The product marketing manager (PMM) role spans many stages of product development. When the team is small, sometimes it means operating like a mini general manager (GM). 

When I joined WhatsApp, I worked on a product, for which I got to wear a mini GM hat. And I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

In this article, I will share my takeaways from the key stages of product development from the PMM lens.

I will cover critical parts of the journey, such as dealing with ambiguity, proving product-market fit (PMF), and communicating effectively.

Phase 0 to 1

It all starts with leadership giving you the green light to explore a side hustle – so you and another three to four people jump on it to see if it can become a product.

The exciting thing about this phase is that you can operate as a mini GM, alongside your partners – you do everything, and the role of, in my case, PMM, can span way beyond its usual definition.

The hard part is a bag of unknowns and a very vague idea of which direction to move in. 

Let’s look at it from various perspectives.

Product 

At this stage, you are defining product potential and scope. Many avenues exist with high ambiguity about the right one.

Strong vision and conviction during this early stage is an absolute must, given the uncertainty surrounding zero-to-one bets.

Leadership involvement

Usually, you would operate as a small team. When we started working on my now publicly available product two years ago, it was a side hustle for four people – the product marketer, product manager, engineer, and business developer. 

In reality, it was so early and small, that no one cared – we struggled to get leadership attention and fought for our tiny crew to have resources and stay afloat. It might sound stressful, but it presents a great opportunity for ownership, and the ability to move fast and push through with the development. 

One thing to remember is the importance of sharing early positive signals and consistently checking in with your leads to show progress.

Process

It is a relatively simple stage process-wise – most daily communication is informal, larger team involvement is minimal and the product focus is narrow.

The difficulty lies in navigating decision-making and setting the product’s direction. Ambiguity is the hardest part at this stage – let’s talk about how to reduce it.

Dealing with ambiguity

Here are three key themes I found helpful in handling ambiguity:

  1. Stay open-minded and flexible:

Product direction might change many times as you move towards defining what you are building. You will have different views on the product direction and many discussions to align as a team.

  1. Scope any parts of ambiguity that can be scoped:
  • Along with a big problem/vision, it is equally important to break work into smaller milestones, so the team can show progress (which is motivating) and get market insights quickly (e.g. Alpha, Beta).
  • Market and customer research work to test hypotheses and reduce ambiguity.
  • Speak directly with customers to ensure you are solving an existing problem.
  • Seek leadership guidance – of course, you need to have a point of view as a team. But sometimes, instead of bringing solutions to your leaders, use them to help you. Come with questions and options. Let them make a call when you are stuck.
  1. Under-promise and give conservative estimates to manage expectations about a product that is not yet well defined.

At this stage, you will also have to size product potential. This one is tricky. On the one hand, in the early days, you want your product potential to be oversized, otherwise, you will never sell it internally. It needs to be sexy. 

But as you move into Alpha and get a better idea of the product, you should also become more realistic and conservative about what you can deliver (for example, if you are running Alpha with several clients, recruit 10 clients but commit to delivering results based on the tests with five). 

Phase 1ish: Product-market fit

That’s when things become real. At this stage, you are, hopefully, aligned on the direction, at least for the early testing (i.e. Alpha), and start working on the learning plan execution. 

People are getting excited, but this critical phase also comes with a lot of anxiety as the pressure on the team is increasing, and the emotions are flying high. How will we know if the product is successful?

Product

Now that you have a solid product concept, achieving a PMF signal is the ultimate objective. Setting the learning plan and KPIs is critical. 

There are a lot of ways to test a product. It can be testing with thousands of end users for B2C products, or an Alpha with a few large clients for B2B products. 

It depends on what you are testing, too: are you testing if a product works well quality-wise (it does not break) or are you testing if it adds meaningful value to your users that can be quantifiable? You might test for both.

Independent of the type of testing you think is right for you, here are a few main things to consider:

  1. What hypothesis do you want to test? How will you define success? What are the performance expectations and do you have reliable benchmarks to set those expectations?

  2. Based on the hypothesis and benchmarks, you need to define clear achievable KPIs (i.e., conversion uplift vs. existing performance) and align them with the working group. 

  3. When setting up the KPIs, make sure you have the needed rigor and tools to get the answers. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot – make sure you set up expectations for the test with all relevant stakeholders. 

Leadership involvement

At this stage, the leadership wants to see the team’s confidence in the data and market feedback to decide if they should approve the product launch. Be prepared for:

  • More regular reviews with more senior leadership.
  • A higher level of rigor and detail expected.
  • Expectations to provide a point of view of how the product can contribute to the overall company objectives (i.e. revenue).

Process

In our case, the team grew from four people to 50 within weeks. When the product becomes more real, everyone wants to be part of its success and the number of contributors and stakeholders expands.

  • It means that you are not that nimble anymore as a team. Decisions take longer to make, and you have less control across all the work streams.
  • Communication and managing relationships with stakeholders change.

Let’s talk about how you should adjust communication at this stage.

Effective communication

As the number of stakeholders becomes bigger and the core team explodes, you want to define key communication channels for each of these groups and how often you will provide updates to them.

Here are the key communication tactics to consider:

  1. Cross-functional team management 
  • Full team bi-weekly status updates
  • Full team roadmap sessions and discussions
  • Core team weekly meetings
  1. Upward and broad cross-functional team communication
  • Over-communicate; drive visibility and clarity
  • Semi-regular meetings with the broad cross-functional leadership team
  • Regular meetings and updates to the core leadership group (i.e. product/engineering)
  1. Managing relationships with external stakeholders during testing (i.e. testing with businesses)
  • Get consensus on the expected outcomes and deadlines
  • Design incentives to support commitments
  • Plan regular connections to drive testing forward

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of over-communication. The larger team that oversees multiple products may not always notice something that may seem obvious to you.

I have stepped so many times in the meetings, where I assumed a good understanding of a product and ended up educating the forum and answering fundamental questions. 

Phase 1 to 100: Scale

You are about to launch!

Product-wise, there is still space for last-minute product strategy adjustments. We changed the product scope two months before the launch based on the feedback we heard from the market.

It might sound stressful, but it is significantly better than launching a product that will not land as strong as it could. 

One of the important lessons for me was how we could ship a product that is easy to adopt. It sounds obvious, but the simplicity of your product integration, and fitting in the existing ecosystem is critical. Especially for large enterprise businesses, where those ecosystems are complex and adoption takes time.  

Leadership involvement

  • You are on the hook to hit the goals you committed to (i.e. revenue, active users).
  • Make sure you know how much time you have to demonstrate performance – how patient is your company? Is it a six-month or two-year timeline before you would have to make a call if this product is underperforming and shut it down? 

Process

Scaling a product requires a new set of stakeholders: Go-to-market team partnerships, making your product a top priority with sales teams and clients.

Communication and sales teams should be your best friends, especially when the product is not the largest bottom-line contributor.

Scale takes time, especially for B2B products, created for large enterprise clients. When developing your go-to-market activations, keep in mind 

a) Who is your audience and how long are their adoption cycles 

b) Incentives your company offers clients and partners – is your product part of those incentive programs?

c) Effectiveness of marketing channels (can you track their impact, can you attribute this impact to the adoption of the product)

In parallel, continue getting market feedback and implement product improvements. 

To wrap up:

  1. Dealing with ambiguity during the early stage of product development is crucial. Identify ways to minimize it, including asking your leadership team for guidance.

  2. Product-market fit requires a clear set of trackable KPIs. Over-communicating the progress and performance of the product will save you rounds of “educational” conversations.

  3. Build a product with ease of adoption in mind. It will shorten adoption cycles and make the work of go-to-market teams easier.