Plan for the week:
Monday: My career path
Tuesday: Agile & product marketing
Wednesday: How can PMMs make remote work work!
Thursday: Narratives to value propositions and everything in between
Friday: Inspiring books for a PMM
So excited to be here this Monday morning! Looking forward to spending the week learning and sharing with you folks at @pmmunderhood
#productmarketing #mondaythoughts pic.twitter.com/UY8TcQqdZF
They say you must always go with a choice that scares you most. That's the choice that will help you grow.
There are direct paths to a successful career in #productmarketing but there are plenty of indirect paths, too.
There is no #careerpath that is the same as someone else's. Do you know any two people who followed the exact same steps, at the exact same moment in time, and landed the exact same outcome? I'd love to know :-)
Each job requires some conscious decision making and a unique plan of development. And that's what I tried to do in my #careerpath - starting out in #businessdevelopment to being a #productmarketer
My first job in the tech industry was in business development. It set me up to be a better marketer.
I learned very early on in my career that front-line sales managers have the highest impact in any sales organization. Thereon, I strived to be a front-line marketer. linkedin.com/posts/pujapuja…
After spending 3+ successful years in sales I did a bit of retrospection. The industry had already shifted largely from traditional outbound marketing to #inboundmarketing. I took it upon myself to upgrade my knowledge and skills, and align my mindset!
Courses from online academies like @HubSpotAcademy @hootsuite @CXLdotcom and of course, @Google helped me transition into a role in marketing.
Well-wishers: These can come in the form of mentors, peers, friends, and family. These are people who see the hope inside you!
In 2014, when I shared my career aspiration to transition from #sales to #marketing, every single person across the table said an affirmative, 'Yes. Go do it!'
Testing the concept, validating an idea, and getting user feedback was already making its way into my life!
All said and done, leadership support, finding the right mentors and colleagues at work who believe in you, is equally important. I must say I was lucky to be surrounded by the right people, at the right time!
And so the fun began - branding, content development, social media promotion, campaigns and data analytics
I began working with many cross-functional teams, across APAC, EMEA and the US. A 5-members marketing team grew to 80+ in three years.
Learning is a continuous process. Since the time I stepped into the world of #marketing, I made learning my top priority.
Also, your network is your net worth. Make sure to invest time in building a good one and consistently growing it.
Peer-to-peer learning is the best way to learn and grow. Yet many organizations have yet to create a formal structure for it. This @HBRexchange article provides some great insights: hbr.org/2018/11/how-to…
I'm not the only one! According to this study, workers are 67% more likely to go to their professional network rather than their companies’ learning systems to build skills.
get.degreed.com/en/how-the-wor…
Who do you reach out to? Google? Youtube? Online communities? Or your peers?
Today, we'll talk about applying #agile principles and practicing #scrum in #marketing
In Rugby, the game from where Scrum draws its name and analogy, there are five or eight players who cohesively push the ball in the same direction in order to put it in play.
Similarly, in a marketing org too, a collaborative, intimate team effort delivers business value in a tightly coordinated fashion.
I have had the privilege of working on an agile marketing team focused on consistently creating and distributing relevant and high-value content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Agile is a #philosophy and a mindset while scrum is a part of the overall delivery approach. Scrum is an agile framework for managing knowledge work, with an emphasis on content development and consistent delivery in a volatile business environment.
Has any of you used #agile in #marketing? I'd love to learn about your experiences.
So, what does agile in the Marketing context really mean? Here is how we can apply the "12 Agile Principles to Marketing Organizations"
#1 Satisfy the customer: Every customer wants a product that gets their job done, worth their money, and is delivered with amazing customer service. Customer-centric marketing is a strategy that places the individual customer at the center of marketing design and delivery. #CX
#2 Welcome change: Change is constant and not an enemy. Don't try to fight it. Embrace change to meet new market demands, innovations, trends, technologies, & advances. #Change is good. It is also often hard. But to succeed in marketing, you must move with it, and join the dance.
#3 Deliver frequently: Value in marketing is customer-perceived value and the difference between their evaluation of the benefits and costs of one product when compared with the competition.
Continuous improvement is a form of quality management that focuses on making small incremental improvements, rather than trying to achieve major changes. Focus on delivering increments, seek feedback, improve and deliver an iteration, then repeat. #culture
#4 Work together: Scrum is propagated as a team-based approach to delivering business value. Even if remote, globally dispersed, marketing organizations will need to come up with innovative ways to keep the team unified & focused towards a common goal – delivering business value.
#5 Trust and support: The scrum framework can be compared to a traffic control system where the leadership provides only a few rules to be followed – stop, go, and slow down signals - and the team self-organizes, inspects, and adapts on its own.
#6 Face-to-face conversation: The 6th principle of the agile manifesto states: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
Well, who had foreseen in 2001 (when this was written) what would happen in 2020?
#year2020 pic.twitter.com/T5NK016uzx
So, if the team is not co-located is it anti-agile? Well, the short answer is: No, a geographically dispersed team is not anti-agile!
Such teams should use working agreements (or Kanban boards, Asana, Wrike) that take shape at the start of a project and evolve as collaborative working dashboards between them.
Tools like Slack, Teams and Skype are great at putting communication in our hands anytime, anywhere and in any form – text or voice.
#7 Working software: As chiefmartec rightly puts it, like in software development, the primary objective is working software; in marketing, the primary objective is remarkable customer experiences. chiefmartec.com/2012/07/agile-…
#8 Sustainable development: This term is concerned with people responsible for communications, brand management and new product development.
