How to Successfully Manage Your First Product Marketing Team
Anna pushed back from her desk and let out a long deep breathe. Last month, she was promoted to manage her first product marketing team. Since then, she has been inundated with requests from Marketing, Sales, Product, and stakeholders she never knew she even had. Her calendar was full of meeting requests and her email inbox was full of unread messages. As the avalanche of work descended over her, Anna wondered if she was the right product marketer for this promotion. She had been an outstanding individual contributor, and this was her big break.
How could she show her leaders (and herself!) that she’s ready for this challenge?
As Anna’s first first managerial assignment, that requires a significant shift in the skills she’ll need to use on the job. Instead of diving headfirst into a project, she’ll be spending more time overseeing and mentoring her team to execute on many projects. She will need to set priorities for her team and be ready to mentor and monitor outcomes. She’ll also need to quickly overcome her Imposter’s Syndrome (a common challenge for highly emotionally intelligent product marketers). Here are a few tips for any new product marketers managing their first PMM team:
DEFINE YOUR MISSION AND STRATEGY
I encourage everyone to define a mission: What’s the most important focus of your work? Your mission should address this highest priority head on. Take a step back and ask yourself: how does our current workload align to what’s most important? Is the team bogged down in random incongruent requests? Are there lots of fire drills coming from certain stakeholders?
Strategy often requires project prioritization and tradeoffs. For instance, if building a stronger marketing engine will drive engagement and contribute substantively to the company’s revenue growth goals, then that may be a higher priority than revamping sales sheets for products in low demand. Finally, make your mission and strategy compelling enough for your team and stakeholders to get behind it.
INVOLVE YOUR TEAM IN ITS GREATER PURPOSE
Most product marketers want to feel like they are a part of something vital to the company, if not the industry or some aspect of society. As a manager, share your mission and strategy, tying your team members’ work to that greater purpose. Encourage each team member to help you align their work towards the team’s strategy. While there will always be some fly-in requests, it’s important for the team to feel some control over making progress towards the highest priorities.
CONTINUE BUILDING TRUST THROUGH INTEGRITY AND CONSISTENCY
As manager, you’re setting the tone of your team’s culture. Make sure that trust is at its core – trust with staff and stakeholders alike. Consistency of deliverables, timetables and reactions all help to reinforce that trust. Avoid contradictions… If you say that you are family-friendly, then don’t assign work over weekends. If you say that everyone has opportunities, then don’t play favorites on the team. Trust will be crucial goodwill in the face of future challenges.
COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE
Product marketing leaders need to communicate as a major requirement of the role. Communicate inspiration, direction, and coaching to your team. Communicate strategy, priorities, concerns, and ideas to stakeholders (including your own manager!). Communicate to learn needs and preferences with customers and partners. Make sure that you have common understanding and alignment, even if that means renegotiating to get on the same page.
For Anna, the future is bright. Once she’s established herself in the new role, she’ll be driving direction and priorities for the team. She will be able to leverage her background as a product marketing individual contributor to coach others towards a shared success.
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