PMM core business
I’ll tell you what the scope of PMM’s work is in my opinion — after reading a lot, reflecting and talking to people. Much of what I’m going to explain is based on the vision of the amazing Bryony Pearce from Product Marketing Alliance.
As it is a relatively new area, there is no right or wrong — it has, rather, what the main methodologies teach, their reflection and application to their reality. Let’s get to them.
a) Ideation / conception / pre-product
I am wary of hearing that “Team X is the guardian of the customer’s knowledge”. That’s because knowing the customer entirely is something so complex that no area alone would be able to do it. Perhaps the closest to the “voice of the customer” are the CX and Sales teams, who talk to a lot of people every day — the high volume allows you to exclude outliers and form a cohesive vision. It turns out that sometimes the lines of these teams can seem like anecdotes and they are not as considered as they could be. Good PMMs listen to these teams with humility and an open heart.
PMM must:
- Deeply understand the target audience and translate knowledge into actionable isights. The more varied the sources of information, the more complete the output will be: discoveries conducted by Product and Design, market research carried out by Customer Insights, C-Sat / NPS reports, qualitative conversations with customers, chat with support teams;
- Build the “source of truth”: gather all existing knowledge about the customer (expectations, needs and pain), allowing its application to product ideation;
- Monitor the development of prototypes and validation of hypotheses;
- Build Product positioning based on the value proposition, considering competitive alternatives, unique attributes and delivered value, as well as collaterals.
b) Go-to-Market
First, launches must be sized based on the complexity of each product or feature and the expected impact (metric). Larger GTMs may involve complex Marketing campaigns with investment, while smaller GTMs may involve a simple push notification to customers on the journey. It is necessary to consider the internal public (customer facing or not) and partners at the launch, after all, they will probably be the customer’s point of contact and should be able to answer questions or even be proactive in reinforcing the new product. It is essential that PMM knows the Product roadmap in order to plan all the releases for that quarter — so as not to saturate the customer, a group of news can be launched together.
PMM must:
- Lead the construction of launch plans together with Product, Marketing, Growth, Sales and Operations;
- Define channels, investment size and effort, key-messages, schedule;
- Act as PMO to monitor the execution of the plan by the specialist areas;
- Evaluate the need for a support plan according to the achievement of pre-established metrics.
c) Life cycle
Tracking customer interaction after Product launch is very rich. PMMs will increase the product’s chances of success by observing the indicators that measure customer interaction at each stage, identifying gaps and opportunities to maximize value from each customer to the business. After all, retaining a customer costs up to 7x less than bringing in a new one.
PMM must:
- Empower the Sales team: assist in salespeople training, preparing pitch decks, success stories, videos (social proof);
- Coordinate communication strategy throughout the journey (onboarding, activation, churn), with support from Growth in defining channels, scheduling triggers and controlling results;
- Consume satisfaction/experience reports and be a protagonist in pointing out necessary improvements throughout the journey;
- Support the definition of success metrics and their measurement, providing feedback to the Operations, Marketing, Sales and Product teams with insights.
In the next article, I’ll talk about the right time to hire PMMs in your company, specially in product-first companies.
Does it make sense to you?
Let me know!
