand if those paths align with your vision. You can also test the waters by volunteering for related projects or taking on part-time work. Choose the path that energizes you the most: ​ After prototyping, choose the path that excites you the most and feels easiest to start. Then, take the smallest, easiest first step to start moving in that direction. Using this approach, my clients have successfully discovered fulfilling new directions. One client moved from big tech to a startup, became a freelance consultant, transitioned from PMM to Chief of Staff, and returned to school to become a creative writer. While their new careers may not be perfect, one thing is certain: they are much happier. I hope these tips help. For further reading, I highly recommend the book Designing Your Life , which is rooted in design thinking principles and has profoundly influenced my coaching style. Question 2: I excel at work, but after three years, I'm still being denied a promotion and paid below market value. I like the company but feel undervalued. What should I do? It's challenging to feel undervalued, especially when you're consistently performing well. To determine your next steps, consider the following approach: Objectively evaluate your performance: ​ Assess your achievements and understand how your organization and manager perceive your contributions. Benchmark your level and pay against industry standards by reviewing market reports and talking to peers and mentors. This will help you determine if your compensation and role are aligned with your skills and contributions. Understand your company’s promotion criteria: ​ If you've consistently received positive feedback in annual reviews but haven’t been promoted, it’s important to ask why. A good leader should provide clear reasons and outline the criteria for reaching the next level. Sometimes, a lack of promotion may be due to the absence of a business need for someone at that level, which may not reflect your performance. Determine your options based on your values: ​ Based on your manager's response, decide on the best course of action. You might choose to stay, seek a different role within the company, or explore opportunities elsewhere if you feel undervalued. Ensure your decision aligns with your core values—such as learning opportunities, the caliber of colleagues, and your future career vision—not just extrinsic factors like title or compensation. Move forward with focus: ​ If you conclude that the company no longer aligns with your values or doesn’t appreciate your contributions, it may be time to move on. In this case: Clearly define your target, including the size of the company, business model, industry, and desired role. Determine your value proposition for potential employers: Articulate in your application materials why you’re the best hire for those companies and what unique value you can bring. Apply to those companies with a polished resume, cover letter, and direct outreach to hiring managers to maximize your chances of landing interviews. Practice interviews using structured frameworks, like my PSAR framework, ensuring your answers reflect the level you’re aiming for, not your current position. Negotiate your offer and title confidently based on your value and market rate. Example: A client of mine, a founding PMM, was excellent at his job and asked for a promotion after over two years at his company. Despite clearly demonstrating his significant impact and crucial role in key projects, the company repeatedly refused to promote him, citing budget constraints. After discussing his options with me, he decided it was time to move on. He quickly received an offer from another company with a 50% pay increase and a higher title—perfectly aligned with his career vision and values. When he resigned, his old employer immediately matched his new offer (!), proving there were no budget constraints—they had simply taken advantage of him. While this situation may not apply to everyone, if you’re a top performer but are repeatedly denied a promotion, it’s likely time to evaluate new opportunities where your contributions are truly valued. Q3: I am currently interviewing for new roles but I keep getting stuck in loop interviews with PMs and Sales. What should I do differently? That’s a great question. Many people get stuck at this stage because their responses don’t match what their audience wants and needs to hear. Here are three steps to follow: Step 1: Understand each stakeholder's perspective. Once you do, anticipate the questions they’re likely to ask. Here are the two most common stakeholders: 👩‍🔧 Product Managers: Product managers want to see your commitment to their product's success. Demonstrate how you've collaborated, championed products, helped prioritize roadmaps, or driven adoption through launches. In startups, PMs may have misconceptions about PMMs. This is a chance to clarify what a great PM-PMM relationship looks like. Potential questions: Can you describe your product marketing experience? How do you approach understanding a new product and market? How do you develop a launch strategy? How do you ensure product-marketing alignment? If post-launch adoption is low, what steps would you take? 