They must have a broad view of social, economic and environmental outcomes, a long-term perspective on the customer’s ever-evolving interests and an inclusive approach in action, which recognizes the need for all people on the team to be involved in the decisions.
#9 Continuous attention: Agile principle #9 talks about “Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design”. In the technical world, it is often important to quickly adopt the new releases to avoid lagging behind.
Similarly, in marketing, right from the days of print, radio and television to the internet, social media and video, to voice search and AI-driven personalization we have been constantly readjusting and adopting.
Over time we may have become very good at utilizing modern-day research, tracking and social media tools to our advantage and yet there is room for some uncertainty, always. You learn something every day if you pay attention.
#10 Maintain simplicity: Complex is easy. Simple is hard. In “The Power of Simplicity”, even Jack Trout argues that it's high time for businesses to replace complexity with common sense, banish the jargon, articulate their vision, simplify processes, and refocus on core issues.
#11 Self-organizing teams: Nature is pretty good at creating networks of self-organizing systems. This is a general characteristic of self-organizing systems: they are robust or resilient.
Falling between order and chaos, the moment of complexity is the point at which self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of behavior.
12. Reflect and adjust: Last, but not least, the core of utilizing the scrum method is to foster a culture of embracing and adapting to changes in your industry.
As marketers, we cannot always predict with utmost surety how long a particular trend will last or how long until the next new trend begins. We are always playing the catching-up game!
In my view, agile marketing is not just a way for the marketing team to get work done. It may also not be required that all the essential roles, events and artifacts of Scrum be implemented to the T as it is done in the software development world.
What is important though is to embrace the goal of Scrum: to become self-organizing in order to best accomplish the mission at hand with flexibility, creativity, and productivity as the main objectives.
Product marketing is such a collaborative role. How to make remote work work if you're a PMM?
Today, let's explore a few ways #productmarketers can continue to collaborate and communicate together while working remotely.
#1 Digital Communication: Companies have many tools to keep workers connected however, as a PMM you need to choose the apt #channel - private messaging, news feeds, videos, audio calls, direct messaging and so much more - depending on the type of message you want to convey.
#2 Collaboration Spaces: With digital platforms designed specifically for group and team collaboration, PMMs have to set-aside space to gather all stakeholders, ask questions, post updates, share resources, and perhaps most importantly, collaborate easily.
#tools #teams
#3 Transparency: With the right tools, PMMs can assign responsibilities to each team member digitally & track individual progress. This helps coworkers know who carries individual tasks and gets everyone to report effectively & stay accountable as they work outside of the office.
#4 Team Charter: This is my personal favorite. The charter defines why this team was formed, what it is responsible for, and how it will work together. The #teamcharter helps address the biggest challenges in #workingremote.
#5 Focus on Relationships: Working remotely is not easy and requires a certain level of temperament and skills to succeed as a #virtualteam. Invest in forming relationships at work - beyond work, at an individual human level.
Most importantly, know when people deserve their space and identify when they are in need of a pair of ears simply to listen. It is so important to break down any walls and give everyone a sense of belonging on that 1-hr #Zoom #Teams or #GoogleMeet call.
"Your efforts are a sum of all parts." A PMMs day-to-day revolves around market research, creating narratives, messaging, positioning, & value proposition statements. We handle the GTM, sales enablements, CI, and in lean orgs. even execute the product launches. It's a lot to ask!
Let's take a look at how we can make the sum of all parts work!
#1 Start with the end-user - It is important to begin with an understanding of the #endUser and the jobs they care about. This will help you speak their language, and be their voice internally. Try to quote end-users verbatim and sharing your learnings from the field regularly.
#2 Value proposition - I use the @strategyzer framework to give this a form and format. I like it because it starts with the end-user, emphasizes we think in terms of their benefits relative to #competitor alternatives. And, the outcome is one statement! strategyzer.com/canvas/value-p…
#3 Story is king - A good narrative is a seed story and not the entire giant watermelon. I like to include the 7 elements of @storybrand's storytelling framework to build a solid product narrative. Read more about it here: commonwealth.com/insights/craft…
#4 Positioning - Should we go Head-to-Head, or try to be the Big Fish in a Small Pond, or shall we start as a Small Fish in a Big Pond? In a competitive crowded world market, it's the well-positioned products that stand out! @aprildunford provides the best insights in this area.
#5 Messaging - I find ''Three Product Levels (Kotler)'' very useful as it pushes one to think, act and communicate about the product inside-out. Just like @simonsinek's Golden Circle principle #StartWithWhy expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/04/three-…
Pillar content is exactly what your #productmarketing strategy needs.
Maintaining master documents outlining the above, discussing these with stakeholders to get their buy-in and making sure everyone across #product, #marketing, #sales, and #customersuccess has participated and co-created will ensure everyone is aligned and committed.
These are often the longest and broadest content on your marketing hub, and every other relevant content branches out of these. These guiding docs will help everyone stay relevant and contextual in our #communication across all channels.
I'd love to learn about the frameworks and methodologies that have helped you as a PMM. Anyone like to share?
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pujapuja191_productmarketing-salesenablement-b2bmarketing-activity-6600251181447122944-bDJt
- https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-to-help-your-employees-learn-from-each-other
- https://get.degreed.com/en/how-the-workforce-learns-report-2019
- http://chiefmartec.com/2012/07/agile-marketing-in-a-single-whiteboard-sketch/
- https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas/value-proposition-canvas
- https://www.commonwealth.com/insights/crafting-your-brand-story-in-7-simple-steps
- https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/04/three-product-levels-kotler/