The Only 3 Skills You Need to be a Product Marketer
You’ve seen it before: Those thirsty ass job descriptions claiming to be looking to fill a product marketing role that requires you to be an expert at 63 different marketing disciplines, have your MBA, and moonlight as a traveling keynote speaker. It’s rampant, especially in a soft job market. But what it really boils down to is a bunch of companies that don’t know what the hell PMK does, so instead of learning, they just toss all the shit they need done into one job description and hope some unassuming, unemployed job seeker will take the bait.
But despite what these ridiculous job descriptions will make you think, there really are only three core skills you need to bring to the table to get started in product marketing. Just three. And if a company insists otherwise, they either don’t really know what product marketing is, they’re too broke to staff an actual team, or they’re too lazy to train you up on the rest of it.
So before you start applying for every PMK role that comes your way (or take yourself out of the running because a lengthy JD caught you off-guard), here’s what skills you ACTUALLY need to have right out of the gate in order to be a successful product marketer:
1Writing. And I don’t just mean you need to like writing, you need to have a love affair with the damn thing. The kind of love affair that compels you to, after a full day of writing for work, sit down amidst two crying infants and crank out this blog because it’s therapeutic. And not only do you need to love it, but you need to be like, really fucking good at it, too. You need to be able to write clearly so even a dumb dumb knows wtf you’re talking about. You need to write compellingly, so even a cynic would take the bait. And you need to write relatably so even the most dramatic, individualist would feel heard.
It should simply state in a product marketing job description, “You need to be able to get your audience to understand what we do, and then they also need to give a shit about it.” Because, spoiler alert: about 50% of your job will be writing messaging houses (a product positioning document that serves as a single source of truth for all products and partnerships within the company). And writing messaging houses is time consuming, labor intensive, and thankless. You’ll spend hours, days, weeks, or even months working on one messaging house, and you’ll never earn a single like, comment, or share. So if you either can’t or don’t like the idea of effectively synthesizing a whole crap ton of information into one crystal fkn clear document that will never see the light of day, I’ll save you the trouble: this ain’t for you.
But if you’re willing to trade the cheap accolades for the satisfaction of positioning an entire product, division, or brand; Or give up the fleeting public recognition for the evergreen authority behind every launch, keep reading.
2Project Management. This one is for my virgos. My enneagram 3s. My type As. My Leslie Knopes. As a product marketer you will be — at any given moment — running point on dozens of projects, campaigns, and launches, all starting and stopping at various, different points, and involving various, different stakeholders. Your team, timeline, and deliverables will rarely be the same, and the expectations of you will be ever-evolving.
Some type As are able to juggle 47 things in their head at once. Some spend more time with their Asana and Trello boards than their spouse. Good product marketers do both. It is up to you to see through a product launch from ideation to beta to GA. It is up to you to collaborate with sales and legal to rebuild pricing and packaging for the 4,000th time. It is up to you to collaborate with creative, demand gen, and ops to identify, target, and convert unique segments at just the right time.
If you’re the type of person who gets off on crossing items off a list, running literally every meeting you attend, and never truly unplugging from work, do it. It’s thrilling, satisfying, challenging, and puts you at the dead center of damn near everything. The ego will love you. But if you’d rather attend than lead, do than delegate, and take stock in a job well done after 5pm, I’ll save you the trouble: this ain’t for you.
3Empathy. “Oh here she goes weaving in that liberal agenda in her marketing again.” Yeah yeah, lock it up, I’m serious. And while empathy may be considered a “soft skill,” I can guarantee you no product marketer ever succeeded without a massive, bleeding heart.
Because it is your job to understand, accept, celebrate, and be the voice of the customer, your sales team, your product team, and your brand all at once. You, my friendly product marketer, don’t matter. It will never matter how much you like a product, it will never matter how you would use it, and it will never matter what you think.
You need to be able to shapeshift your way into the body of your customer. You need to feel what it’s like to be your most satisfied account, and you need to know deeply how discouraged your angriest client is. You need to become intimately aware of the nuances between every persona within an account, and what they each want from your company and your solutions — from a technical standpoint, as well as a personal one.
Building effective sales enablement requires empathy, because if you get it wrong, the product won’t sell. Bringing a product to market in a way that does its development justice requires empathy, because if you shit on the features, the product won’t sell. Positioning marketing that finally makes your customer say “oh HELL YES that SPEAKS TO ME” requires empathy, because if your customer doesn’t feel connected, the product won’t sell.
So if you find yourself dropping everything to answer a slack from an AE, or checking in on the mental health of your overworked copywriter, or eagerly hopping on customer calls just to hear their voice, this discipline could very well be up your alley.
But if you’ve caught yourself bitching about your “lazy” sales team on more than one occasion, or you don’t believe your product can solve real problems, or you think your customers are idiots, I’ll save you the trouble: this aint for you.
I want to make it clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong if by the end of this, you’re like, “Nah…I’m good.” I’ve seen them come and go. And that’s ok. There’s a million other marketing disciplines (and non-marketing disciplines) that might be a better fit. But I can promise you that if you don’t embody the passion and ability to write, project manage, and empathize, you’ll be miserable in product marketing.
But damn, if this is you? Welcome. You have a HOME, boo boo. And damn this house is nice.