👩‍🔧 Sales: In B2B companies, product marketing's relationship with sales is crucial (and sometimes contentious). Sales teams need to see your strategic value in the enablement activities that product marketing does. Potential questions they might ask: How do marketing initiatives support our sales goals? What sales collateral will you provide? How do you ensure product messaging resonates with our target audience? How do you gather sales feedback on marketing materials? What KPIs do you track for sales enablement effectiveness? Step 2: Prepare your responses using a structured framework, such as the PSAR framework I developed: In your answers, emphasize the role of the stakeholder team and how you collaborated with them, explaining the rationale behind your actions, not just the actions themselves. When describing a work experience, follow this structure: [Process] Outline your approach to show systems-level thinking. [Situation] Briefly state the task, challenge, or goal. [Action] Detail your actions, following the process you outlined. [Results] Share the impact, results, and learnings. Here is an example: Can you tell me a time you had to launch a product to market? [Process] When I launch products, I follow a three-step process to ensure the best results. First, I validate the product/market fit to answer the what, how, when, and why of the launch. Then, I develop the positioning and messaging. Lastly, I determine the promotional and channel strategy, including internal enablement. [Situation] Last year, I was tasked with launching a DEI tool to help SMBs track their diversity metrics easily. The goal for this launch was to drive pipeline for our sales team. [Action] I first aligned with my PM counterpart to understand the target persona, problems we'd solve, and our unique benefit. I then created a brief capturing these details and identified positioning for the SMB market. After sharing this with cross-functional teams for buy-in, I developed the promotional strategy, focusing on educational webinars with industry experts rather than simply pushing product features. [Result] We exceeded our launch target within the set timeframe. My launch playbook became widely adopted across the team due to this success. Step 3: Finally, tailor your messaging by using the exact language each stakeholder uses. For example, when speaking with product managers, use terms like "roadmaps," "adoption," "release/launch," "product development lifecycle," and "backlog." When speaking with sales, use terms like "deal cycle," "win rates," and "win/loss analysis." You don’t have to do it alone. I offer three programs that can help product marketers like you: ​ Land: My job search Blueprint Course to help you land your dream job fast (currently on sale!) ​ Grow: Succeed in your product marketing role in the first 90 days. Deliver value quickly and minimize stress. ​ Thrive: Thrive in your product marketing role. Achieve your career goals and get to the next level. That's all for this issue. See you next time!

Susan Liu is a client who enrolled in my Job Search Membership Program. When we met, she was trying to overcome the final round of rejections and bounce back after a layoff. Through hard work, she landed a senior product marketing manager job at a reputable startup within five weeks of working together. Her story is truly transformational. I recently caught up with Susan to have her tell her story and share some of what she’s learned. I hope she inspires you the way she has inspired me! Yi Lin: What did you do for work before your recent job search? Susan: I had a varied career, starting as a pharmacist and then working in consulting roles in digital transformation, strategy and innovation, and product management. There was a layoff at my last consulting role. And initially, when I was made redundant, I was in denial. I thought, "Oh, it's okay, I'll just get another job," but I didn't realize how tough the job market was. Coming from a consulting background, I had a very generalist skill set. I was applying for various types of roles, which made my applications weak because they lacked focus. It was an even tougher market to be trying to make a career change. But I didn’t want to give up on myself; I wanted to find a job I was interested in. Once I zeroed in on product marketing roles and started only applying to them, I started having success. Wow, you have a fantastic background! Why did you choose to focus on product marketing? As I struggled through interviews, I took a moment to think about what type of work I enjoy most and how that overlaps with my skill set. A lot of that converged around product marketing. In consulting, I often tested new ideas, making fake landing pages and prototypes to see if they solved a pain point and whether people would pay for them. Realizing that I enjoyed these elements more made me understand that I actually preferred product marketing. Amazing. Switching back to job searching, how did you stay positive during the search? That’s a great question. Since the search was long (I spent six months searching before joining the coaching program), I had to stay positive and keep moving forward. Instead of just grinding, I focused on building new skills while on the job hunt. I realized no career is ever safe, so adapting and changing with the times is essential. In my time off, I attended a data analytics boot camp, which is something I was always curious about but didn’t have time for before. Additionally, it gave me time to invest in a side project I’d always been interested in—thinking about how to communicate with more impact in a work environment. I started a TikTok channel, researching how