You want to break into Product Marketing. What skills do you need to master?

A "T" profile is in my experience the most successful in Product marketing. What is a T profile? It is that marketing professional that by nature knows and is curious about many different topics (Represented by the horizontal bar of the T ) but at the same time is capable of delving into a specific topic and becoming one of the greatest experts about it (Represented by the vertical bar of the T)

3 Key Skills: 1) Storytelling - Translate complex technical concepts (product features) into simple value propositions. 2) Market Research - Gather market trends, competitive intel, and customer expectations. 3) Go-to-Market Planning - Plan product launches, drive product awareness, adoption, and usage, and monitor performance. 3 Key Strengths: 1) Customer Centricity - Prioritize customer needs, expectations and preferences in messaging, positioning, and campaigns. 2) Collaboration - Work closely with Product, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams. 3) Project Management - Manage multiple streams with tight deadlines involving difference stakeholders in a fast-paced environment. No pressure!

Product marketers must comprehend market, customers, and competitors through qualitative and quantitative research: interviews, surveys, focus groups, and analytics. Analysis of trends, opportunities, threats, and benchmarking against competition is crucial. Research defines target audience, value proposition, positioning, and messaging.

To break into product marketing, it's essential to grasp three key product strategy concepts: 1. Product Portfolio Positioning: The BCG Matrix categorises products as Stars, Cash Cows, Question Marks, or Dogs based on market share and growth rate. This helps in prioritising resources effectively. 2. Product Lifecycle Management: Products progress through stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. Marketing strategies evolve accordingly, from creating awareness to maintaining market share or discontinuing declining products. 3. Understanding User & Buyer Personas: This helps to identify user demographics, purchase criteria and buyer journeys, and allows product marketers to craft targeted product marketing messages.

Product strategy it's about taking a bunch of data and insights from the market and your competitors (business awareness and acumen), then turning them into a map that guides your product's journey. Imagine sitting at a table with the brains behind the product. Your job? To make sure everyone's rowing in the same direction, towards the same goal (persuasion skills). And you've got to share it, make everyone see what you see. That's how you make sure the product doesn't just meet the market's needs but knocks its socks off. It's about being the product's biggest cheerleader and toughest critic, all while keeping your eyes on the prize: shaping a product that stands out today and is ready to evolve for tomorrow.

Crafting a compelling product strategy is integral to the success of any product marketer. This skill involves translating comprehensive market research into a strategic roadmap that harmonizes with overarching business objectives. Collaboration with cross-functional teams, including product managers, engineers, and designers, is essential for defining key elements such as product features, benefits, and points of differentiation.F urthermore, adeptness in gathering feedback and validating strategies ensures continuous improvement and alignment with market needs. Ultimately, mastering product strategy empowers product marketers to shape the direction, scope, and priorities of their offerings, driving sustained growth and market relevance.

Product marketing informs product strategy as product strategy will normally be defined and set by a senior product manager. Product marketing’s analysis of industry trends might have highlighted a need to implement generative AI to solve a buyer persona’s pain point. Or established from a user special interest group that there is an expectation from customers that there is an MLOps function to help deliver new AI models through continuous delivery. Ultimately product marketing informs strategy through collation, aggregation and subsequent distillation of the important nuggets of information that will push the needle in growth.

While product marketeer is not the sole owner of product strategy, its important to build the strategic mindset to help build the product strategy with the cross functional team. Product marketeers should have deep consumer and market insights which drives the core value proposition development of the product.

Mastering go-to-market planning is essential for product marketers. Adept at crafting comprehensive GTM strategies, they outline objectives, timelines, budgets, channels, tactics, and metrics for every product lifecycle stage. Coordination across teams like sales, marketing, customer success, support, and PR ensures seamless execution. Effective GTM planning drives product adoption, generates demand, and ensures successful market entry.

Nailing your Go-to-Market (GTM) is setting the course from inception to launch day, covering all bases: objectives, stakeholders, timeline, budget, channels, and metrics. Project management skills and tools comes very handy. Launch it’s not a solo journey. It’s about rallying the crew: sales, marketing, customer success, operations, legal... ensuring everyone's synced up and moving. Good communication skills and persuasion and understanding of your business will make things easier. Crafting a GTM plan is your masterplan for making waves in the market, sparking interest, and getting folks hooked on your product. In essence, mastering GTM planning is mastering the art of storytelling, strategy, and project management, to make an impact.

Content creation is a cornerstone skill for product marketers. It involves crafting compelling and engaging content that highlights the value and benefits of the product. Mastery of this skill means developing clear and consistent messaging that resonates with the target audience while distinguishing the product from competitors. A proficient product marketer can create diverse content types, including landing pages, blog posts, emails, social media posts, case studies, testimonials, videos, webinars, and presentations. Effective content creation serves to educate, persuade, and convert prospects and customers alike.

Crafting content that captures hearts and minds is not just about broadcasting what the product can do; it's about weaving a narrative that resonates with your audience, setting your offering apart. Having an extensive vocabulary and good writting skills will help you in that difficult task. With every blog post, email, or video, you're not just informing; you're engaging in a conversation. The diversity in content types: from social media buzz to in-depth case studies, offers a rich palette to highlight your product's unique value. It′s more than just writting, but having a great understanding of your audience to create connections and interest. Effective content creation is a powerful tool to educate, engage, and convert.

It's all about the right messaging. Answer the "why you would need this" question instead of telling the customer about the features of the product.

To master data analysis for Product Marketing, start by learning essential tools like Excel, Google Analytics, and some basic SQL. Practice interpreting data to derive insights. Dive into online courses or seek mentorship. Apply learnings to real-world scenarios. For instance, analyze campaign performance metrics to optimize future strategies. Continual practice and application refine your skills over time, making you adept at leveraging data for informed decision-making in Product Marketing.

One of the most important skills for a PMM. Develop the ability to distill key findings into clear, actionable recommendations, effectively bridging the gap between data analysis and strategic implementation. This skill not only enhances your credibility as a product marketer but also empowers stakeholders to make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.

Effective communication is pivotal for a product marketer. Tailoring your message to suit various contexts and channels is key. Active listening, asking pertinent questions, and offering constructive feedback are essential. These skills foster rapport, trust, and influence with customers, colleagues, partners, and media. Mastering communication ensures your message resonates across diverse audiences and mediums, vital for success in product marketing.

Being able to clearly communicate value in a compelling way requires study of copywriting. if you don’t have experience with hooks and attention grabbing headlines, I suggest starting there. Read the works of David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz, and Claude Hopkins. These are masters of grabbing people attention enough to drive mail in response. In today’s world, you have to be memorable and stand out just to get people to read your second sentence.

This is pivotal to being successful in product marketing - Knowing your audience and knowing what to say and when is crucial. Just creating a general rapport with your colleagues across multiple orgs will go a long, long way

Project management is also an important skill. In product marketing, it's likely you'll have to juggle multiple deadlines, launches and priorities. Being able to triage requests and make progress to meet deadlines will be essential.

In my opinion, besides having the fundamental skills of both product management and marketing, product marketeer requires being able to bridge between technology and commercial strategy in a language that is relevant and resonates with the target audience Depending on the target persona, being able to communicate the value of the product to the customer segment requires a deep understanding in how it value adds to the target market. Simultaneously it is also being able to translate how the product is a business worth investing in to internal stakeholders