“She looked at the product cold, identified exactly where the messaging broke down, and gave me a structured framework to fix it.”
That's one mentee on one call with Evelyn O'Keeffe, a product marketer on GrowthMentor. Here are three calls like it, in order, for anyone new in a product marketing role. If you already know what your role should own, start with the second.
Call 1: Work out what your role should own
Product marketing is a different job at different companies. At a 20-person startup, one product marketer might own the homepage, the sales deck and every launch email. At a large company, the role can be the launches for one product line (how marketing teams split the work at each company size). Before you polish any one piece of work, get clear on which of these jobs is yours. That tells you what to get reviewed first:
| If your role covers | Get this reviewed first |
|---|---|
| Positioning and messaging, the website, a team of one or two | Your positioning brief and the homepage copy |
| Launches across several teams | The plan for your next launch |
| Sales enablement and competitive intelligence | The battlecard for the competitor sales meets most |
- Bring
- Your job description, a list of what you worked on last month, and the requests you get from other teams.
- You leave with
- What your role should own, and what to get reviewed first.
Recommended mentor
Denny Hollick
Product marketing leader, 5x director at companies like Unbounce and Kajabi
70+
sessions
One mentee credits him with making clear what the job looks like day to day and how product marketers work with other teams.
- 1.What does a product marketer at a company this size spend their week on?
- 2.Which of the requests I get belong to product marketing, and which should go back to other teams?
- 3.What should I get right first: positioning, the next launch or sales material?
- 4.What would you expect from me after six months in this role?
Also good for this call: Div Manickam, a product marketing leader who mentors on career growth.
Call 2: Get one piece of your work reviewed
Bring the piece from the first call, before it ships if you can. Write down the part you think is weakest before the call. It's hard to judge your own work, and the gap between your guess and the mentor's first question shows you what to check first next time.
An example, made up for this article. The work is a launch plan for a bulk-export feature in an invoicing tool: a webinar, a Product Hunt post, a blog post and nine social posts. Its writer expects notes on reach. The mentor asks who asked for the feature. The answer is 40 accounting firms on the top plan. They won't sit through a webinar about exports. They want an email that says it shipped, and their account managers need to hear about it first. The plan has no line for either.
Next time, that writer checks who each message is for before counting channels.
- Bring
- The piece of work, sent the day before, with what you assumed and the part you think is weakest.
- You leave with
- What to fix first, and what a buyer or your sales team would push back on.
Recommended mentor
Evelyn O'Keeffe
Senior GTM and product marketing leader, 15+ years at Google, Square, Deliveroo and Personio
Ask her to read your work the way a buyer would, before you explain any of it.
- 1.Here's my work and the part I'd fix first. What would you fix first?
- 2.Which line would a buyer argue with?
- 3.What did I leave in that you'd cut?
- 4.What would you need to see to believe this segment is right?
If the piece is a sales email or a one-pager for sales, book Gokul Kailasam instead. He spent seven years as an account executive before five in product marketing, and one mentee says his comments on their email sequence made them rethink parts of it.
Call 3: Show your work's impact to the people above you
A lot of product marketing work shows up in other teams' numbers: the deals sales closes, the features customers use, the pages that convert. This call is about connecting your work to those numbers and saying it in a way your manager can repeat.
In the invoicing example (the numbers are made up too), the update to the writer's manager could read like this:
- What changed: the launch went first to the 40 firms that asked for export, a week after their account managers got a one-page note.
- What happened: 31 of the 40 firms used export in the first week.
- What I dropped: the webinar. The firms that asked for export already knew what it does.
- What I'd test next: whether firms on the lower plans want export too.
Four lines like these after each piece of work make a stronger case at review time than a list of tasks.
- Bring
- Your last two or three pieces of work, and any numbers you can tie to them.
- You leave with
- A short way to report your work, and what to measure on the next piece.
Recommended mentor
Mariana Racasan
Product marketing consultant for B2B tech, first marketing hire several times
25+
sessions
Her profile says she helps first-time PMMs prove their value and build credibility. She has been the first marketing hire at B2B tech startups several times.
- 1.Which of these results would my manager care about most?
- 2.How do I show impact when the numbers belong to sales?
- 3.What should I start measuring before my next launch?
- 4.What would you want to hear from a new PMM after their first quarter?
After the three calls, you know what your role covers, what a product marketer would change in your work, and how to report what it changed.
The three calls follow the format of Growth Roadmap. We wrote this one by hand for the article.
Have your work checked by a product marketer who has done the job.
You’re doing the job without anyone senior to check it. Let’s start with what your role should own.
What we found for you
Agree what your role should own, get one piece of work reviewed, then show the people above you what it changed.
Work out what your role should own
Which requests belong to product marketing at a company your size, and what to get right first.
Get one piece of your work reviewed
Bring the piece and the part you think is weakest. Find out what a product marketer questions first.
Show your work’s impact to the people above you
Connect your work to the numbers your manager tracks, and report it in a few lines.
Get a plan for where you're stuck
Describe your situation, answer three follow-up questions, and Growth Roadmap suggests three calls, each with a mentor.
Other calls worth booking
Product marketers on GrowthMentor also take calls on these. There are more on the product marketing mentor page.
Launch plan review
Walk through the plan before launch day, not after.
Talk to
Div ManickamCustomer research and ICP
Who to talk to and what to ask before you write a word.
Talk to
Gokul KailasamYour first 90 days in the role
What to ship first so the team trusts your judgment.
Talk to
How these calls go
Send your work the day before. Mentors tend to start with your customer before they open your document: who buys, what they use now and what would make them switch. Then they work through the document with you on a shared screen and ask to see the next version.
Denny, Evelyn and Mariana all take calls at no extra charge with a GrowthMentor membership. If your first call isn't worth it, you get a full refund within 14 days.
Start with the call about what your role should own.
Talk to a product marketer about your role and the work on your desk.
Find your product marketing mentorProduct marketing mentor questions
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