we can communicate with impact, and that was instrumental in helping me land my current role. The most important thing for staying positive was realizing that I can learn and apply different skills and be adaptable in a tough situation. How did you identify and address challenges during your search? Improving my communication skills There were definitely a few challenges I had to overcome. I realized that to stay sane and improve my interviewing skills, I also needed to improve my communication skills. So, I researched different communication techniques, attended improv classes, and took a stand-up course. It may sound unrelated, but I applied these techniques during the interview to improve my communication and storytelling. Specifically, I learned to reduce the amount of information for the other person to process and explain it in a way they understood. Before, I struggled to articulate my experiences because of the wide range of projects I've worked on. I realized I needed to communicate in a way others could understand. This mindset shift improved my interview success. Improving job search strategy In addition to communications, I also found that I kept having the same problem with product marketing interviews–I was doing everything right to land interviews and get all the way to the third or final round, but I couldn’t quite nail the case study or assignment. So, I was getting very close but was struggling to close offers. I had been following you (Yi Lin) for a while and loved your content. Then, as I began reflecting on my mistakes and identifying areas where I required additional assistance, I realized I wanted more dedicated support than reading your content online. That's when I joined your Job Search Membership Program. Immediately after I joined, I attended a case study workshop you hosted and immediately realized my mistakes. I applied all the techniques I learned, specifically your "show, don't tell" approach - and that was one of the most important things that helped me land the role at Semble. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised by all the other elements of the program.  The masterclasses you offered were a shortcut to mastering PMM best practices and techniques. Plus, the community you built is incredibly supportive and knowledgeable, and the buddy system kept me motivated throughout the search. All in all, I just want to say to everyone that you can’t put a price tag on the technical knowledge shared in the program, but what truly sets you apart is Yi Lin's genuine kindness and commitment to each person’s success. Thank you so much! It’s been a pleasure working with you. Can you tell us more about landing your product marketing job - the breakthrough moment, and how you felt? The job search membership program was a real game changer in my job search. As a career switcher, I landed a Product Marketing role just five weeks after starting the program, beating candidates with over five years of experience. The breakthrough moment was truly the “show, don’t tell” approach for the case study. This method highlighted my specific skills and creative thinking, which helped me secure the job. I even created a sales enablement video as part of my project. This approach gave me confidence during the interview and allowed me to showcase my abilities effectively. Starting the new job was an emotional and exciting experience. I laughed and cried when I got the news. Meeting the team and diving into the product and industry has been amazing, and I’m eager to address the significant healthcare challenges ahead. What advice would you give to other product marketing job seekers? My advice to people in a long job search is to focus outward instead of inward. You can lose confidence when something traumatic happens, like losing your job. But if you focus outward, you have the clarity to think about why a company is hiring, what problems they're facing, and how you can solve them. Don't worry about not having perfect skills; reframe your mindset. Previously, as a career switcher, having a generalist background was a disadvantage. However, by systematically building my strengths and applying these new ideas in interviews, I landed a role. Even though I had more time off than I would have liked, it gave me time to think about what I wanted to do and helped me refocus. I zeroed in on product marketing and companies with a mission I believed in. During the job hunt, I realized that our time in life is limited and moves simultaneously fast and slow. I want to spend my future on something I care about, like improving healthcare, which is Semble's mission. I'm eager to make an impact in my role by setting up new processes. Most of all, I'm thrilled to keep working with Yi Lin. I want to continue asking for help and building my strengths to succeed, even beyond the interview process. If you’re still in a job search, focus on your strengths, showcase them in interviews, and believe in yourself. One day, this will be a blip, a transformative experience. Thank you so much, Susan! For a step-by-step walk-through on how to land your next PMM job with ease and confidence, check out my free guide here. To learn more about the Job Search Membership Program, navigate to this page and click on “The Membership Program” option (Currently on sale!) Susan also created a free course on how to use the communication skills she learned to ace storytelling in interviews. Check it out here!

