Five attributes of distinctive product marketers
Most people don’t start their careers thinking they’re going to be a product marketer. (I certainly didn’t!) But it turns out to be one of the most impactful roles at a tech company. It’s also one of the hardest roles to hire for. And to be clear, I’m not talking about hiring just any product marketer. I’m talking about hiring a really great product marketer.
An exceptional product marketer (PMM) is the secret weapon for a fast-growth company. An exceptional PMM can do anything — jump in for the PM, dive deep into the pricing strategy, craft compelling messaging, incubate your sales motion — whatever your business needs to make your product successful. An exceptional PMM can make the difference between a product that launches and then fizzles, and a product that launches and leads to sustained growth.
So what makes an exceptional PMM? As someone who’s led the PMM team at Stripe for the last four years, and at Square before that, I get this question a lot and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
But before I share what makes a great PMM, let’s start with what product marketers actually do.
What does PMM do?
Product marketing is responsible for three things:
- Strategy — synthesizing user and market insights to inform the product roadmap and build the go-to-market strategy;
- Launch — actually bringing the products and features to market, crafting the narrative, creating marketing collateral, enabling the sales teams, etc.;
- Growth — driving ongoing awareness, growth, and adoption of the product). PMMs are like the CMOs for their products.
PMMs should be responsible end-to-end for each of these areas, championing the needs of the user throughout. PMMs who are embedded with the product at the outset will do better work on launch and driving adoption. However, there are several failure modes I’ve seen for the role:
- A “drop-in” PMM (someone who just drops in to build the launch materials) will not have the depth of understanding of the product and customer to drive the most successful launch and growth strategy
- A “firefighting” PMM (someone who is spread across too many products) will also not be maximally impactful — their work will always be focused on the latest urgent fire versus driving more strategic work
- A “yes-person” PMM (someone who gets strategic direction from others on the team) will become a service bureau rather than someone who elevates the thinking
Many, if not most, PMM teams are operating in a “drop-in” or “firefighting” way.
Because so many product marketers in the industry don’t have actual experience working across the product lifecycle end-to-end, you have to be thoughtful and creative when hiring. (And if you’re a PMM who wants to work in this way, you have to make sure you’re doing the due diligence with your prospective team to make sure the team is set up in this way).
The five attributes of distinctive PMMs
There are a lot of skills that are clearly critical for a good PMM — synthesis, storytelling, cross-functional effectiveness to name a few. I’ve found that there are also specific attributes that differentiate a distinctive PMM from a just good PMM.
Distinctive PMMs are:
1. Curious (they think from first principles and challenge convention)
2. Opinionated (but not obstinate)
3. Assiduous (they really, really care)
4. Multi-dimensional (they can tackle any challenge)
5. Adaptable (they thrive in ambiguity)
1. Curious (and think from first principles)
The best PMMs are curious — they seek to deeply understand why. They want to know how the business works. They want to understand how the product works. They want to understand everything they can about the users (and the non-users) and the competition that is vying for their attention. They will not take superficial answers, and they will dig into the data to get to ground truth.
It can be really easy for PMMs to rely on traditional playbooks or industry convention, but the best PMMs are curious about how things could/should be versus how they have been. Every business, every customer, every product is different. The best PMMs start from playbooks but throw out what doesn’t apply and build new approaches when needed. They have a learning mindset and experiment relentlessly to test hypotheses and grow the business.
2. Opinionated (but not obstinate)
The PMMs who are most effective are willing to question and disagree with their many cross-functional partner teams, such as Product, Finance, and Legal. They bring a perspective grounded in user insights or market data, and they push back with their perspective when they believe something doesn’t make sense — all in service of getting to the best outcome for the user and for the business. Distinctive PMMs look for the “right” answer, not the comfortable or consensus-driven answer. And if there’s ambiguity or no data to support a clear direction, the distinctive PMM is also able to disagree and commit.
I think this is the hardest attribute to find in a PMM. It can be easy to assume something a colleague is working on is “already aligned on” and just focus on the launch. But not pushing back can lead to worse outcomes for your users and for the company. Without sharing the PMM perspective and driving a healthy debate, the PMM function will be relegated to a service org that executes on another team’s strategy.
3. Assiduous (they really, really care)
I can’t count the number of times I’ve visited a B2B marketing page and not understood what the company actually does even after several minutes attempting to decode the homepage. The “alphabet soup” of B2B tech jargon is splashed across so many websites (and consumer marketing pages can have their own issues too!). I don’t think the PMMs building those pages intend for it to be the case when they work on the pages, but after compromising with the nth cross-functional partner, a crisp landing page can be watered down into a pile of corporate platitudes.
B2B customers are like any other human :). They appreciate clarity and specificity. Amazing PMMs agonize over each word on every landing page and email. They mull and debate over every turn of phrase to make it as specific as they can and to make sure it means something.
Writing is only one place where PMMs have to really, really care — and one that is visible to any outsider. But PMMs must sweat the details in so many areas that are *not* always visible — from the carefully-devised launch contingency plans, to the meticulously organized day-of-launch checklist, to the rigorous funnel analysis that they pore over post-launch. An exceptional PMM brings energy each day to making the work as excellent as it can be, always bringing the customer’s needs to the forefront.
PMM teams should hold each other accountable to make the work better. Your team has to build the culture and systems to care — really, really care — about making the work exceptional. Distinctive PMMs want to be part of raising the bar and honing the craft.
4. Multi-dimensional (they can tackle any challenge)
Distinctive PMMs are multi-dimensional athletes who can tackle any problem, at any altitude. They can span the spectrum from being hyper-creative to highly structured and rigorous. They can scrutinize drop-offs in a funnel or the assumptions behind a financial model, and then build a creative customer-facing narrative. They’re strategic, 30,000-foot thinkers who also care deeply about the pixels.
Great PMMs are often T-shaped. They have a broad, generalized skillset, and they have at least one superpower (e.g., expert on storytelling, expert on product strategy). Great PMM teams have a nice assortment of superpowers across the team so you have experts who can jump in to help on hairier topics.
Many of the best, T-shaped PMMs I’ve worked with did not actually come from formal product marketing training. Some of the best product marketers I’ve worked with came from jobs as management consultants, founders, developers, sales execs, analysts, and even lawyers!
5. Adaptable (thrive with ambiguity)
In any fast-growth environment, resilience and adaptability are critical. But this is particularly important for Product Marketing. PMMs work on some of the most nebulous projects, and they’re implicated in nearly all meaningful Product and GTM initiatives at a company — everything from “should we change pricing?” to “should we actually not launch this?”. Any material change that the company makes will typically touch the PMM team.
Because PMMs are at the nexus of so many strategic decisions, it’s a job that often has more uncertainty than other jobs. PMMs are exposed to a lot of the “sausage-making” within the company, and this can be very challenging for people who don’t like change or who are looking for guided direction.
The best PMMs draw energy from the dynamism of a fast-paced environment with unclear swim lanes. They thrive in ambiguity, and they will be sober-headed and mature in times of change. They are comfortable building a plan and pivoting or adapting it as there is new information. A new competitive reality or product timeline or user insights may emerge — PMMs take the new information and fluidly adapt the plan.
Finding and building a team of distinctive PMMs is hard, but if you get this right, you have an amazing talent pool that can tackle any problem.
I hope my perspective is helpful for anyone grappling with how to build a PMM team or a PMM career. I’d love to hear how others have approached this as well. Drop me a DM or — better yet — apply for one of our many PMM roles if they sound interesting :)
Thank you to everyone who helped me review this post and to the amazing PMMs I work with. You’ve shown me what great looks like.
