Some of you may know that I started my career as a civil engineer, working for a consulting company for six years before making a major pivot into tech and product marketing. So when I started my first product marketing role, I tried to absorb everything I could. I was fortunate to be among a team of product marketers with a strong leader who taught me a lot of the fundamentals of product marketing and empowered me to get promoted within one year on the job. The Unique Challenges of Being a First-Time Product Marketing Leader Feeling more confident and wanting to grow, I decided to join a Series A startup, where I was the only product marketer. While it was exciting to have full ownership of the function, that excitement soon turned into stress and imposter syndrome. The truth is, I was woefully underprepared for the role as a first product marketing hire or head of PMM, which came with its unique set of challenges: No one understands product marketing, or misunderstands it - The role of product marketing is still relatively new, and in most cases, poorly understood. Even though you may be hired to work on “strategy”, you could easily be reduced to a glorified content creator or launch machine. This unique challenge means you need not only to do excellent work but also do the RIGHT kind of work. Taking on too much too quickly - Because of the lack of understanding of product marketing, or the fact you may be only a team of one, there is a tendency to take on too much too quickly in an effort to prove yourself. This not only leads to burnout but also does not deliver the best results due to a lack of focus. Not spending enough time on building relationships - This burnout means you can deliver tunnel vision quickly to deliver more and more results, instead of doing the necessary relationship-building work. The reality of being the de facto head of a function means you have to spend as much time evangelizing your role as actually doing it. Luckily, I was able to recognize these challenges in time, and turned my learnings into a framework that provided me with clarity and helped me to succeed, where I was then promoted to Director of Product Marketing within 1 year of joining the company. Turning Product Marketing Leader Challenges Into Opportunities The Maturity Journey Framework Today, after building the product marketing team at Teachable from the ground up, my team was recently awarded one of the Best Places to Work for Product Marketers in 2022, largely thanks to sticking to and applying this framework. So, I am super excited to introduce the Maturity Journey Framework for first-time Heads of PMMs or solo PMMs. I hope it will allow you to deliver value quicker and better while minimizing stress. This framework essentially breaks down growing a product marketing function into three stages, each with its unique objectives. Just like achieving any goal, success is not built in one day, and by breaking down key milestones into stages you will reduce stress and have more success. So let’s dive into more detail. The Three Stages of Growing a Product Marketing Function 1. Crawl Stage: Generate quick wins (1-6 months) When you are new on your job, the most important thing is to clearly understand the biggest gaps and most obvious opportunities the company faces. I recommend going on a listening tour in your first few weeks and speaking to your key stakeholders around the company. This will allow you to then create a gap analysis and identify initiatives to close the gap. One of the common mistakes to avoid here is trying to do too many things too quickly (like attempting to build out every single functional area of product marketing). Once you have identified the initiatives, I recommend prioritizing them into quick wins or major projects depending on how much effort is required to complete them. While some projects are extremely important to tackle (e.g. a complete positioning exercise), it may take a long time to deliver results, so it’s important to also work on one or two quick win projects. At the end of the day, the faster you can generate value the quicker you can build trust. When I first arrived at Teachable, I realized the GTM launch process was broken. Knowing there was a major feature that needed to be launched immediately, I worked with the Product Manager side-by-side to test out a new process that I introduced. It was significantly better than what existed before and helped us deliver results quickly. This success bought my trust in my work and I was then able to implement more programs that took longer to generate results, such as spending 2 months talking to customers to improve our positioning. Finally, as you are delivering value, don’t forget to also evangelize the function by regularly sharing with other teams what product marketing is, what you are working on, and how you can help these other teams deliver value. 2. Walk Stage: Build the foundation (6-12 months) Once you have delivered quick wins and established some trust in your abilities, you can start setting the foundation of product marketing by building out processes. If that first product launch you did was a success, now it’s time to build out a more formalized process for all product launches going forward - you will have more confidence this will work and you will also have an easier time getting buy-in. At this stage, I also highly recommend setting up a regular research process where you devote at least 20% of your time to conducting critical research each quarter, whether it’s customer, market, or competitive research. Research is the foundation of all great product marketing and the insights you get from your research powers strategy and avoids you from becoming a tactical machine. If your team has a budget, I also recommend working with consultants to deliver larger research studies (e.g. quantitative buyer personas) faster. Additional product marketing areas that are important to tackle include building out the enablement process (sales, customer success, or marketing team enablement) and/or more advanced areas such as pricing and packaging. 