Newsletter · 9 min read

First Marketing Hire? Why It Should Be a PMM

Liz Christo · GTM by Stage 2 Capital Free Advanced

The clearest answer to the when part of this question, and it argues against the default (hiring a growth or demand generation person first) with a specific reason: without a defined ICP and message you are just buying traffic for a story nobody has validated. Christo works with GTM teams for a living, so the sequencing advice is grounded.

  • Make a product marketer your first marketing hire, ahead of growth or demand generation.
  • A PMM helps you determine product-market fit in the first place, not just scale it afterwards.
  • The PMM runs a two-way street between market and product, translating in both directions.
  • Skip it and you either build features that do not land or launch to the wrong persona.

The question it answers

  1. What does a world class product marketing function look like, and when does a company need one?

Read with it

  1. Freshworks' early marketing approach documented properly: what they measured, what they spent on, and the argument that below... SeedToScale by Accel Article · long read SaaS Playbook: Marketing Rachit Parekh
  2. The clearest short explanation of why market category is one of five interdependent positioning pieces, with a real... aprildunford.com Article · 12 min read A Quickstart Guide to Positioning April Dunford
  3. This is the bit most positioning writing skips: how weak positioning shows up as sales pain, including the 40 percent of B2B... Lenny's Newsletter Newsletter · 12 min read Summary: April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process Gaurav Chandrashekar
  4. Video · 40 min SVPG Partner Martina Lauchengco: Product Marketing Advice from her Book LOVED at Lean Product Meetup Martina Lauchengco
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