Explore every episode of the podcast The Product Marketing Experts

[00:01:00] - When you think about your own journey, what pulled you into product marketing in the first place, and how has that perspective evolved across Salesforce, Box, MuleSoft, Google Cloud, and now Canva?

[00:06:00] - Can you unpack what your LinkedIn bio quote means: "A good platform is a good story and a good story is also a good platform"?

[00:10:00] - Two-part question:

1. In some ways this means that the company has to be at a certain level, right? Early stage startups aren't really gonna have ecosystems - is that something you look for in your next role?
2. What is ecosystem? Break it down - what does ecosystem marketing entail, maybe your day-to-day or week to week of what that's like to be an ecosystem marketer?

[00:17:00] - Let's talk about building a product marketing team in a global environment, multiple offices around lots of time zones. How do you approach that? How do you even think about that? And has anything changed in how you think about this coming out of Covid?

[00:22:00] - What's one piece of advice that you wish you had earlier in your product marketing career? Or what would you wish you could go back and tell yourself 10, 15 years ago?

[00:30:00] - What's inspiring you right now, outside of marketing, maybe outside of Canva?

Want more insights from Indy? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Indy here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

00:21 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
02:29 How do you define growth product marketing and how it differ from traditional quote-unquote product marketing? 

04:29 How do you like to sort through some of the signals to find the right stories to tell to the market? 
08:13 How do you empower your team to make informed leaps and how do you build space for them to do it?

10:51  How do you collaborate effectively with the rest of the marketing and product teams?
14:20 For product marketing professionals seeking to join or currently collaborating with your organization, what key skills and strategic mindset transformations have you identified as critical for individual and team's success and growth?
16:43 Is there any book or podcast or blog or anything that you've read throughout that's had a significant impact on your career and helped you out? 

Want more insights from Kelsey? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Kelsey here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

00:19 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
03:25 Can you share a little bit about how you think about crafting great product stories that resonate with customers? 

06:08 How do you balance technical details, emotional storytelling, and the unique capabilities to tell a differentiated story at Lattice?
08:50 Do you have any data points that you regularly look at or would like to look at to tell how some of the stories are working or how some of that differentiation is resonating?

14:19  How do you prove to the org the changes we have to make in stories and show the ROI?
18:18  How do you think about carrying the messaging through the journey to additional products or add ons that the company offers?   
25:02 Is there any book or podcast or blog or anything that you've read throughout that's had a significant impact on your career and helped you out? 

Want more insights from Emi? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Emi here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

0:18 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
1:48  How do you think about deciding what KPIs truly reflect the success of product marketing efforts? Do you have any favorite KPIs that you feel have been overlooked but are useful for product marketing? 

05:33 How do you think about the reporting cadence and how that's historically worked best for you and your teams?
08:17  Do you have any advice for ensuring that KPIs are not just numbers on a spreadsheet but telling a compelling story?

12:37 How do you think about working with enablement and bridging that to generating revenue and measuring the success of the effort that you tie into enablement?
16:57  How do you ratchet up the maturity of those KPIs between enablement and product marketing as the organization grows and evolves? 
21:08 Can you share how you made the jump from PMM to overall marketing and your biggest challenge faced during that transition? 
27:39 Is there any book or podcast or blog or anything that you've read throughout that's had a significant impact on your career and helped you out? 

Want more insights from Charlene? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Charlene here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

0:32 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
2:57  Can you share any stories about a memorable launch that you've been a part of and how you've adapted to make it a success? 

10:32 How do you think about messaging and working with analysts or cross-functional partners to ensure that messaging is cutting through the noise effectively? 
18:35 How do you balance speed to market while ensuring that all of the launch elements are in place and fully ready?

22:20 How do you whether as a Pendo or in another company you've been a part of integrate competitive insights into your launch strategy to ensure that your positioning not only stands out but counters any competitors?
26:27  How do you encourage product marketers, whether its a brand new product marketer who's just joined your team or somebody who's joining your team as a fairly senior product marketer to have a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape?
31: 17 How do you think about creating that rolling thunder and ensuring a launch not only goes smoothly, but it has a lasting impact beyond that initial day or event?

Want more insights from Jackie? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Jackie here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

0:26 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing
4:14  How do you convince customers to care about what makes your product different?  

7:32 Can you share an example of a time when you faced intense competition and walk us through some of the processes of how you crafted competitive positioning and ultimately won major deals?
11:16 How do you strike the balance between responding to some of those competitors and staying true to your vision and strategy?

23:11 Can you advise some advanced tactics that are overlooked or underutilized that product marketers can level up or learn as they're looking to go head-to-head with a potential competitor? 
29:53  Any book or a piece of content that's helped you propel your PMM career and how you think about product marketing?

