Are you a Product Marketer and don’t know it?

Hi! It’s great to have you here on my Medium. I’m Fernanda. I work as PMM Lead at QuintoAndar, Latam’s largest housing platform; I have 14 years of experience in Marketing, both in startups and in traditional companies, and I am currently a great Product Marketing enthusiast.

When I first heard about Product Marketing, I thought it was a very specific position. The icing on the cake of a very consolidated Tech and Marketing structure, not something for early-stage startups. After all… do you really need a Marketing team to launch a Product? Or would it be just a hype?

I love it when time and experience prove me wrong.

To my pleasant surprise, when learning what Product Marketing’s core work is, I found that I always did it, even in incumbent companies. And so I thought it was worth coming here to tell you — whether for you to discover that you do this too, to evaluate a career migration to PMM, or to launch a PMM area in your company.

The famous step back: what is PMM?

Before I tell you the five fundamental principles that every PMM needs to know, I’ll quickly explain what Product Marketing does. For me, the best definition is:

Product marketers act as translators between what the product does and what customers cares about — and then track whether they understood, liked it and are using it, providing feedback to the entire team.

The first part is by Misha Chellam and the second part is mine :)

Now, let’s get to the principles.

Assumption 1: make the complex understandable

PMMs interact with many areas, so they are used to technical language. In the same way that PMMs must translate aspects of the product into value for the customer, they must communicate directly and fluidly within the company. It’s okay to use acronyms and foreign terms as long as the meanings are available; when presenting a chart, make sure people understand the key points. Be simple.

Assumption 2: adaptability and ambiguity

At many times, the work of the PMM is strategic, but sometimes can be very tactical. Being such a cross scope, it is natural that there are gray areas and ownership confusion. PMMs must be flexible and hands on — but they don’t do tasks for the sake of doing it. They understand the impact of every activity and question when the reasons and expected results are not clear.

Assumption 3: prioritization and results orientation

Generally, PMM teams are smaller than Product teams. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate PMMs in priority fronts / projects / tribes / squads. And how do you know what is a priority? Asking senior leadership (believe me: executive teams value professionals who focus on what is most important to the company rather than those who work on a high volume of low-impact deliverables).

Tip: nothing beats sharing the main OKRs with Product teams.

Assumption 4: collaboration and engagement

Good PMMs must define when is the right time to include stakeholders. Engaging too early is not productive, engaging too late is uncomfortable. It is essential that the PMM team understand the dynamics and the way of working of partner areas (in addition to minimally knowing their indicators), in order to share the challenges and engage people in the joint delivery of value. Of course, mastering the Product roadmap is essential to knowing when to involve whom.

Assumption 5: empowerment for scalability

It will be very difficult for the PMM team to participate in all projects. If you are (and enjoy being) one of those marketers who “blocks everything” or wants to approve all deliveries, maybe PMM is not for you. Product Marketers must think scalable and ego-free. It is very important to allow Product, Design, Operations, Sales, CX, Growth, Campaign, Social Media, PR and the entire company to be able to communicate with the customer autonomously, consistently and quickly. The best way to do this is to develop playbooks. Positioning, value proposition, communication and messaging guides, tone of voice, do’s and don’ts…

In the next article, I’ll explore the core of the Product Marketing work, using some famous references and complementing with my vision.

Does it make sense to you?

Let me know!