Advice for 25-year-old me: 10 useful clichés

It’s now ten years since I started at Google, which means it’s ten years since I fell into the world of Product Marketing. My time at Google was full of highs and lows, but I’ll always feel thankful for it being the place where I found a line of work that truly makes me excited about getting up in the morning and going into the office. 

I was recently asked to reflect on my career (so far) in an interview and it got me thinking about the advice I wish I’d been given when I first got into Product Marketing. What I’ve ended up writing is simply my go-to list of tips that I use in my day-to-day work. I don’t always manage to follow them, but I do try…

I’ve worked at enormous companies, I’ve worked at tiny companies. I’ve been part of hyper-scale growth journeys, and I’ve seen multiple redundancy periods. Things get tough, but they almost always get better. And you often don’t realise you’re enjoying one of the golden periods of your career until you reflect back on it, and realise what a good time you were having. 

I have ten pieces of advice. A lot of them are clichés. But all of them are things I hold true and still guide me today. I’ll break them out into batches over the next few weeks, so you’re not reading my own version of War & Peace. Here’s the first one…

Perception is reality. 

This is a somewhat unfortunate truth. I wish it wasn’t always the case, but if you’re at a sizeable company - say, 100+ - part of the job is about managing perceptions. It’s not enough to keep your head down and just do the work if no one knows you’re doing it. Part of your job is letting your stakeholders know that you’ve done the job. 

You don’t have to go about it in a showy way, where you feel like you’re bragging or taking credit for the work of others. Just find your own style for giving everyone clarity about the work you do. Focus on having a healthy relationship with your manager, so that this person knows exactly what you’re working on and the impact you’re having, so they can advocate for you. 

If you don’t like being too vocal in meetings, send written summaries to your key stakeholders. If written summaries take up too much time, try sending voice notes in Slack or Loom videos. It can feel unproductive spending time on ‘upward management’ but at growing companies there’s so much noise - and often a lot of chaos, too - so make it as easy as possible for others to know how you’re spending your time and the impact you’re having. 

This advice is especially relevant for product marketers. A big part of our role is about changing or shaping perceptions.

For your customers, that might mean changing a perception or stigma around who your product is for. Or shifting the perception about why someone should choose you over the competition. Even if you believe your product is genuinely the best for your target audience, this doesn’t matter if there’s a perception that another brand is a better fit. (I really recommend reading MKT1’s article on Perceptions, by the way…)

I’ve written before about how Product Marketing can go to market with a narrative ahead of the full version of a product - using the rule of ‘perception is reality’ to your advantage. Start telling that story well in advance of the new product going live, so your customers already perceive you as being a solution for their problem, well before you have the fully finished offering. 

Plus, part of Product Marketing’s role is a version of internal comms - a bridge between the commercial and product parts of a business, that helps everyone keep up to speed with what’s happening within a company. We’re there to add to that internal perception around how a business is doing, both from a product and Go-to-Market perspective. Product Marketers can create a sense of momentum within a business, adding to that feeling that you’re winning - which can be incredibly powerful. 

‘Perception is reality’ can sometimes feel unfair, but it’s a part of being in tech. Find your way to work with it, and when it comes to Product Marketing, use it as part of your toolkit - it can be a secret weapon. 💪

Cheers! 👋