Want more insights from Michael? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Michael here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

0:24 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing

2:24 How do you think about go-to-market strategy and how do you feel about audience segmentation, especially when dealing with a broad user base, like you have at LinkedIn?

6:37 How do you think about executing the go-to-market strategy?
11:45 How do you foresee and solve the complex go-to-market challenges? 

19:25 Any advice for what product marketers should be thinking about or doing now to prepare for the changes coming from AI?

Want more insights from Andrew? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Andrew here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?

4:22 How you and Crossbeam team think about creating successful go-to-market plan?

7:37 how do you lay out the responisbilities and plan across your organization?

10:03 How you think about defining that ownership and gaining buy-in cross-functionally.?

13:57 How you approach different launch sizes or just different launches overall?

17:14 How you think about defining KPIs for a successful go-to-market launch?

19:46 How you've thought about differentiating yourselves and your messaging and ensuring that you retain leadership through launches?

22:06 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

Want more insights from Amanda? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Amanda  here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?

4:05 How you think about what is the metaverse in general and how you really look at it through a product marketing lens?

7:35 How is your product marketing team oriented?

12:18 Do you use any data for about prioritizing the roadmap with your product management colleagues?

14:55 How do you think about aligning with your counterparts, who are overseeing other divisions or other product lines and aligning strategy with them as well?

19:53 How do you get leaders all at once in a room and have and have discussions around?

21:26 How do you build your relationship with the broader executive leadership team?

25:03 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

Want more insights from Girija ? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Girija here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:25 Opening Question: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your path into product marketing?

6:32 How you handle release marketing at Observable and how you think about organizing and planning for releases at your current company??

11:09 how did you work with leadership and your product team to kind of get that alignment initially upfront?

13:27 How you've thought about this and how you've even empowered product marketers on your team at observable?

18:37 How have you thought about as a manager, as a leader, how do you communicate that kind of across the org and up and down the org respectively as well? 

22:43 How you've kind of advised pmms on your teams respectively to address some areas that you've seen launches go wrong?

28:21 Can you share a little bit more about your journey, how you thought about it and how you actually took that or ather made the jump to being a PMM leader?

33:34 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

Want more insights from LaShaun? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find LaShaun here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:36 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing?

4:41 How do you think product marketing leaders and teams should start integrating AI into their strategy.?

8:34 What kind of AI tools are you using around segmentation and market research and copywriting?

11:38 How do you ensure that you're writing the right prompt to get the best information from the respective AI source that you're using?

15:26 How you're thinking about or even advising other product marketers to position AI enriched offerings within their strategy or their product?

18:45 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

20:20 As product marketing leaders should we be preparing for over the next few months to move into AI?

Want more insights from Abhishek ? Check out his Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Abhishek here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:27 Opening Question: Tell us about your journey into and through product marketing?

4:06 How you've used the core business metrics to influence your team or your leadership at Klaviyo?

5:37 How have you and the product marketing team at Klaviyo thought about differentiating yourself in the MarTech landscape?

7:50 How have you kicked off the process of repositioning Klaviyo?

10:29 What are some of the success metrics for you and the team?
11:52 How have you incorporated or planning to incorporate GenAI at Klaviyo?

13:44 How do you work with your GTM partners across sales and CS and how you handle the volume of launches?

14:29 What are some ways that you've successfully enabled your internal teams and maybe more specifically your go-to-market teams like sales marketing?
18:45 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

19:22 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing?

Want more insights from Katie ? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Katie here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:23 Opening Question: what's been your journey into and through product marketing?

4:15 What brought you to DigitalOcean and what does your current role encompass?

8:15 During the early stages how do you divide the work and handle all the requests while also handing some of the strategy?

11:33 How do you navigate all of those sometimes disparate priorities and get to a mutually agreed on one point of view?

14:59 How have you successfully developed bidirectional relationships with executives and other functional leaders across the business to achieve not only the goals of your group but drive momentum for the business?

18:19 How do you influence product decisions?

22:39 How have you worked on prioritizing framework and how have you effectively made those trade-offs?

25:51 How has building the product marketing function at DigitalOcean been a little bit different in your eyes than building product marketing at some of the other companies you've been a part of?

30:27 How do you think about getting into a more technical industry or company and specifically into product marketing?

33:16 Can you share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

Want more insights from Raman? Check out his Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Raman on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:34 Opening Question: How you got into product marketing and what brought you to Clari?

4:17 Can you give a little bit of an overview about what Clari is, what you do at Clari?

8:41 What are some of the differences in your mind between what makes a good launch versus a great launch and how do you prepare your team for a great launch?

12:01 How do you ensure that your exec's opinions are taken into account?

14:50 How you've aligned your go-to-market teams and how you've successfully enabled those folks?

