In 2019, I quit my job in ad tech to try my hands at a start-up. We managed to get a YCombinator interview and failed at the last step, but that was pretty much the high point of the short-lived attempt.
It was too early to have figured out a revenue model. Some of our (cofounders’) personal situations changed and made it harder to go on. And then Covid came along, and I decided to re-enter the workforce much earlier than hoped.
This sparked an introspection.
Till then, I had tried my hands at 4 different roles in just over 5 years and enjoyed pretty much all of them. But when I looked back at the elements I enjoyed the most in each of those roles, they overlapped the most with product marketing. The failed startup attempt also taught me that building a product today is less about the technical challenge, while go-to-market strategy and execution are much more urgent. Eventually, I decided to try for PMM roles. (I didn’t even know back then that PMM would be the hot cake it turned out to be.)
As luck would have it, around the same time, my previous boss approached me for a similar role – GTM strategy, but it soon expanded to PMM within 3-4 months of me joining.
Why did I get in?
At that point, I felt I was handed a wildcard entry.
Getting into PMM is not straightforward, but I had the benefit of a shared working history with the said boss and my familiarity with the industry. Incidentally, I had also lined up 2-3 other PMM interviews. All 3 were for products that sold to marketers – a persona I knew reasonably well thanks to my experience in ad tech, and my own marketing experience.
Is the industry experience that critical? Like answers to most questions, it depends.
Having now spent the best part of the last two years working in product marketing, I have had the benefit of interviewing folks for my time, working with experienced PMMs both within and outside my team, and ruminating on how I found myself in this role that finally turned me from an avowed generalist to an aspiring specialist. So I came up with a framework for PMM-product fit that helps me not only evaluate hiring decisions but also figure out learning and development goals for me (and my team).
Framework for PMMs
When I look at a product marketer (for hiring, promotion, feedback, etc.), I typically evaluate them on five dimensions:
- Industry context: How deeply do you understand your buyer/user pain points? Can you articulate the problem statement well for everyone else? Can you connect dots between two adjacent (or sometimes seemingly separate) areas of innovation or solution spaces?
- Messaging and positioning: Can you articulate your product features and benefits in a way that customers are convinced your product is awesome?
- GTM strategy and execution: How well can you map out the umpteen steps in while going to market? Do you have the required attention to detail, the discipline to rally the teams through the launch and adoption phases?
- Content: I have often heard the complaint that some PMMs are hired for content marketing. And while that may be unfair, the reality is that a product marketer also communicates via a lot of content: ranging from internal advisories for sales to external marketing content like blogs and playbooks. Being able to write well structured and readable content is a superpower.
- Stakeholder management: How well can you articulate the go-to-market plan across stakeholders? How can you manage expectations and reprioritise as needed?
A product marketer who scores five stars in all five dimensions is a unicorn. I will never go looking for one, and neither will I expect to be one. (New products, moving goal posts etc. etc.). But I would typically look at hitting 4/5 stars in 2 dimensions.
I will not be surprised that some hiring managers were evaluating my resume on a similar framework as well. And because I had little experience to speak of in 2, 3, and 4, I was naturally getting interviews only for those roles where I would score highly in industry context. (My previous roles have enough positive proof points for stakeholder management.)
That is probably how and why I ended up in product marketing. I am incredibly fortunate to have known this niche space so well that I could land my desired role so quickly.
If you are trying to get into product marketing but have no past experience in this function, my advice would be to go find a PMM role in an industry you know very well. It makes the entry and ramping up in a new role easier.
Utkarsh's Blog 