Today, I will share my framework for building a strong product marketing strategy - the foundation you need to up-level as a product marketer or leader. Today’s content covers part two in a multi-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy: ​Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy framework ​ Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the business stage (today’s newsletter 😍) Part 3: Operationalizing the strategy through growth tactics Part 4: Scaling the strategy to action by building a team What to level up in your product marketing career? Then my Grow and Thrive programs might just be for you. Being a startup PMM can be stressful and lonely, but you don't have to do it alone. Through my 1-1 coaching programs, you can succeed in your role and level up faster and more confidently by having a trusted guide. Learn more about the program here. How To Build A PMM Strategy Part 2: Product Marketing Strategy by Business Stage I recently advised a service-based startup that has been in business for 20 years and has thousands of customers. When they first reached out, I assumed they wanted to scale their business and optimize their GTM. However, I quickly realized that’s not what they need. Despite being an established growth-stage company, they had one newly hired PMM and no established processes. Even though it was a mature company, its new product—its first-ever SaaS product—required significant learning and market feedback, much like an early-stage startup. So, instead of building out processes for them or suggesting they spend months on extensive research for positioning and messaging, I guided them to leverage the collective knowledge of their entire team to create a V1 version of their positioning and messaging for the new product. I also helped them establish a quick launch process and trained the team to launch it and capture customer feedback. This saved months of work and helped them quickly capture market feedback to iterate their GTM. I share this because while the core components of a strong product marketing strategy should be the same across companies, their applications can differ significantly by company stage. This article highlights the differences and sets the right expectations for product marketing strategy at three different company sizes: early, growth, and mature stages. For current PMMs and job seekers: I hope this newsletter helps you understand the companies most suited to your skill set. For managers, founders, and team leaders: This newsletter will help you better understand how to scope out product marketing and hire the right PMM for your stage. Early Stage: Validating Product/Market Fit and Rising Awareness (Series A) Early-stage startups are all about quick iterations and learning. This is not a time to obsess over processes or invest heavily in deep research—you won’t have the resources to afford it, nor do you have enough confidence in your PMF to pour money into scaling it yet. This is about being scrappy and making educated guesses to find your best customers who will consistently choose you over others. Research: Research at this stage should be gathered directly from any team that has direct contact with customers: Product Management, Founders, Customer Success, Sales, etc. The job of a PMM is to be able to synthesize this information quickly to provide insights. Primary research, e.g., customer interviews done at this stage, should generally take weeks and not months and focus on methods that will generate the most useful information with the smallest possible resource requirements. Positioning and messaging: The insights from the research gathered should immediately inform the positioning and messaging. For early-stage startups, it’s important to create positioning with a strong point of view. This POV needs to capture the market's attention to drive awareness, which the company desperately needs at this stage of the business. The PMM should pay attention to market feedback on the positioning and messaging (e.g., from sales conversations) to iteratively improve it. GTM strategy: The GTM strategy should focus on identifying a few channels that will deliver 80% of results. For instance, if you are in the LLM or developer space, prioritizing channel partnerships within the ecosystems may give you much higher returns than paid media. The PMM’s role here is to provide insights into the customer’s journey to help determine the critical channels of focus. This is also a time to create the first version of the sales playbook and sales process. PMM profile: At this stage, there is likely a solo PMM acting as the head of product marketing. Given that this PMM needs to be scrappy, fast-moving, and able to deliver a wide range of tasks with relatively little supervision, this hire will need to be a senior PMM level hire, at minimum, with some prior entrepreneurial experience or tendency. Example: When I was the founding PMM at a Series A startup (when AI was in its infancy), the company led with a very strong AI-focused messaging. Yet, while initial customers were excited about AI, the company had trouble capturing more “mainstream” customers. I took on a challenge to conduct some research by talking directly to salespeople and reviewing Chorus calls. I realized many customers had no technical background, didn’t understand AI, and even feared it would eliminate their jobs. This led me to create an AI demo video and shift our positioning to focus on improving their jobs and elevating their status in the company. Growth Stage: Scaling For Rapid Growth (Series B -> C) Let’s say your early-stage startup found PMF. The next stage is the growth stage. This stage is “all hands on deck” and is about scaling success as quickly as possible. This is the time