3. Run Stage: Scale for success (12 - 18 months) With more built-out processes that are working well and wins under your belt, it’s now time to scale the PMM function for success. This could mean adding more head counts, hiring additional agencies, or adding more automation (e.g. competitive intelligence tools) to help you deliver even more value and insights faster. While you could be adding these resources as early as the crawling stage, a common mistake I see new Heads of Product Marketing make is asking for too many head counts too quickly - it’s hard to know who to hire and what to hire for when you have not built the foundation and understood the true needs of the business through hands-on learning. If this also happens to be the end of the year, then I recommend conducting resource planning so the budget can be allocated for the next fiscal year. For resource planning, this is the process I recommend: Summarize the team’s key accomplishment in the previous fiscal ear tied to the goal of the company. For instance, what impact did the personas project help achieve? Higher conversion rate across the funnel? Better retention? Understand the goal of the company in the next fiscal year. Usually, these are either acquisition, retention, or monetization. Also, understand what is the actual KPI that the company is tracking towards . e.g. grow subscribers by 30% next year. Then from there, list out ALL of the activities you are doing now already to help reach the goal. These could be things like GTM launches, research, etc, which should continue. Brainstorm additional things you need to do to hit the goal that you are not doing today. Most importantly, in order to accomplish those things, what additional resources are needed? This could also be expansions of existing activities. Share your plan with your manager and make sure you include how much of those initiatives you can accomplish with your existing resources, and with the new resources, The goal is to get them to prioritize for you and understand what you CAN NOT do if you are not given the resources. This is not an exercise to make demands or blindly ask for things. In summary, establishing yourself as the first PMM or the head of PMM takes time and patience. With the right expectations and a methodical approach, you will achieve success while minimizing stress. I have also created the table below to show the success patterns and anti-patterns to watch for as you go through your journey. As you go through this process as a new leader, you also don’t have to do it alone. I have coached nearly a dozen product marketers and leaders in the past year and helped them get more clarity, reduce stress, and deliver results faster. As you approach the end of the year, now is the best time to reflect on 2022, build your vision and strategy for 2023 so you can take control of your career, and start the new year with a bang. So Let me know how I can help you on this journey through my 1-1 coaching programs. My leadership coach programs can also be reimbursed through your department's L&D budget.

Breaking Down the Role of a Product Marketing Manager There is no denying that product marketing is in demand today. In 2022 the role was consistently ranked as one of the best 50 jobs in the United States, surpassing even popular roles like Product Design and Program Management, according to Glassdoor. Despite its surging popularity, many job seekers are struggling to pivot or land a role in product marketing. Every week, candidates come to me with questions such as: I have no tech experience, can I still become a PMM? I have been prepping for months, but struggle to even land an interview. What can I do? I keep getting passed over by more experienced candidates, am I not cut out for this? I know you can transition into product marketing without tech or marketing experience. After transitioning from being a transportation engineer to a product marketing manager myself AND coaching nearly 100 professionals to land their product marketing roles even during the pandemic, I know you can do it too. In this article, I share with you the key steps you can take to pivot into product marketing, typical mistakes candidates make, and how you can avoid them to pursue your dream role with confidence. What Product Marketing is (and what it’s not) To find and land a product marketing job, you need to first understand what product marketing is. Too often the role of product marketing is reduced to product launches, generating collaterals, or supporting the sales teams. While these are the activities a product marketer does, it is not the purpose of product marketing. The purpose of product marketing is to tell the story of the product and use marketing strategies to reach product adoption and business goals. My LinkedIn post below summarizes product marketing in a nutshell. Another common misconception is about the relationship between product management and product marketing. Many people think product marketing is a supporting function to product management or is a “backup” career to product management. This couldn’t be further from the truth because the two roles are actually distinct and both are necessary to help drive adoption and business goals. In simple terms, product management puts products on the shelf, and product marketing gets products off the shelf. You need both functions to build and sell a successful product, and great product marketers are highly respected peers of product managers. This article by the 280 Group provides excellent insight into this. How to pivot into product marketing without experience Many articles out there offer advice on how to find a product marketing job if you are already in tech or have access to product marketers at your company (this Hubspot article is a great