17:32 How do you ensure that the GTM teams or revenue focused teams are aware of and keyed in on the right updates without kind of feeding them all the noise and trying to make them pay attention to every little thing?

19:32 What's one thing, maybe a mentor or another leader that has kinda shared with you or that you've learned from them that's really served you well in your career?

Want more insights from Julien? Check out his Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Julien here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:25 Opening Question: What led Claire and you to start ‘Forget the Funnel’?

3:50 Can you talk a little bit about the book that is derived from your consultancy ‘Forget the Funnel’?

9:10 Where do you recommend even starting with customer research?

18:53 How you've taken the crawl, walk, run, run approach and learning from these insights what survey or interview methods that you've seen that work best?

26:16 How you think about then taking the segments that you're learning from prioritizing some segments versus maybe other segments, and then actually operationalizing that?

32:34 Who you think should be the champion of customer life growth internally within a company. Should it be maybe its own independent team? Should it be a part of an existing team?

36:50 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing career?

Want more insights from Georgiana? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Georgiana here on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1:25 Opening Question: Journey into and through product marketing

3:28 How you think about as the product marketing lead at Twilio, about how you think about team structure?

10:50 How you think about really helping truly drive that demand gen engine, from a product marketing lens?

23:52 How the economy and the pandemic has potentially impacted your messaging?

29:54 Can just share one piece of insight that has served you well throughout your product marketing?

Want more insights from Philippe? Check out her Sharebird Profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Philippe here on LinkedIn.

As a PM at Google, Vishal Naik focuses on Google Assistant integrations with other products. Before that, he spent valuable years at DocuSign and TriNet, getting to know the SaaS space inside out.

In this episode, Jeffrey and Vishal talk about his experience at Google, the ways in which a product marketer can influence the product roadmap, and how operations are set up when you work on a product used by more than 500 million people.

Want more insights from Vishal? Check out his Sharebird profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Vishal on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey into product marketing?
2. What does the average day look like for a Google Assistant product marketer?
3. How do you approach the cross-functional nature of your role? How are you building connections between different product teams at such a huge company like Google?
4. As a product marketer, how are you bringing the customer’s voice into the conversation?
5. PMMs sometimes run the risk of becoming the middleman between teams. How are you ensuring you are adding unique value?
6. Do you think product marketers should be able to influence the product roadmap?
7. What’s a piece of advice you picked up during your career that has served you well?

Mary Sheehan’s career began in the early days of Google, where she started as an Account Manager fresh out of college. Switching lanes to Product Marketing, Sheehan now heads the Product Marketing team for Adobe Lightroom.

In this interview, Jeffrey and Mary talk about her newly launched book “The Pocket Guide to Product Launches”. In this interview, you'll hear her tips on product tiering and what kind of metrics are best for determining the success of a product launch.

Mary's book is now available on Amazon - you can check it out here!

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Please share a little bit about yourself and how you got into product marketing?

2. How would you advise others to start building out their go-to-market strategy? Where to begin?

3. In your experience, how long does it take to execute a gold launch versus a bronze launch?

4. How do you bring people along for process X? Especially given different, overlapping timelines and priorities, for example in the cases when a product marketing team is pulled in a number of different directions — how do you make sure that everything is going according to plan?

5. Can you tell us a bit more about how you measure the effectiveness of the launch process?

Want to learn more from Mary? Check out her most recent AMAs on Sharebird.
Connect with Mary on LinkedIn.

"I define product marketing as a function which takes into account your market, your customer, and your product truths to drive go-to-market outcomes." -Sahil Sethi

Before he was a VP of Marketing at Klaviyo, Sahil Sethi spent incredibly valuable years with McKinsey, Microsoft, and Qualtrics, among other companies. 

In this episode, Jeffrey and Sahil tackle the topic of product-led growth (PLG), and challenge the idea of PLG and enterprise sales being polar opposites. 

We also talk about the ways that product-led and sales-led growth can coexist, and discuss the eternal question: Should PMs have influence over the product roadmap?

Want more insights from Sahil? Check out his Sharebird profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Sahil on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. How did you get into product marketing?

2. Can you provide us with an overview of what product-led growth (PLG) is, how you've used it, and how it intersects with enterprise sales?

3. How have you structured your team around supporting PLG? How does structuring a team in a traditional PLG-first company differ from an enterprise company?

4. How much of a role do PMMs have in the customer journey in your experience?

5. How do you test your messaging with PLG?

6. How do you build a strong relationship between the product leader and product teams?

7. Should PMs have some influence over the product roadmap, in your opinion?

8. How have you operationalized the feedback loop between product marketing and development?

9. Are there any books or other reading material that you found especially 

impactful during your career as a product marketer and in your role as a leader?