to build repeatable processes and ensure all three growth levers (acquisition, retention, and monetization) are on fire. Research: At the growth stage, there should be a more standardized effort to regularly conduct market, competitive, and customer research, including investing resources in routines to conduct interviews, surveys, and other analytical methods (either through third-party agencies or internal employees). The results of the research should help refine a detailed understanding of buyer personas, market trends, and competitive dynamics. Positioning and messaging: At this stage, PMM should have created clear, tested, and differentiated positioning. Multiple products could also be present at this point, so an aligned product portfolio and brand-level messaging will also be important. The positioning and messaging should also be revisited and reviewed frequently to reflect changing market dynamics and customer insights. GTM strategy: In addition to core channels, product marketers should provide insights to cultivate additional channels for growth and support multi-channel marketing campaigns throughout the funnel, from awareness campaigns to retention campaigns. There should also be a fully built-out sales enablement process to support a growing salesforce, as well as a repeatable and tested product launch process. PMM profile: The PMMs who will succeed here are business strategists with proven experience executing. Given that many of the responsibilities here are focused on enabling field teams to scale their efforts, the PMM must also have exceptional skills in building relationships, influencing without authority, and making convincing business cases. The head of PMM, in this case, is usually a director-level person who is a strong coach-player. A strong early-stage founding PMM may NOT make a great director at this stage, as the key strengths differ. Founding PMMs trying to get promoted here must reframe their roles to be focused on scaling, building processes, and enabling others instead of being the Swiss Army knife do-it-all. Example: As the director of product marketing at Teachable, my main mission was to build and scale product marketing to enable the rest of the organization. As Teachable is product-led, one of my main focuses was piloting a product launch process. I then scaled our team to launch products effectively to the market to maximize each launch effort and support four separate product teams. Mature Stage: Maintain Sustained Growth And Market Share (Series D+) When a company has reached the mature stage, it’s likely to have a significant market share and be a category leader. At this stage, product marketing activities are more specialized to provide more advanced and deeper support. The goal for this stage is to maintain sustained growth and find new market entry opportunities for expansion. Research: At a mature company, there are usually fully dedicated insights teams that provide detailed customer, competitive, market, and product-level insights. Product marketing aims to uncover insights to drive business growth (e.g., reducing churn, expanding to a new market, and optimizing pricing). The data here has robust depths and breadths, and PMMs should have the skillsets to analyze and interpret the data and use it to influence the product roadmap regularly. Positioning and messaging: While the core positioning should be well established, this stage will likely focus on strengthening the positioning to prevent competitors and challengers from taking over market share. This could also involve repositioning efforts that respond to major product developments, mergers and acquisitions, or expansions into new markets and verticals. Positioning for product suites and portfolios will continue to be important, given the scope of products at this point. GTM strategy: In addition to dominating every channel, PMMs here generally need to support and lead large-scale, global, and regional launches and campaigns to reach business goals. Sales enablement here will also have reached its most mature state, with dedicated sales enablement roles that provide even more in-depth support. PMM profile:—The PMMs at large mature companies are generally more specialized and have a narrower scope but much larger impact from a business perspective. This means they need to be able to think extremely critically about the proposals they put forth, as each will have major financial consequences. In addition, they need to be comfortable presenting business cases, getting buy-in, and knowing how to navigate the organizational culture deftly. Example: When I was a newbie marketer at Autodesk, the flagship AutoCAD brand faced increasing competition from cheaper imitation brands. So, my team created a global campaign to strengthen AutoCAD's positioning as the original brand for original thinkers. I led the development of major customer stories around the world that became a main pillar of the campaign. This helped re-establish and reinforce AutoCAD's value in customers' minds. Wrapping up The point here is that while the foundations of PMM are the same, its scope, application, and complexity change by stage. The best PMMs should be able to adapt to the growth stage, clearly communicate that to others in the company, and act as evangelists for the function. Of course, these are guidelines (not hard rules), and as some of my examples demonstrated, mature companies can have the product marketing maturity of a small start-up. The most important thing is that you understand which stage your company is at and act accordingly. There’s so much confusion around what a modern go-to-market is, and what marketing’s role is in developing and executing against a successful GTM strategy. Are you a modern marketer? Check out my Episode with the Marchitect In the first episode of The Marchitect, Sangram Vajre, Founder at GTM Partners, Trinity Nguyen, VP Marketing at UserGems, and Yi Lin Pei, Founder at Courageous Careers share: The modern go-to-market, and the role of the CMO and their PMM leader The difference between marketing the business and the business of marketing The key characteristics of a modern CMO & PMM leader What GTM motions should be top of mind for modern marketers ​Listen to the episode here. ​ That's all for today. See you next time! Yi Lin

