What do you see as the foundational skill sets and areas of focus for a product marketer? And what are the best ways to establish those skills and competency in those areas?

The best product marketers put themselves at the center of the 5 Ps: Product, Packaging, Positioning, Promotion, and Place (aka Enablement). 

On any given day, your work should be related to the above. 

PMMs should be the most athletic (multi-dimensional) marketer at the company. The more you expose yourself and work on the 5 Ps the better off you will be. 

When I think about foundational skill-sets and areas of focus for a PMM, I tend to think about Inbound vs. Outbound skills.

• For inbound:

  • Get as much experience as possible running customer research, and then using those insights to drive changes in the product roadmap. Especially as a junior PMM, your superpower is getting in front of customers, and delivering feedback to the organization in an actionable way.

  • If there aren't any immediate opportunities here, raise your hand to help get customer feedback for a new product launch or an idea the team is investigating, and you'll quickly earn your seat at the table, and show the value of PMM. Or, offer to do some foundational JTBD research to help understand the challenges your customers are solving.

• For outbound:

  • In order to establish skills and competency, there's no substitute for running an end-to-end campaign. From this experience, you'll quickly learn what work is 'nice to have' vs. what drives meaningful impact.

  • If you aren't able to own a campaign end-to-end, then getting involved with an existing campaign, and offering help on voice of customer to refine the creative is a great way to get a seat at the table. For example, offer to to do root cause analysis on what the customer is looking to solve using 'the five whys', and use these findings to inform the messaging.