“I’m guided by a deep sense of curiosity.” - Tiffany Tooley

Tiffany Tooley started her career as a one-person marketing team of a small cookie manufacturer. Today, she’s the Head of Product Marketing at Hubspot. Throughout her journey as a product marketer, she nurtured a strong growth mindset – as someone who thrives when presented with a challenge, Tiffany’s always ready to learn new things and tackle problems as they arise. 

In this episode, Jeffrey and Tiffany talk about her career path, share tips for ensuring employee satisfaction and promoting growth, and discuss Gartner’s, as well as her own, guidelines on what makes a world-class PM.

Looking to connect? You can find Tiffany on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. How did you get into product marketing?
2. 2022 has been a rough year for many. How is Hubspot walking that tightrope between handling the effects of the recession and retaining talent?
3. How do you set your team goals and align them with wider company initiatives?
4. Hubspot is one of the leaders when it comes to building an inclusive, welcoming company culture. Can you tell us a bit more about the organization’s approach to DE&I programs?
5. A big part of building strong teams and driving employee engagement is giving praise and recognition where it’s due. What are some strategies Hubspot employs to this end? 
6. What are some of the skills you look for in your PM candidates?

Chad Kimner is a Product Marketing Director for AR/VR solutions at Meta, where he is currently spearheading the go-to-market strategy for privacy and responsible innovation.

In his role at Meta, Chad is embracing the powerful opportunity to shed more light on the capabilities of augmented and virtual reality, and be part of Meta’s exciting venture into the AR/VR space. One of the most important things he’s learned in the role is what it takes to create a trustworthy product – to meet consumer expectations when it comes to data privacy, diversity, and inclusion, feeding consumer insights back into the product every step of the way is essential.

In this interview, Chad and Jeffrey go into detail about the role AR/VR plays in Meta, quality product-specific messaging and organizational models for PM teams, as well as chat about Chad’s love for music and how it‘s shaped his approach to product marketing.

Want more insights from Chad? Check out his Sharebird profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Chad on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Can you tell us a bit more about the role of the AR/VR division at Meta?
2. What has your passion for music taught you about marketing?
3. How does product messaging and positioning tie into the Meta ecosystem as a whole? 
4. How do you approach product-specific messaging?
5. In your previous role at Mozilla, how did you structure your work? Did your team operate in sprints and have goals in the kind of traditional agile methodology framework?
6. What are some of the most effective organizational models for product marketing you’ve picked up over the years?
7. Many consider messaging and positioning as synonymous, or complementary. Where do you draw the line between the two?
8. What are some useful tips on messaging you’d like to share?

“You should be listening to your customers every day – it should be a fundamental part of what you do because you represent that customer, and you are their mouthpiece.” – Kristen Brophy

Kristen Brophy is a Senior Director of Marketing at the NBA, leading product marketing efforts on NBA’s direct to consumer side, including the NBA app and the association’s streaming service Lead Pass.

Before coming to the NBA, Kristen was part of Uber and Square, where she picked up important lessons on scaling and strategic alignment. When building a strategy, Kristen doesn’t start with a goal – she outlines the outcome first.

In this episode, you’ll hear about the evolution of NBA’s product marketing, ways to maintain strategic alignment with cross-functional partners, and the importance of creative briefs for positioning.

Want more insights from Kristen? Check out her content on Sharebird.

Looking to connect? You can find Kristen on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your current role at the NBA.
2. What are your thoughts on the function of product marketing? How do you approach structuring PM teams?
3. In your current position, have you noticed the role of the product marketing team change over time?
4. How is your team at the NBA organized? How do you approach their organization in order to reach viewers and new subscribers?
5. How do you and your team approach strategic alignment with cross-functional partners?
6. As you build your team, how do you equip them for career growth?

Kevin Wu is the Head of Solution and Category Product Marketing at Airtable, where he has been building a product marketing program from scratch.

In his role at Airtable, Kevin has been reinventing the product’s messaging and positioning framework. When it comes to SaaS B2B companies, he says, the messaging should start at the demo. 

In this episode, you’ll hear essential questions to ask when building product demos, how Kevin’s experience at Salesforce shaped his later approach to PMM, and how he enables his team to grow.

Want more insights from Kevin? Check out his content on Sharebird.

Looking to connect? You can find Kevin on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Airtable.
2. How do you think about the production and messaging around huge events like Dreamforce? What goes into the product side of these events?
3. When it comes to product positioning, there is a very specific balance that needs to be struck between the executives’ vision and voice and a PMM’s knowledge of the product. How do you achieve that balance?
4. For a company that size, Salesforce moves at an incredible pace. How do you look at your experience at Salesforce overall
5. Have you kept the same kind of lens on messaging and positioning once you moved from your role at Salesforce to AppDynamics and Airtable?
6. What are the key ingredients for building a great product demo?
7. How do you approach your team’s organization and ensure your team members have room to grow?