Welcome to the Courageous Careers newsletter! My goal is to help you land, grow, and thrive in your dream product marketing role with confidence and courage. Today, I will share my framework for building a strong product marketing strategy - the foundation you need to up-level as a product marketer or leader. Today’s content kicks off the first part in a multi-part series on How to Build Your Product Marketing Strategy 🎉 Part 1: The 3-step product marketing strategy ← this newsletter 😍 Part 2: Aligning the strategy with the growth stage and funnel Part 3: Operationalizing the strategy so you can see results Part 4: Scaling the strategy through building a team ​ But first, I would like to start with an announcement. Everything You Need To Land Your Dream Job For the last five months, I’ve been working on something that will be the most valuable tool for helping you land your next role as a product marketer: The Dream Job Blueprint Course for Product Marketers. This is the culmination of my work as a job search coach. It includes everything you need to land your dream job (in weeks, not months). It is the ONLY system designed for product marketers and has been vigorously tested over three years. The course combines my own proven pathway to job success plus a supportive community to help you stay focused and committed. The public launch is coming in May, but I am excited to invite you to join the waitlist to access early bird discounts and get exclusive content and bonuses. The 3-Step Product Marketing Strategy Framework No matter the organization, product marketing almost always struggles to show/generate tangible results, is poorly understood across the organization, and is at risk of being delegated as a supportive function. Product marketing often struggles to emerge as a strategic role at the same table as product, sales, or other marketing functions. While there are many reasons for these challenges, the root cause is a lack of a clear, simple-to-follow framework. While tactics can get us started and may result in quick wins, only true SYSTEMS can help us deliver sustained results that will lead to the right growth for the business. So what foundational system should we adopt? Over the years, I have studied and researched half a dozen PMM strategy frameworks ranging from highly complex to overtly simple. But none of them did the trick for me. So, I came up with a three-step framework that is both easy to understand and comprehensive. I have used this framework in my roles (it helped me go from newbie PMM to director in three years) and coached my clients to adopt it and rapidly gain traction in their roles. Understanding and building your product marketing strategy using this framework is the first key step to creating a powerful PMM engine for the company. So, let’s look at the components. Step 0: Pre-requisite (not included in the above chart) You need to have product-market fit (or at least be on the way to finding that). If your product doesn't address customer needs, no matter how much marketing is done, it won't generate results. If you can do a detailed breakdown of your product capabilities and how that leads to value, you'll be in a much better spot to begin setting a strong product marketing foundation. Step 1: Research The most important question any business should answer is “Who do we target?” But this should go beyond merely a persona profile. It should include segmenting customers, understanding their market, knowing what frustrations and problems they face, and understanding the customer journey. For that, you need to conduct three kinds of research: customer, competitive, and market research. Market Research: This is really important to help you understand the market today and in the future to determine the most viable customer segment to focus on and how to position against emerging threats/opportunities. It will also help you understand the partner ecosystem. Competitive Research: This will help you map out the competitive landscape within your market segment, understand the strengths and weaknesses of similar products that solve the same JTBD for target customers Customer Research: This is the most important research activity you should do. This is how you get a detailed understanding of target customers' jobs to be done, needs, and how they make purchase decisions and use your product. Together, these three research activities will help you build a strong Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and detailed buyer personas. A product marketing team should spend a minimum of 20% of their time engaged in research to get insights and power strategy, messaging, and GTM. The table below lists the most important research activities to undertake. Step 2: Positioning and Messaging The insights from activities in Step 1 should power positioning and messaging - the most important role of a product marketer, as we are the storytellers of the product. According to the book, LOVED: Positioning is the place a product occupies in people’s minds. It sets a context in which the value prop of a product is clear. Messaging is what teams use to communicate the positioning to customers. A narrative is a story that stitches all of that together to make it stick. There