2A Consulting’s Post

Here's some Friday food for thought... 🥙 Finding the right fit when transitioning to a new company sets you up for career success. Understanding product marketing's maturity level at the company is especially important for product marketers. A formal product marketing department or role may be relatively new compared to standard finance or product management functions. Both situations have pros and cons and exciting challenges to tackle. ✔ Being the first product marketer offers the opportunity to pioneer and set expectations, but it could also mean overcoming a lack of clarity on your responsibilities, unrealistic expectations, and internal resistance. ✔ Conversely, established product marketing teams provide structure and opportunities to exceed established standards, but flexibility and advancement may be limited.

Delaying the hire of a product manager or product marketing manager can lead to a cycle of random acts—random acts of development, random acts of marketing, and, ultimately, random business results. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AYV9x #productmanagement #no_chaos

A VP Marketing at a B2B, dev-focused startup recently reached out to ask me some questions about #ProductMarketing. We spoke about what a product marketing manager is responsible for, what skills to look for in a PMM, best practices for onboarding a new PMM hire, etc. In this video I share the inherent challenge of finding the rare combination of someone who can be very analytical, understand complex technologies and products, and yet still have a very well developed right side of the brain, so they can creatively and compellingly communicate said tech/product to their target audience. In a future post I'll dig into how I find these special people, how I make sure they have what it takes for the job and red flags to be aware of. Also, I just wanted to dedicate this post to 2 very special PMMs that I'm super fortunate to have on my team, who along with the above mentioned VP Marketing, have inspired this post.

Curious about a career in Product Marketing? Watch this video to get a head start! Our senior product marketing expert Julian Dawkins talks with Nitin Kartik about building up your profile & highlights transferable skills as the key to a successful career shift.

I landed in product marketing by accident. After leaving what I thought was my dream job as a pastor, I had no freakin clue what I was going to do. Who hires an ex-pastor? What am I even good at aside from this? What do I do with these 2 useless degrees? I found my first role as a project manager on a marketing team. I project managed a B2C team, a B2B team, a Product Marketing Team, and occasionally a product team. When I started I didn't have a damn clue about how to build products and take them to market. But I watched marketers, PMMs, and PMs work, innovate, build, and ship... and I started to pick up on a lot. I also quickly found that I didn't like project management, but I was reaaaallly interested in what product and product marketing were up to. And around that time I connected with a buddy of mine who ran marketing at a company in the church tech space (you read that right), who happened to be hiring for a Product Marketing Manager. He told me to read April Dunford's Obviously Awesome and apply for the open role. I ripped through April's book in a weekend and I was hooked. I binged all the product marketing content I could and (sort of miraculously) landed the role. It changed my career. And, to my initial questions... It turns out that if you can: - tell a story, - synthesize complex ideas, - understand why people do what they do, - & motivate people to march in one direction... you can make for a pretty decent PMM. ---- (Photo is from my pastoring days. Feels like a lifetime ago.)

Delaying the hire of a product manager or product marketing manager can lead to a cycle of random acts—random acts of development, random acts of marketing, and, ultimately, random business results. Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/AYLsn #productmanagement #no_chaos

Not sure who needs to hear this today but you have a great background to be a top product marketer. I talk to PMMs and folks who want to become ones daily. 97% of them say they don’t have a traditional background for it. I hate to break it to you—there’s no such thing. Some of the best and most successful product marketers I know were Sales Engineers. Some were SDRs before that. Not to mention amazing folks coming from product, customer success, content. I’m an engineer and believe it or not never did PMM for a super technical product. But it’s been useful in other ways. It used to bother me that I didn’t have a marketing background. Now I see what a waste of time that was; many don’t and that’s fine. There are many PMM career pros out there so I’ll leave it to them to give you tips about focusing on your transferable skills and industries you’re an expert in. But do yourself a favor and don’t assume you don’t have the ‘right’ background. There’s no such thing.

On the plus side, our new Product Manager role got 10 applicants within the first half hour of posting it (if it's you, I'm so excited to read your submissions!) On the minus, more social platforms like LinkedIn are resorting to non-transparent pricing models to "entrap" you by telling you something's free (ie: their job posting board), offering a very expensive paid option ($88 a day, I believe is what the "sponsored" going rate was), then when you go with the free option, abruptly pulling your content and forcing you to pay to continue. I'm fully aware social media companies need to make a buck, but we all know they're already making gobs of money off our data and then some. This just feels like malicious double-dipping, and I hope the practice stops. *[Reviews every other "Product Manager" job listing on LinkedIn Jobs, top 500 of them say "Promoted"]* Oops, guess their gambit is working. Carry on, I suppose.

4 harsh truths Product Marketing Manager's learn the hard way throughout their career 1. Impact over popularity: Focus on making a difference, not on being liked. 2. Not everyone appreciates your role: Some colleagues won’t be thrilled that you make the big decisions. 3. 60-hour weeks are normal: Be ready for long hours and demanding projects. 4. Responsiveness is essential: Quick reactions can make or break your success.

CUSTOMERS = REALITY I can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year than with customer visits. It’s one of the most beneficial activities I can experience in my role, or any role for that matter. I’m flying to Los Angeles to spend the week with an engaged, enthusiastic customer who is pushing the boundaries of operational excellence. They are early adopters of some new capability we are building. I’m looking forward to digging into roles, use cases, the value they expect, as well as their appraisal of our positioning, messaging, and the potential mismatch between what we think we are building and how they will actually use it. I’m extremely grateful for the time they are investing with us. Here’s to a busy, informative, and collaborative week! (If you are in product management or product marketing, what do you like to evaluate on deep customer visits on new product?) #Product #productmanagement #productmarketing