one). But the reality is this process is 10x harder for career switchers in non-tech or non-marketing roles. My goal with this section is to provide you with a proven strategy for pivoting into product marketing regardless of your experience - and focusing specifically on the job search phase. Five steps to getting your dream product marketing role even without direct experience Step 1: Assess your current skills It’s impossible to reach your goal if you don’t know where you need to go. The first step is to map out the key skills required to be a product marketer and how you measure up today. Product marketing does not require a laundry list of skills. In fact, what is required can be broken down into two main buckets: Core competencies - these include research/data analysis, storytelling, product launch, and enablement skills. Soft skills - these include influencing without authority, a bias for action, writing/verbal communication skills, and emotional intelligence. While candidates generally understand that soft skills are transferable, many think they do not possess any of the hard skills. But the reality is even the hard skills can be transferable - after all, the principles of research are the same whether you are a product marketer or not. The key is to correctly identify what past experiences can be translated into product marketing, which can be hard to do on your own. As a result, this is usually where I start helping new clients when we begin working together. What if, after mapping your past experience to product marketing skills, you find that you have huge skills gaps? That is definitely possible but the surprising fact is that 90% of all my clients match at least 70% of product marketing skill requirements, even without any tech or marketing experience. This could be explained by the fact that product marketing by definition is a highly diverse role with very transferable skills. Step 2 - Target the RIGHT companies Once you have matched your skills, the next step is to determine what companies you should be targeting as not all opportunities are created equal. Identify your key strengths and prioritize opportunities that you are passionate about AND have a competitive advantage (I will talk more about this later). One of the most common mistakes candidates make is using the “spray and pray” method, where they apply to as many jobs as they can. When that does not work, they apply to more jobs only to have the same thing happen again. This creates a vicious cycle as shown below. This approach to targeting companies will not only waste your time but will also yield sub-optimal results. Instead, the best approach for career switchers is to narrow your focus by targeting companies where you have a competitive advantage. To uncover your competitive advantages, start by listing out all types of customers, industries, transferable skills, and products that you have had experience with within your previous roles. Then find companies where your competitive advantage will be a key requirement for the role. For instance, as a former transportation engineer, I was the exact target customer of Autodesk’s AutoCAD product. My in-depth knowledge of the customer and their needs differentiated me from all other candidates and helped me land the role. When evaluating these opportunities, don’t forget to also evaluate the company culture, and whether you are a fit. This will not only help you land the interview (as culture fit is also a competitive advantage) but also help you thrive in the role once you land it. When I work with clients, we create a specific rating system for determining and scoring each job opportunity that best aligns with their skills and passions. Step 3 - Craft your personal story Once you have determined which companies to target, it’s time to create your personal story. Your personal story is NOT just your resume - it’s your entire brand from your resume/cover letter to how you introduce yourself in LinkedIn messages to hiring managers. Despite its importance, typical personal stories for candidates generally resemble a laundry list, which is ineffective and uninteresting. The reality is that you can’t expect the employer to connect the dots for you through your experience - you need to tie your background to why you are naturally the best candidate for the job, despite your lack of direct experience. To craft the best personal story during interviews, start with your most important skillsets that directly tie to the jobs you are targeting, and highlight 1-2 key accomplishments to support your skills before wrapping up with why you are interested in the role. My client Ayushi has a really unique background as a software engineer which she thought was not relevant. However, we completely reworked her story to make her engineering background a central part of her skills and rationale for her ability to grasp technical concepts quickly. She was able to use her story to land a great role at a B2B SaaS startup, where she is marketing a complex technical product. Step 4 - Apply the right way Now that you have a great personal story and thoughtfully crafted resume, it is time to apply. The last thing you want to do is to submit your resume online, where it will sit with hundreds of other resumes. What you need to do is to get referrals as much as possible. This is because getting a referral is 15x more effective than submitting online (Jobvite). For most companies, when you get a referral you bypass the online application pool, so the resume goes straight to the recruiter or hiring manager to be reviewed. So what if you don’t have any warm leads? Then you need to get a cold referral. This means reaching out directly to the hiring manager on LinkedIn in your target companies, with a thoughtful message that directly ties your background to why you are a great fit for the role. In addition, you can also play the long game by following your target companies or hiring