“Always put on your own personal research hat.” - Jameelah Calhoun

Jameelah Calhoun currently serves as the Global Head of Product Marketing at Eventbrite, where she drives go-to-market and monetization efforts to launch new product experiences for both event creators and consumers.

In her role at Eventbrite, she is working on continuing the evolution of Eventbrite from its roots as a ticketing tool to a platform that covers the intersection of helping creators and small businesses alike thrive.

As a PMM, Jameelah considers market research the bedrock of everything she does. Analytics and UX research are the foundation of understanding the customer and championing their needs – and that’s why the synergy of market research and product marketing is becoming increasingly important in rapidly shifting market conditions. 

Want more insights from Jameelah? Check out her {Sharebird profile.}

Looking to connect? You can find Jameelah on {LinkedIn.}

“Don’t launch it and leave it - launch and learn.” -Brianne Shally 

In this interview Jeffrey and Brianne discuss what being a PMM leader for a consumer product marketing brand is like as well as Brianne’s path into PMM. Brianne is a former strategy consultant who considers herself a business leader first, and pmm second. What she loves to solve is, how can she and her team accelerate the growth of local businesses and make word of mouth in communities more innovative to serve SMBs? As product marketers, they are passionate about helping small businesses be successful and bringing communities together. 

As we know, small businesses are challenged more than ever to grow and tools and products like Nextdoor help to facilitate growth and better serve the community by fueling SMBs, creating messaging and positioning that ties back to the market trends, and using insights to inform their GTM strategy.   

Want more insights from Brianne? Check out her Sharebird profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Brianne on LinkedIn.

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your path into Product Marketing at Nextdoor.
2. Since you focus specifically on SMB, can you share what that entails at Nextdoor? How do you think about the success of SMB and the strategies of your PMM team?
3. What are some of the differences from your strategy to ones Enterprise is executing? And how do you work together with any colleagues focused on up-market activities?
4. How have the past ~2 years changed your PMM strategy and SMBs you're working with, or targeting?
5. How do you work with, and “power” SMB-focused marketing and GTM efforts at Nextdoor?
6. As a leader, what is one key challenge you're facing and how have you thought about overcoming it? 
7. What recommendations would you have for aspiring product marketing experts to level-up their own career or skill set?

Rekha is an engineer turned marketer who has a technical background and fell in love with the PMM craft. Two aspects that she thoroughly enjoys in the GTM process are the naming and positioning of new products and features. She advocates for involving every team in the launch process and both internally and externally creating messaging that clearly states the nuances of new releases. She also discusses how Salesforce tiers their launches on a 1-3 scale and reiterates the importance and value that comes from conversations with customers. 

Want more insights from Rekha? Check out her Sharebird profile.

Looking to connect? You can find Rekha on LinkedIn.

Whether you’re looking to break into PMM or have been a practitioner for years, this interview is full of advice on how to further develop your career.  We are joined this week by Mike, VP, Product Marketing at ClickUp, who has had an amazing career finding the right roles and ultimately landing him a VP role.  Mike and Jeffrey discuss how to gain credibility, evaluate your future role, prioritize the right goals to advance your career, and expand your horizons outside of product.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.
Join Mike on Sharebird.

Questions covered in this interview:

1. Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM? 
2. What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now? 
3. What’s one nuance about Developing Your Product Marketing Career that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively. 

In this week’s episode Natala and Jeffrey are talking all about product launches. How do you make the magic happen while getting the organization excited and aligned? It’s not just about storytelling and designing a great narrative for your product, rather it’s creating a product that delivers on those items. Tune in to hear how to create a distinctive narrative and story in a competitive landscape, what it means to “work backwards”, and how to conquer any divisions and fractions amongst teams by serving as the “glue” to repair. Also, Grammarly is hiring. So be sure to check out their available positions!

Connect with Natala on LinkedIn.
Join Natala on Sharebird.

Questions covered in this interview:

1. Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM? 
2. What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now? 
3. What’s one nuance about Product Launches that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively.

Alex is a former product manager and consultant who has found his way into the adtech world, and specifically measurement. This interview is all about how him and his team leverage research and measurement. When it comes to measurement, he and his team look at how well advertising is working and it’s overall performance. In regards to research, he talks about what it’s like to work for a company that is incredibly data and experiment driven, the importance of talking to customers, and how research informs what they build. Tune in to hear how him and his team build and manage a large ecosystem of products.

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.
Join Alex on Sharebird.