are various positioning and messaging gurus like April Dunford and Emma Stratton out there sharing valuable tips, so I won’t dive into this step in too much detail. One call out I want to make is that if you work at a one-product company, your brand's and product's positioning may be hard to distinguish. They should be the same when it’s one product. As the company matures and you have multiple product lines, the positioning for the brand and the product will need to be separated (e.g., Adobe the brand vs. Photoshop the product). ​See my post​ here to distinguish the two. As product marketers, we need to spend at least 30% of our time on positioning and messaging and revisit it often based on the specific dynamics in the market and product marketing industry. Step 3: GTM You developed strong positioning and messaging, but how can customers learn about your product and buy it? You need a clear GTM plan that aligns with business goals. To have a great GTM strategy plan, you have to consider the specific channels customers are most likely to find your product, price, and package the product to align with perceived value and enable internal teams. Hence, they understand the product's value and can communicate that to customers. While most B2B teams focus on sales enablement, it’s equally important to enable other teams, such as marketing and customer success (which I collectively call field enablement). One of the most useful frameworks on GTM I have seen is from the book LOVED: the GTM Launch Canvas. Instead of an extended deck or checklists, having a dynamic, big-picture canvas that all teams can see and contribute to will help drive better transparency and ownership. This is my recreation of her canvas with my examples. To read more about how to create one, ​read this post here.​ Effective PMM strategies require an organic flywheel to work together. A strong process like this creates a feedback loop, with one step feeding into the next. Once this foundation is built, you can customize the framework for your needs. We’ll explore this in the next newsletter. Ready to land your next job? If you don’t want to spend MONTHS looking for your next product marketing role, this is the course for you. The ​Dream Job Blueprint Course for Product Marketers​ is the ONLY system designed for product marketers and has been vigorously tested over 3 years. It covers the A-Z of job search and includes everything you need to land your dream job in weeks and not months.

Welcome to my newsletter! And Happy International Women’s Day! 🦸 You should have four different types of people in your career: mentors, sponsors, coaches, and thought partners. No one is just self-made. We all stand on the shoulders of people who came before us and propped us up along the way. And if you’re strategic about the different kinds of support you seek, you’ll be more successful. Mentorship, sponsorship, partnership, and coaching are greater together than the sum of their parts. I’ll explain what I mean. Let’s dive in. When I started my journey in product marketing, I was completely new to the industry. Feeling isolated, I contacted a VP at my new company who went to the same school as me for a coffee chat. She didn’t respond for several weeks, and I gave up on the idea that she might. But one day, she approached me at my desk, apologized for not reaching out sooner, and we went for lunch that day. Over lunch, I learned about her journey from non-profit to tech and then her rise from manager to VP of Sales in just a few years. Her story inspired me, and I told her I would love to assist her team on sales deals. Surprisingly, she took me up on my offer. Over the next six months, I helped the team on several special enterprise deals by providing collateral and research support (in addition to performing my core duties). Through consistently providing reliable and quality support, I started getting more opportunities at work to enable larger and larger deals, including jumping on planes to fly cross-country with Sales leaders. Then, the Sales team nominated me for a company award, which gave me great visibility and helped me secure a promotion within one year. I think back to this story often because if I had not sent that initial email to the VP, I don’t believe I would have had the same opportunity or success. My product marketing career was accelerated because someone advocated for me. This is an example of a career sponsor. The VP of Sales gave me a chance to work on something I didn’t have easy access to, which opened the door for future opportunities, promotions, etc. (Note: I did have to work hard to earn a lot of the things that resulted, but that wouldn’t have been possible had she not taken a chance on me). But I certainly didn’t start my career there. When I first came to the US, I had no relatives, family, or friends to support me. As someone who came from a traditional Asian culture, I grew up with the belief instilled in me that “you have to do things by yourself; otherwise, you’re a failure.” It was only through hard lessons that I realized I could not succeed alone and asking for help is not a sign of weakness but strength. No One Succeeds Alone: Build a Career Team to Accelerate you Product Marketing Career My personal story is one proof point, but research supports what I’ve experienced to be true. Our success is positively correlated with the number of people who want to help us succeed. Recently, I learned about the concept of a career team, a term from my friend ​Al Dea​ (check him out!). A career team is comprised of four main types of people: 1️⃣ Thought partners These are peers to bounce ideas off of. Early in my career, I was fortunate enough to meet awesome peers who challenged my thinking in all the right ways. They can also advise you on sensitive matters and act as confidants—they are right alongside you in their careers and know what you’re going through. 