What makes a great product marketer?

Hello!

Apologies for the radio silence these past few weeks. I went offline so I could recharge my batteries ahead of starting a new job! Last week I joined a fantastic company called Pleo as their Head of Product Marketing. 🥳

Now, back to the blogging.

A couple of weeks ago, the lovely people at CXL got in touch to ask me what I think makes a great product marketer. You can read my response here, along with tips from some brilliant product marketing leaders, but it gave me an idea for a post…

And it’s a timely one. I’ll be looking to build out an all-star Product Marketing team at Pleo in the very near future so if the below characteristics sound familiar to you - and you’re seeking your next challenge - then please reply to this email or add me on LinkedIn.  

What makes a great product marketer?

There are of course many different kinds of product marketer, from B2B vs B2C, to people who gravitate more towards user insights, sales enablement, or pricing and packaging, plus PMMs who excel more when embedded within a Product squad.

So I’ll do my best to keep this broad. Here we go…

Passionate collaborator

A great PMM gets involved with almost every part of the business so you should get a genuine kick out of collaboration and working on projects with other teams.

It helps to not be afraid of ruffling feathers or over-communicating, as a big part of the job is aligning teams, sharing insights across departments and pushing projects forward. 

Strong copywriter

Great copy is at the heart of everything we do. PMMs often tend to play a generalist/all-rounder role at a lot of companies - especially in the early life of a business - so being able to produce solid copy for any kind of marketing channel is essential. 

Customer obsessed

Whether you’re working on sales collateral or determining a new message framework for your target audience, a product marketer needs to be able to put themselves in the customer’s shoes at any given moment.

Make sure you’re carving out time each week for catching up on consumer insights, be it watching user interviews, reading the latest product reviews, or checking out survey responses. 

Strategic thinker

Being able to see the future (at least 3-5 years ahead) is key. You’ve got to know where the product is going to be able to tell the story and create that long-term narrative.

Once you’ve worked out that longer term vision, it suddenly gives product and feature launches a whole new meaning, where each launch is contributing to that bigger narrative of where your product is heading. 

Get Sh!t Done mindset

This is such an important one. When hiring product marketers, you ideally want to find someone who can do both the strategy side and the execution piece.

It’s no good having a mind-blowingly genius strategy if you can’t work out how to execute it. But find this combo and you’ve got yourself a top-tier product marketer. 

Builds genuine relationships

Given that Product Marketing is one of the most collaborative functions in any business, it’s important to invest time in building meaningful relationships with the people you work with. 

If you can create genuine partnerships with other key players and stakeholders, it makes the difficult conversations (which hopefully there won’t be too many of…) so much easier. 

Product expert

This kinda goes without saying, but you should love the product side of your job. Be one of your company’s top authorities on all things product, and know how it works inside-out.

I often say a PMM should be the marketing person in any product conversation and, vice versa, the product person in any marketing conversation - making sure that Marketing understands Product’s vision and that these two teams aren’t pursuing two different stories .

Ok, so those are my top tips for what to look for when hiring a PMM for your team. I’m sure there are a few I’ve missed so let me know in the comments! 👇