From Pop Punking to Product Marketing
How I Found My Stage In Marketing
It was my twenties. My prime. We had our own cars, our own apartments, and our own identities. The bars were littered with $50,000 salaries, new clothes, and bad decisions. The world was ours, and the beers were cheap.
But the truth was, I didn’t make it out to many of those bad decision dujour nights. Sure, I found my way to a happy hour every once in a while, and believe me when I say I made the most of them (so many long islands, so many more Advil), but to be honest, ya girl was BUSY juggling my four jobs.
So while my peers were blowing off steam and getting wild on the weekends, I found my moments of zen during my weekly car wash. Or my Wednesday #officemani desk manicure. Or that time I went a little overboard on scratch-off tickets. (And if anybody’s wondering, the odds printed on the back — at least according to my privately funded study — do not prove to be accurate.) But I also found great relief by jamming with my pop punk band. So I guess we’ll start there.
I was a performer.
With five of my best friends, I spent at least two nights a week for almost all of my twenties at my uncle’s factory cranking out explicit language stamped original, angsty pop punk songs. We designed our own promos and merch, we leveraged social media to raise brand awareness and drive traffic to our shows, and we even hit the road and toured the midwest. We were a bunch of college grads running a small business, waiting for the moment we would turn a profit.
And similarly, on Saturdays, I worked my second job as a wedding singer. (For those keeping score at home, I’m still very much a wedding singer.) So every weekend, I’d scoot down to the city around 7, hop on stage for about 4 hours, play the soundtrack to some lucky couple’s best day of their lives, and head home with a check, a lot of energy, and even more satisfaction.
Job number three had absolutely nothing to do with music, but still very much a performance: I was earning my master’s degree in teaching. Which meant in addition to taking night school, I was collecting around 80 hours per semester observing — and at times, teaching — the youth of America in various suburban Illinois elementary classrooms.
And finally, Monday through Friday, from 9–5, I was slinging car insurance for State Farm. I mentioned the beers were cheap but they weren’t free, y’all. Mama’s gotta make a paycheck. So while I wasn’t studying, teaching, singing, promoting, or touring, I worked at an insurance agency and — compared to what I do now — my job was MASSIVE: I owned networking in the community and with other businesses, marketing to target segments, running outbound digital and direct mail campaigns, cold calling marketing qualified leads and referrals, running quotes and delivering proposals to opportunities, closing their business, and servicing our existing customers.
I was an ABM Marketer, Demand Gen Marketer, Inbound BDR, Outbound SDR, Account Executive, Account Manager, and Customer Success Manager. ALL.AT.ONCE.
Literally every part of the sales and marketing funnel fell under my umbrella. It was a tremendous lesson in how a pipe works, and an even better lesson on where the hell I fit into it.
But as I was wrapping up my twenties, my pop punk band, and my graduate program, I quickly realized I did not have what it took to be an elementary school teacher. And I had a decision to make:
Where the fuck in that pipe do I belong?
I’ll start by saying this: I LOVE money. It may not seem like it between my self-funded private grad program and my steadfast dedication to playing mediocre punk music for free, but I swear working the numbers each month on that Excel spreadsheet to maximize my commissions was a really fun game.
But what really got my heart pumping wasn’t the thrill of the close, or saving the account after an angry call; it was the strategy. It was figuring out what dealerships we could partner with to send us auto insurance customers; which apartment buildings saw the most relocation tenants needing renter’s insurance; which doctor’s offices saw the most uninsureds. Which products we sold that would yield the most profit for our agency, and figuring out what differentiated them against our competitors. Why OUR life insurance was better than Allstate’s. Why small businesses will benefit most from OUR liability policy if shit really hits the fan.
And honestly, building those partnerships and strategies, coupled with the personalized sales scripts and tools for our whole team to use in our pitches gave me a sense of ownership — not just over my job, or my commissions — but over the success of our business. It felt exactly like it did when I was on stage: everyone’s in time, on-key, and performing their asses off. Through this work I saw myself getting pulled into the company more, I felt myself evangelizing our team and our customers, and I took great pride in knowing my team was really set up for success. My calling was in marketing. My path became clear.
So how’d I go from marketing to PRODUCT marketing?
Once I figured out I was a marketer, it was now just a matter of figuring out what kind. And as many of us do, I started out as a generalist for a small tech firm, owning every damn piece of it, whether I knew what I was doing or not. But that generalist experience helped me get rid of the commissions, the close, the customer success, and the pitches, and let me focus on doing everything I could to help sales crush it.
I noticed quickly what I found myself tending toward, and what I found myself running from. Blog assignment? GIMME. One-sheeter? YES MA’AM. Strategic Partnerships? I’m your girl. But event promotion? Ughhh, fine. SEO? Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh whatever. Design? LOL, that’s cute. Hope y’all like stick figures and drop shadows.
And honestly it wasn’t that I hated the latter. I saw their value, and I knew I was still helping the company ultimately drive revenue. But I wasn’t getting that thrill; that tickle; that fire in my belly like I did when working to build solid enablement pieces, or create compelling product content. After a few years of growing more and more tired of the shit I didn’t like, and more and more drawn to the shit I did, the writing was on the wall. And it only took a conversation with the best recruiter in the business to figure it out.
Is product marketing for everyone?
Hell no. I know marketers who hate writing. I know marketers who resent sales. I know marketers who live for the clicks and conversions, and frankly could give a shit about the positioning that earned them. The point in all of this isn’t to convince you to be a product marketer, but it’s to take an honest assessment of your skills and passions under the marketing (or full-funnel) umbrella. Where do you see yourself gravitating toward? What makes you want to vom? What makes you feel more connected to the overall success of the company?
In my next blog, I’ll dive deeply into what it takes to be a great product marketer. We’ll hit on the skills you should have going into it, the skills you’ll pick up along the way, how to land those product marketing interviews, and the one thing you should NEVER do.
To scope out part 1 in this blog series, swing by PRODUCT MARKETING: The Best Job You’ll Ever Have.