Questions covered in this interview:

1. Can you tell me a bit more about your path into product marketing and also more specifically measurement?
2. Can you share a bit more about how you think about Measurement at Facebook?
3. How do you use that data you gather at Facebook to influence other activities like the roadmap, marketing strategy/campaigns, product launches, and more?
4. How have you gone about segmenting your audience and then use that information to inform content?
5. What’s one thing a manager, colleague, or mentor has taught you that’s served you well in your career? Can you share a bit about it?

We’re on a messaging kick! This week we are discussing how Sophia and her team approach messaging and positioning that serves both B2B and B2C target audiences. Sophia and Jeffrey discuss what Glassdoor has done to maintain a position of leadership in a crowded market and how they’ve evolved their messaging while remaining true to the core values of the company that have not changed since day one. They also discuss how to measure the success of messaging and positioning and navigate the competitive landscape.

Connect with Sophia on LinkedIn.
Join Sophia on Sharebird.

Questions covered in this interview:

1. Can you share a bit more about your path into PMM and how you got into product marketing?
2. Can you share a bit about how you think of the category Glassdoor is in, and how you made some of the tradeoffs in positioning and messaging?
3. With a lot of different use cases and audiences, how do you ensure the messaging you and your team are releasing is consistent?
4. How are you measuring the success of your messaging and positioning?
5. Differentiating from competition is crucial as we know, but how do you think about competitive intelligence and how your key competitors are positioning themselves as a part of your messaging process?
6. What’s one mistake you’ve found a lot of PMMs make with messaging?
7. What’s one thing you’ve learned from a mentor, colleague, or manager that has served you well in your career? Can you tell me a little bit about it?

From startup companies to being at a large scale organization, Jeff has been doing product marketing work since before it was even defined as PMM. In this interview you’ll hear his point of view on the emergence of self serve and how it’s impacted the role of product marketing. He shares how the environment at many companies has made the switch from a sales led environment to product led and why product marketers are earning their seat at the table in making big decisions.

He also discusses the co-creation that exists with sales, how to position yourself in the market, advice on how to conduct listening tours and better serve as the cross functional diplomat to reduce friction amongst teams and champion stakeholders.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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Questions covered in this interview:

1. Can you share a bit more about how you got into product marketing, and also into more of a growth role?
2. Product-led Growth is clearly a hot topic everywhere around us. How do you think about product marketing differently in a product-left growth company versus a more traditional sales or marketing led company?
3. How have you structured your growth PMM team? How would you say it’s different from a traditional team?
4. Beyond just structure, how is the role different for an individual PMM? Are there different traits or skills your looking for that a traditional PMM would need to develop?
5. With your focus on growth, how do you draw lines on what you and your team handle versus others in marketing or product development?
6. How do you think about driving user adoption at Calendly?
7. Is there anything that a mentor, colleague, or manager has taught you that has served you well in your career? Can you share a bit about it?

Messaging is a fundamental aspect of product marketing that includes testing, refining, and a huge amount of internal alignment across the organization. It’s a living breathing process that when done right, equates to an impactful impression left on your market. Tune in to hear messaging frameworks that will help you win deals and make your GTM process that much more effective. 

Crisply articulating the unique aspects of your product that you’re bringing to market is key to the success of your GTM process! 

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Questions covered in this episode:

1. Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM?
2. What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now? 
3. What’s one nuance about Messaging that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively. 

How do we become product marketers? Pallavi shares her extensive background in marketing and how she’s evolved to lead all marketing functions at a quickly growing company. She also shares her take on the 80/20 rule, how to structure your team, and achieve KPI’s. You’ll also hear why she values happiness and believes that “the success of the company depends on the manager”.

Follow Pallavi on LinkedIn.
Join Pallavi on Sharebird. 

1. Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM? 
2. What’s your outlook on the career of Product Marketing? Is it a good place to be right now? 
3. What’s one nuance about Product Marketing Org and KPI's that you only know now because you understand it deeply? Around doing it effectively. 
4. How do you think of structuring your product marketing team, or just generally?
5. Based on the structure, how do you coordinate work across the team and have similar goals with PMs and other groups you’re working with?
6. Speaking of goals, as a leader how do you measure the success of your team? How do you set goals differently for individuals on your team who are at different levels?
7. What are some mistakes you’ve made and what you’ve learned from them?

Product marketing hasn’t always been recognized as a value ad to organizations, but more and more companies are recognizing the need for the function and therefore more roles in the field are being created. Keeping up on the trends in the market and playing to your strengths will ultimately help you not only land the role you desire, but keep that role and excel in it. This week’s expert shares his twist on the 80/20 rule and how identifying the areas you currently excel in and the areas you need to further develop leads to success in your career. Also, never underestimate the power of kindness and being a nice person. 

