WRITTEN BY Erica Foster, Senior product marketing CONSULTANT at Fluvio
Product Marketing has consistently grown as a function over the past several years. I’ve spent time as an in-house product marketing manager and a product marketing consultant, and have worked alongside many brilliant PMMs over the past several years. I’ve either run into or been asked about the same classic challenges, time and time again.
Here are five challenges all product marketers face (and how to overcome them, of course).
Challenge #1: Nobody understands what you do
A big problem with product marketing is there isn’t a standard, shared definition of the function (yet). The industry is trying hard but the reality is that PMM looks a little different from company to company. That makes it very challenging to set expectations about what exactly you do. Especially if PMM is a brand new function to the organization.
How to solve it:
Evangelize the role early, and often. Do roadshows on what Product Marketing is and what we do. Define the impact for key teams within your organization, and say “Here are the outcomes we can now achieve now that I'm in the picture.”
Establish norms. Tell them how you plan to work with sales, product, CX, etc.
Give them a ‘what’s in it for me’ — people inherently will be trying to understand how what you do will help them. So tell them, here’s the impact to you.
Challenge #2: Sales team doesn’t use you messaging or collateral
Sales teams can get stuck in their tried and true ways of doing things, and might not be using the new messaging or collateral you worked so hard to build.
How to solve it:
Have continuous, candid conversations about what they think is working and what’s not about the new content. They’ll likely want to give you valuable input on what they think would work better.
Make it easy for them to find and use. Effective roll-out (and organization system) will help with this.
Speak their language and let them know you understand them and this will help them do their job better (often times for sales = make more $$!)
Challenge #3: Product team doesn’t want to provide a product roadmap or release timelines
While product teams should have roadmaps, more often than not it’s in an internal system that’s not easy to understand or shared broadly. People are always asking product, “What’s coming next?!” and sometimes it’s not that straightforward. The catch is that we need that roadmap to plan for our next big go-to-market launch.
How to solve it:
Give as much as you take. As product marketers, you should be feeding market and customer insights to the product team to help inform the roadmap. Help build vs just asking for something to be handed to you.
Take the “help me help you” approach. Help them understand that having ample time to plan for a launch helps you better tell their story to the market, and hopefully increase adoption.
Reinforce desired behavior. Show them what a well-planned launch looks like, and the positive impact it has on sales, customers, and adoption rates.
Challenge #4: You have a growing to-do list, and not enough hours in the day
You’re probably in back-to-back meetings, with dozens of unread slack messages, and still haven’t managed to make time for your actual work. This is a shared feeling for many product marketers, and is just the nature of our work.
How to solve it:
Set expectations early and often. Let people know your preferred methods of communication and hours, push for agendas for meetings, and set boundaries for how you want to work – doing this early on and holding firm will set you up for success.
Fiercely prioritize (especially revenue-driving activities). Constantly reevaluate how you’re spending your time, and if it’s not on the most urgent and important tasks then you need to rethink your ways of working and where you're spending your time.
Let some fires burn. You can’t be everywhere and do everything all at once, sometimes that extra task is just not worth it and the world will keep spinning if it doesn’t get done.
Challenge #5: Too many stakeholders want a say in the messaging (or other content)
Everyone wants messaging, right now. Or, everyone wants to have a hand in copywriting or wordsmithing messaging.
How to solve it:
Find the north star that you can rally everyone around and consistently point back to when things are getting off track.
Build consensus through 1:1 conversations. Not everyone is comfortable sharing their feedback in a group setting, so discussing one on one can help others share their true, direct thoughts.
Encourage ideas and concepts over wordsmithing. The most important part of messaging is that the core message is coming across clearly – we have copywriters to help with wordsmithing in channel distribution.
If you feel up to these challenges and want to give product marketing a go, Fluvio can help through our Launchpad program.
Launchpad is a product marketing immersion program for skilled, ambitious product marketers who are looking to find a perfect match with a company that deeply values the product marketing discipline. You'll expand your experience, develop tools, and receive on-the-job coaching from Fluvio consultants to propel you into your new role. Stop settling, take the reins of your career and land your dream job.