managers on LinkedIn and interacting with their posts (thoughtfully). My client Tanner was able to land an interview (that turned into an offer) by thoughtfully commenting on the hiring manager’s posts. One of the most common questions I get is whether you should include a cover letter with your application. While there is a lot of advice that says cover letters are unnecessary, I believe they are crucial for your job search success. These are the reasons why: It signals high intent. Out of 100 applications, only 5-10% of candidates will write a cover letter. If someone puts the effort to write a cover letter, it immediately signals they are more serious about the job. It highlights your most important competitive advantages that are not apparent in the resume, which is especially true for career switchers. It shows your writing and storytelling skills, which are key skills for any great product marketer. All this is to say, your chances of landing an interview are significantly higher when you write a cover letter and include that no matter how you apply. Step 5 - Ace interviews and assignments The most critical part of the job search process is preparing for the interviews. Before we dive into the strategy, let’s look at what a typical interview process looks like for product marketing in the table below. Analyzing what each interviewer is looking for is the first step to acing interviews. Then when it comes to preparing for each interview, be sure to prepare thorough examples using the STAR method while highlighting your key strengths through your responses. But just using the STAR method is not enough. One of the most important ways to prepare for product marketing interviews is by using frameworks. Frameworks allow you to structure your thinking and present a cohesive plan that can be more easily understood and communicated internally. Frameworks can include Go-To-Market, Market Research, Positioning/Messaging, Enablement, and more. I spend a significant amount of time with each client practicing product marketing frameworks. This is not only crucial for acing interviews but for learning how to be a great product marketer. For instance, my client Mara used the GTM framework we went through to land two offers while learning how to build the best GTM strategy in the process. The assignment stage is where a lot of candidates trip up. In general, there are presentation assignments and writing assignments - both of which require strategic thinking and communication skills. The key to doing them well is by avoiding the temptation of jumping in to solve them right away but instead smartly outlining the thought process first. Bonus Step - Make yourself the irresistible hire After going through all the hard work of the previous steps, you should be getting offer letters. However, if you just don’t seem to be able to close the deal, I suggest reading this bonus section. When you get rejected in the final stage of interviews, it’s generally not because you lack experience (otherwise you would not have been moved forward). Here are the typical reasons why you may not be landing the role: You didn’t show enough interest As a hiring manager, I want to hire candidates who demonstrate they are highly interested in the job. This could simply be reiterating your interest after interviews and following up promptly. Or you may have to go above and beyond to show your commitment to the role. For the role you really want, I recommend going above and beyond by creating a 30-60-90-day plan, sending in sample collateral, or something else that is unexpected. You didn’t address your weaknesses While no candidate is perfect, you want to understand exactly what the hiring managers are looking for in terms of key skill sets, and promptly diagnose if you have a skill gap. Developing a great relationship with the recruiter to get feedback after interviews can help you tremendously in gauging your candidacy, and allow you to address your weaknesses in subsequent interviews. My client Simeon promptly sent in a product positioning deck to show he can actually do positioning - and got the job immediately. You are not targeting the right companies If you’re convinced you have demonstrated all your skills, you have gone above and beyond but you still did not get the role, then your underlying issue might be not targeting the right companies. As I mentioned before, you have the highest chance of success in jobs where you have the best alignment in terms of domain experience and passion. If you are targeting jobs where you have little to no competitive advantage, you will likely lose out to candidates who have that slight edge, all else being equal. What’s Next? Pursuing a product marketing career without prior experience is possible with persistence and the right strategy. The world of product marketing is all the better because of the diverse backgrounds of people who make up the field. Reflecting on your WHY and what makes you unique is the first step to your success. Additional resources: To gain real-life advice on finding, landing, and growing a career in product marketing, follow my LinkedIn posts, released weekly. Learn the best product marketing frameworks by reading LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products by Martina Launchengo, Silicon Valley Product Group To understand my path to coaching and my coaching philosophy, listen to my podcast episode with Product Marketing Life, hosted by the Product Marketing Alliance