What makes your messaging stand out from competitors isn’t the simple task of stringing together a lovely sequence of words and putting pen to paper -  it’s the constant evolution and iteration, rooted in testing and market research, that ultimately sets your marketing apart. In order to know how to reach your target audience, you’re going to have to get customer insights and collect the data and feedback necessary to prove why your product is valuable, how it differs from others on the market, and what language best resonates with your customer. 

In this week’s interview with Andrew Forbes, who directs PMM at Zendesk, him and Jeffrey discuss GTM strategy - from organizing your team, sales enablement, getting internal alignment, to the importance of market research - tune in to hear how to make your product launches bigger and better. 

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Join Diego on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Can you tell us about yourself and your role at UiPath?
2. UI Path recently went public. Can you share a bit about what that was like?
3. As the leader of product marketing, what did you need to think about and do during the IPO journey?
4. How long before the S1 filing did you and the team start preparing? Tell us about the narrative you created.
5. What drove you and the UiPath team to create this narrative? And how did you go about it?
6. How have you measured the success of the new narrative? What have been some of the outcomes you've seen?
7. How has product marketing evolved from pre-IPO through today?
8. What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?

Follow Alex on LinkedIn.
Join Alex on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at ActiveCampaign?

2. How do you and the product marketing team at ActiveCampaign think about storytelling?

3. When you think about telling a new story or working on a narrative, where do you start?

4. When that narrative is drafted, how do you refine and revise it to ensure it resonates with customers and the market?

5. How do you ensure your narratives are focused on the customer or buyer?

6. What storytelling framework does your team use at ActiveCampaign? 

7. Once you've created a story, how do you measure it's success?

8. As a leader, how do you coach your team on stories? 

9. Are there any narratives you really admire out in the market?

10. ActiveCampaign positions the company around Customer Experience Automation. What went into the decision behind that? We hear a lot about customer experience today, so how did you decide on this category?

11. Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have impacted you or your career?

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Join Leah on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Gusto?
2. How do you and the product marketing team at Gusto handle competitive intelligence? Do you have dedicated people for it, or is it a part of what every PMM is doing?
3. How do you keep track of key competitors in your space?
4. What reporting (if any) do you provide internally on competitive win rates or details about losses?
5. How do you and the PMM team at Gusto learn and drive change throughout the organization with competitive intelligence?
6. Competitive intelligence is important for product marketing teams to own and drive, yet there's also a danger in following competitors too closely. How do you prevent it at Gusto?
7. Based on the intelligence you're gathering, how do you enable your sales and CS teams around competitors?
8. Are there any assets you've found really helpful (or not helpful at all)?
9. Especially in a time when everyone is remote and spread out, how do you communicate these updates and ensure everyone internally is on the same page?
10. As a leader, how do you ensure that your team is balancing their time on competitive intelligence and all the other priorities that product marketers have?
11. Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have impacted you or your career?

Connect with Becky on LinkedIn.
Join Becky on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Snow Software?

2. As a leader how do you set the tone, and build a great relationship with Product?

3. At Snow, do you and the Product Marketing team help Product influence the roadmap or provide feedback on the market or competitors?

4. What about when it comes to Go to Market strategy. What processes and systems have you put in place to share information?

5. What information should PMs be sharing with PMMs (and vice versa)?

6. When it comes to GTM strategy, how early should PM and PMM be talking and collaborating?

7. How do you show PMs the value of collaborating early-on and treat PMM as a strategic ally?

8. In your career has there been a PM/PMM relationship, or process that didn't work? If so, can you walk us through that and what you learned?

Connect with Axel on LinkedIn.
Join Axel on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and Datasite?
2. At Datasite you oversee product marketing, content marketing, and pricing. Can you share how that came to be?
3. How did you come to own pricing?
4. For PMMs interested in owning pricing, what skills or attributes should they be looking to build?

5. I'm noticing a trend in product marketing where there's more specialization and even some teams bringing on a PMM dedicated to pricing. What do you think of that trend?

6. There's been a trend in product-led growth. How do you think about pricing and the future of that trend?

7. What are some mistakes product marketers are making when it comes to pricing or trying to influence pricing strategies?

8. Are there any books or podcasts you've listened to recently that have really had an impact on you or your work?

Connect with Kavya on LinkedIn.
Join Kavya on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Sprinklr?

2. Can you share a little bit about how you got into product marketing and what interested you about it?

3. For a product marketer looking to get into leadership, how do you advise they approach it?

4. Are there any skills or areas of opportunity you see a lot of product marketers need to address at this stage?

5. As you grow, and as the company grows, eventually you need to learn to manage another layer and add managers to your team. How do you develop this skill as a leader? 

6. Looking back, is there anything you'd do differently on your path to leading product marketing? Any particular situations you learned a lot from?

7. One of your favorite questions to ask is what a candidate's superpower is. Can you share a bit more about why you like to ask that?