2️⃣ Sponsors It’s nice to have many people who are your peers, but you need people in positions of power, too. Sponsors are generally senior to you and have the power to give you more opportunities. These could be the head of sales, the head of product, your boss, or more. My VP was my sponsor. 3️⃣ Mentors Mentors are people who are more senior to you and can give you advice and inspire you. You generally have to proactively manage the mentor relationship. Most of my mentors are outside of the companies I worked for, and they helped me think through sticky situations, provided insights, and helped me see around corners. 4️⃣ Coaches Coaches are dedicated professionals who help you reach your goals in a structured fashion. They provide you with frameworks, structure, and accountability to a higher degree than mentors. I benefited significantly from the coaches. My coaches taught me how to advocate for myself, earn trust, and be a better leader. Their advice fundamentally changed my mindset. This is the reason why I became a coach to others. Mentors vs. Sponsors The line between mentors and sponsors can be blurry. But they are decidedly not the same thing. According to Deb Liu, author of Take Back Your Power, a mentor supports you by giving advice, whereas a sponsor lifts you up and opens doors. Sponsors are more powerful because they use their reputations to help you grow and create opportunities in a way a mentor could not. So, how do you build your team and specifically find more sponsors? Start by identifying individuals within your company/network whom you admire and may already have a good relationship with. Go to them to seek advice on something specific they can help with. Take their advice, implement that, share with them how you improved based on the advice they have, and offer to help them as well. Continue to do that, and you will develop a trusted relationship over time. Then, ask them to advocate for you to get a new project or put in a good word for your promotion. As you saw in my story, part of the deal with my sponsorship was that I also did more work outside of my core responsibilities, which unlocked doors for me. Sponsorships can’t be forced. When you get a sponsor, you will know it. You will feel they are willing to invest the time and effort to help you. You can use the same technique to find thought partners within your company at similar levels as you. What about coaches? When do you need them? While sponsors, thought partners, and mentors are essential, they cannot provide a coach's structured guidance and neutral perspective. Most people get a coach for the first time when approaching a major career milestone, like wanting to secure a promotion or managing a team for the first time. However, having a coach earlier in your career will help you map out a career roadmap and develop the necessary skills early on to be successful in the long term. I suggest reading ​this article by HBR​ to understand when you should hire a coach. Next steps: So, as you finish reading this article, I suggest doing this exercise (inspired by my friend Al Dea’s work once again) to map out your career team. Specifically: Who was/were the most helpful in your career so far? What relationships do you want to invest in more in 2024 (old or new)? Here is a table you can use to capture the information. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Other resources How to Choose the Right Company To Work For The company you choose will have a HUGE impact on how you feel about your career. BUT how do you choose a company in your job search when you have been burnt by toxic work environments, suddenly laid off with zero warning, ghosted multiple times, or have generally lost faith in the system? I know how awful this can be and feel. So here is a 3-step process to make an informed choice on selecting the right company on your job search journey. It includes: How to vet the company How to vet the team How to vet the role ​Read the full post here!​ Related… 23 Reverse Interview Questions (Things To Ask Your Future Boss) Sometimes, your direct manager can have a bigger impact on your mental health than the company you work for. Even though we all know it’s important to find the right manager, most people don't know how to determine the quality of the hiring manager during the interview process. ​Read the full list here!​ From Layoff to Job Offer: Navigating Product Marketing Job Transitions I was recently featured on an episode of Product Marketing Maestros: Tales From the Front Lines. Nitin and I discussed a time when I helped a client land a job in product marketing within two months during a challenging job market. ​Listen to the full podcast episode here.​ Find Coaching and Thought Partners Here: If you want to make a career move, my ​Job Search Membership Program​ is a budget-friendly way to dip your toes into coaching and thought partnership. It combines group coaching and a supportive community of peers you need in this critical juncture. Membership gives you access to: Up to 4 live monthly group coaching calls and workshops, including interview prep, resume review, guest speakers, and more! We’ve had some heavy-weight guest speakers lately, from Emma Stratton, to Anthony Pierri, to Julien Sauvage. Recordings are included in the community as well. My full Job Search Resources Hub has 20+ templates and guides on every stage of the job search journey. The private Slack community with 100+ members and alumni to ask questions, participate in the discussion, connect with others, and access exclusive job opportunities Special offer available now. ​Check out the Membership Program here.