In today’s issue, I want to share the top early-career mistakes made by four marketing leaders who I admire, and the lessons they learned in the process. I truly believe in life, there are no mistakes or failures, just lessons learned. Hopefully, by reading this, you will learn important lessons that will help you in your career. Ok, let’s dive right in. Mistakes and Lessons from Marketing Leaders 1. Emilia Korczynska - Head of Marketing at Userpilot What is your biggest early career mistake? My biggest career mistake was not getting into marketing earlier and thinking I need to go to school or get certifications to do that. I started out my career as a journalist. I love languages and have a degree in Linguistics. But I am introverted and just didn’t see myself moving on to marketing or feeling I have what it takes to do marketing. How did you learn it was a mistake? I was working at a translation agency when clients started asking me to produce content. That was when I realized I like content marketing and could do it, as it’s the perfect marriage between my interest in languages and journalism, which involves doing a lot of research. So I embraced that and moved to work for tech startups which allowed me to dive deep into the topic and allowed me to do really interesting work. I started building out entire marketing functions using my strong background in content marketing. As a matter of fact, today at Userpilot our marketing is 100% inbound and focused on organic SEO, which has been working well for us. Knowing your mistake, what would you/have you done differently? I would focus more on what I am good at, and not chase fads or try to do everything. This extends both to my own career and business. For instance, I was trying to learn Google Ads but had absolutely no interest in it, so I hired someone to do that while I focused on what I am naturally good at - content marketing. ​ 2. Alex Henthorn-Iwane - VP of Marketing at Firstbase What is your biggest early career mistake? My biggest mistake stemmed from not paying attention to the first-team/second-team principle. This concept is from the popular book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The first team consists of your peers, such as other marketing leaders while the second team consists of people who report to you. I got so focused on taking care of the team that reported to me that I didn’t spend the time and focus needed to build enough connection and communication with my peers. How did you learn it was a mistake? This led to a situation where my team’s results were outstanding, but my peers didn’t understand the value we were bringing. That led to a lot of needless friction and (for me) heartache. It’s a lesson that definitely got burned into my psyche. Knowing your mistake, what would you/have you done differently? I would focus on the first team as much as the second team. Sometimes that means having difficult conversations. It’s important to not shy away from engaging those peers who may have a particular agenda. Engage them with the best intention and goal to help the company. This way your motivations are clear and clean and aligned with the company. Do not let the situation devolve into turf wars simply because you don’t want to communicate with your first team. 3. Anand Patel - Director of Product Marketing at Appcues What is your biggest early career mistake? My biggest early career mistake is not taking into consideration how important a role my manager plays. In the first 4-5 years of my career, my focus was just on finding a job, any job. Part of that is due to graduating during a downturn. It was not until I joined Paysafe that I realized how pivotal a great manager is to your career success. Having a manager who cares and supports your growth is one of the great accelerants you can have. How did you learn it was a mistake? Partially, it was a positive feeling I had after finally getting a manager who 100% supported my growth. But what really brought it home was when I got a promotion after a year. A big reason for this promotion was my manager advocating for me and being my champion. I didn’t realize this was possible in any of my previous roles. What would you have done differently, or what have you done differently as a result? I would’ve done a better job of evaluating my manager before taking my early jobs, which is something I definitely do now. Now, when looking at opportunities, three of the top priories are whether I will enjoy the work and learn from it, the type of people I will work with every day, and the kind of manager I will have. That last one has started to positively impact my career trajectory. 4. Brian Lee - Product Marketing Lead at JPMorgan Chase What is your biggest early career mistake? My biggest early career mistake was not tailoring my approach to the interviewer. I was interviewing for an internal promotion, and as a part of the process, I met with potential future team members and cross-functional partners. I asked pointed questions about what was working, what wasn’t, and how they would improve things. This helped me formulate what I would do if I was hired for the role. I made it to the final rounds and was interviewing with the big wig regional manager. During our discussion, I brought up that I spoke with her team and that based on their feedback, there are some items I heard as areas of opportunity. I even offered suggestions and I thought she would appreciate my directness. How did you learn it was a mistake? I thought I was a shoo-in for the role after the interview process especially since I was already doing a lot of what the role would require. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this role. The HR representative told me afterward that some of what I said was taken as rather harsh and that it’s important to consider your audience/who you’re talking to and their perspective. Knowing your mistake, what would you/have you done differently? Looking back, I could have been more tactful in approach/tone and possibly also solicited the manager’s perspective. I also could have brought up the great things about the team and what I perceived as operating well. This is now something I consider when giving feedback in general - it’s important to give ALL feedback, the bad AND the good. Reflecting on the Wisdom of Marketing Leaders That's all folks, thanks for reading! Which of these spoke the most to you? ​