8. What's your superpower?

9. As a leader, how do you develop great relationships with other leaders across marketing, sales, and product? Certainly there's 1:1s, but beyond that?

10. What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?

Connect with Gregg on LinkedIn.
Join Gregg on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?
2. How have you structured the team at Zapier?
3. What do you think about structuring product marketing teams? Why did you decided on the structure you just mentioned?
4. As a leader, how have you balanced scaling yourself and your team/resources?
5. We're seeing more specialization in product marketing lately. With specific roles for pricing, competitive intelligence, research, and more. What do you think the next few years of this looks like? What skills should aspiring product marketing leaders look to develop?
6. A lot of product marketing leaders and experts alike are looking to make a leap similar to this. What skills should we all be thinking about?
7. Have there been any mistakes you've made while growing or establishing the PMM function? If so, can you share with us what you've learned?
8. What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?

Connect with Grace on LinkedIn.
Join Grace on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Udemy?

2. As product marketing leaders, we need to build credibility with so many other groups such as product, demand gen, customer marketing, and more. How do you do this effectively, and how does your team build upon this for launches?

3. How do you and the team at Udemy think about quarterly or yearly planning and how do launches fit into that?

4. Does product marketing drive content or market themes that the broader marketing team should be focused on?

5. With planning, how do you and your team prepare for launches and execute them cross-functionally?

6. Can you tell us about what kind of internal marketing you do in the lead-up, and during a launch?

7. Talk us through the week or two leading up to a major launch. What does that look like for you and your team?

8. Do you have any memories or lessons you've learned recently from a launch that went well? Or didn't go according to plan?

9. What are the check-in milestones you as a leader setup to ensure your team is on the right track?

10. Are there any books you've read, or maybe podcasts you've listened to recently that have taught you new things?

You can connect with Francis on LinkedIn.
Join Francis on Sharebird!

Questions covered in this episode:
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?

2. You've held a number of product marketing roles. Tell us about what product marketing should look like in an early stage company?

3. As a company evolves, maybe series B, or C, what does product marketing look like and how does it change from the earlier days? What skills do leaders, or senior members of the team need to relearn or focus on as the company grows?

4. How about when a company IPOs or is public, what does product marketing look like and how does it change?

5. Can you tell me a bit about why you decided to make this leap into an overall marketing leadership role?

6. What skills should we all be thinking about in order to transition to general marketing?

7. What do you think of the career path for product marketers?

8. A number of leaders believe product marketing will come to own brand marketing, or that brand marketing will merge with product marketing. What do you think?

9. As you've now taken over leading marketing, what are some of your key priorities in the coming months? What trends or resources are you paying attention to that we all should be aware of?

10. What's one or two books you've read recently that have had an impact on you?

Connect with Jasmine on LinkedIn.
Join Jasmine on Sharebird. 

Questions covered in this episode:

1. Tell me about your career path to becoming a PMM. 
2. So you work in one group with multiple PMMs- How do ensure you're telling stories that are aligned?
3. Do these stories align to your personas and differ based on seniority or segment you sell into?
4. How have you successfully built relationships across teams? Or what are some secrets you've seen work well?
5. What’s one nuance about Stakeholder Management that you only know now because you understand it deeply?
6. Question from your AMA: Responsibility without the authority - that seems to be the position of quite a few Product marketers. How do you manage people who don't necessarily report into you?
7. How do you get your team, and other teams, to align around customer priorities?
8. What's been one time where a launch or a campaign didn't go to plan? How did you work with stakeholders to fix that?
9. How have you built deep and productive relationships with product and proven your value?
10. What's your outlook on the career of product marketing? Is it a good place to be?

Connect with April on LinkedIn.
If you haven't already, you can download April's book Obviously Awesome here. 

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn.
Join Sam on Sharebird.

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkuperman/
Join Daniel on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/daniel-kuperman

Book recommendations:

1. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - by Al Ries and Jack Trout
2. Obviously Awesome - by April Dunford
3. Crossing the Chasm - by Geoffrey Moore

Connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbayuk/
Join Lindsay on Sharebird here: https://sharebird.com/profile/lindsay-bayuk-1 

Questions covered in this episode:

1. What’s your elevator pitch for Pluralsight? 
2. How did you come up with that? 
3. Did you use a framework to write it?
4. When do you know it’s working? 
5. How do you know when your positioning is ready to ship? 
6. How often do you update the positioning for your company? 
7. How do you keep new features/products organized within a larger positioning framework?
8. How do you research when working on positioning? 
9. Have you ever launched new positioning and realized it failed? 
10. What’s the one book a product marketer must buy if they’re going to own their company’s positioning? 
11. Who is another product marketing leader we should interview for this series?