AMA: DigitalOcean Vice President Product Marketing, Raman Sharma on Building a Product Marketing Team

It is important to have a good idea of what you are looking for. We ask the hiring manager to have a good enough conversation with the candidate before bringing them in for a full round of interviews. This initial validation gives us confidence that it is valuable for 3-4 other people in the company to spend time with the candidate. We make it quick for the candidates by clustering all of these interviews as close to each other as possible. I think the decision around who to bring into the company and the team is one of the most important things we do as managers. So, we cannot artificially rush it. Having said that, I would also mention that our interview round is a good balance of quick and thorough. We arrive at our "hire" or "no hire" decisions soon after the interviews, and communicate them accordingly.

My philosophy on this is that PMMs should almost be embedded into their counterpart Product/Engineering teams. Schedule or scope changes shouldn't come to them as a surprise. We have utilized multiple tools like shared calendars, regular update meetings, dependency tracking tools, etc. Those are all useful but they are just tools. The intent is for PMMs to constantly stay in touch with the Product team to understand the what, why, and when of the customer value being delivered. Having this mindset and being an active participant in decision-making builds empathy within PMMs for the realities of Product delivery and empathy within partner teams for the downstream dependency pressures that PMMs feel for Product GTM.

I would recommend ruthless prioritization. * Work with your product counterparts to figure out the most important products from a business/strategy standpoint. Then make sure you are giving these products the lion's share of your time and energy. * Work with your business leaders to understand the most important GTM initiatives (self-serve, Sales, Field marketing, etc.). Then make sure you spend the majority of your effort on prioritized GTM. It is no use creating beautiful-looking slide decks if your Sales effort is non-existent. Maybe focus more on message optimization on the website. You still need to do an OK job for other products (for example, having a product page on the website). However, the key products should see a lot more focus from you - understand customer scenarios, produce differentiated messaging, figure out competitive positioning, produce collateral valuable for GTM motions (self-serve or Sales), customer stories, produce in-depth content, etc.

Product Marketing means different things in different companies. So, asking for "prior PMM experience" may not always be as helpful as you think since this experience could mean something completely different from what you are looking for. While relevant PMM experience is a plus, I have also hired several people from non-PMM backgrounds into PMM roles. Specifically for tech, people who have spent time in customer-facing roles (especially those with a technical element) tend to ramp well in PMM roles. Some examples are Customer Success, Solutions Architect/Engineers, Technical Evangelism, etc. I myself am a convert from Product Management to Product Marketing. I usually find the following traits helpful in identifying PMM candidates: * Ability and willingness to understand the space, i.e., the product, the target customers, the usage scenarios, the competition, etc. Even if a PMM is not a domain expert to begin with, I expect them to intentionally build the right level of depth over time. In my opinion, this is what allows them to produce differentiated output. * An appreciation and understanding (even if not expertise) of other marketing disciplines like DemandGen, Content Marketing, Comms/PR, Lifecycle Marketing, Field Marketing, etc. What PMMs produce informs (or should inform) what these other teams deliver to customers/prospects. So, understanding their craft helps PMMs do their jobs better. * Ability to articulate product (and company) value proposition in terms of what customers care about. I put heavy emphasis on writing. PMMs should be able to tell stories both internally (about customers) and externally (about products and solutions) * Collaboration: PMM, by definition, is required to be a highly collaborative role sitting at the intersection of Product, Sales, and Marketing. 

I might have a slightly controversial take on this one. * I think if you are in the business of marketing products to developers, you have to learn the trade a little bit. You must understand developers, developer tools, preferences, contemporary development trends, etc. * If you are beginning to build a PMM team in a business like this, I recommend bringing someone who is a part marketer and developer. Such people exist * They are building micro-SaaS apps, they are writing books or building content about developers, and they are managing local or online communities around certain topics or technologies. * They have a pretty good handle of "marketing through the internet, " basically things like web copy, brand positioning, newsletters, etc. * They will find ways to work with Product and Engineering teams to develop differentiated developer-friendly content and "campaigns." * They will find ways to get your company on HackerNews. I know this sounds like too much, but my biggest learning after working for DigitalOcean has been the discovery of this rare breed of "Developer Marketers" who don't even call themselves marketers. They make for excellent PMMs for DevTools, in my opinion.