Get caught up on Season 1, or stay at pace with Season 2.
SURPRISE! We’re closing our last guest episode with a secret one: Emma Stratton, founder of Punchy. Emma is a messaging expert who has helped countless tech companies translate their complex products into clear, engaging narratives. In this one, we dive deep into the unique challenges and rewards of product marketing.Emma shares her journey from feeling like a misfit in traditional roles to embracing her unique strengths and starting her own successful business.
Finding the perfect job can often feel like being surrounded by ghosts because recruiters keep disappearing. With confusing job descriptions, 7-step interview processes, and downright disrespectful recruiters, it’s a very shitty journey. In this episode, we're sharing our personal horror stories from the job search trenches and discussing how you can avoid making similar f*%k up.
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Bold marketers? They’re harder to find in B2B SaaS than the “clearance section at a Lululemon store”. Our industry today is living under a “sea of sameness”. Relying on *revenue* as our single product differentiator, right? Wrong! That’s why we misfit PMM (who can’t find a good deal at Lulu) gotta shake up these B2B SaaSy seas. Meaning don’t copy competition and call it a ‘winback campaign’. We gotta do better. Be bold, stand out, and win over our market (one audience segment at a time).
Lot of marketers (PMMs included) talk about external brand. Product launches, website copy, and press releases are a few examples of what we see. But, that’s not enough for PMMs today to be influential. Time better spent building your internal brand. Especially if you’re a founding PMM doing all the examples mentioned (and more). With zero internal influence.
95% of startups die because they lack the demand or at least the capture of it, and a lot of these failures have bad segmentation to blame. So what happens when PMMs are getting asked to market the product to everyone? We get a bit more dead inside, right?
B2B product marketers are of two minds. Anna Borbotko (previous guest) described it best as “being marketers that think like salespeople”. Well… we’re not marketers, BUT where does “product” fit in?
No one goes to school for B2B marketing— or, B2B product marketing whether you consider it marketing or not. But what if one person -- who worked in almost every marketing role in B2B -- had a say in this discussion? Better known as the OG of B2B marketing, or should we say DG? Dave Gerhardt, or “DG” currently leads Exit Five, the largest online B2B marketing community with 3,500+ members (like us three 💀). And, we’re lucky enough to have him on the pod. From a marketing manager in Boston, a fellow podcast host with almost over 150 episodes, a two-time CMO, and now the organizer of Drive in Burlington. Dave is the perfect guest to ask this one question: are product marketers actually marketers?
Sales enablement is the name of the game for B2B product marketers, but it’s also a double-edged sword. We want to make it better, but we’re getting asked for more revenue — with less budget and headcount. To fight this dark side, we’re joined by Anna Borbotko, buyer and sales enablement lead at TomTom. And product marketing Jedi. She wants to make the B2B buying process simpler and better, and she has deep expertise in GTM and positioning. Anna will tell you everything about how she’s seeing the B2B buying process evolve and what her best tips are to navigate it as someone who manages the whole thing at TomTom. Get ready to join the dark side of product marketing.
90% of PMMs today don’t have formal training. It’s one way to stand out and stay relevant — getting trained. But if you copy what the 10% do, then you struggle to differentiate yourself.
We sat down with our 2nd guest from across the pond, Carlota Güell—host of Product Marketing Stories, the leading product marketing podcast in France, and Senior PMM at Decathlon. Carlota shares her unique perspective on having worked as a PMM in B2B and B2C, the differences between the US and European markets for PMMs, and how she was able to shape her product marketing skillset. Hop onboard this cultural PMM exchange to hear more.
If you know Harvey Lee, he’s a HUGE AC/DC superfan. This episode title is only fitting for the “OG of PMM” himself. Harvey takes us back to his rock ‘n roll roots — how living every moment on razor’s edge of serendipity and guts — eventually landed him to be the “Bundle King” on the XBox PMM team. Yes, Microsoft’s Xbox. Like AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”, Harvey took the unconventional path to product marketing and never looked back. Jump in and crowdsurf into this electrifying episode.
Last season, the three misfits spoke on personal experiences with PMM layoffs. Despite marginal gains since, there’s still more PMMs looking for work than there are open roles. That’s why we had career coach and founder of Courageous Careers, Yi Lin Pei, join us in this intimate conversation. Yi Lin shares how this extraordinary circumstance has shifted her own PMM career coaching, specifically helping candidates find their differentiated strength to better stand out. You could rely on baseline PMM skills in an easy job market. But, that’s not the case today.
Emotion can’t be reduced to “leads” or “ROI”. It’s an intangible feeling you can’t really quantify in a SalesForce report. And if you’re a product marketer, you know how much emotion matters to the product-customer relationship. That’s why we “killed” the pod last month. It was a real-life Mom Test - what did listeners really feel in our absence last month? It’s what you might wanna know too. How do customers really feel about your product? Listen to show your CEO why building emotion matters more than chasing leads alone.