Rob Pearson is the Director of Product Marketing at IT company Octopus Deploy:

“Here at Octopus Deploy, we help software development and IT operations teams ship software better and keep it running smoothly. We create happy deployments, and by extension, happy software teams.”

Rob became aware of the Product Marketing Core certification after seeing an endorsement in our PMA Slack channel.

In this case study, we’ll explore:

Rob’s motivation

Rob’s primary goal was to enhance his product marketing skills and knowledge and complete a course with a certification to show for his efforts.

Having transitioned into product marketing following a 20-year career as a software developer, he’d experienced a significant career change and completed the course to help build credibility in his role.

“I was looking for breadth and high-quality content. I wanted full coverage of product marketing as I’ve only been doing a subset of the role and I wanted to expand and mature my skills.

“I was also looking for a practical and actionable course. There are a million other marketing courses full of razzle-dazzle, hacks, and tactics. I’m looking to build my career in product marketing for the long term and make an impact. Not do something short term so I can jump to a better title at a different company.”

Why Product Marketing Core?

After considering other providers, it became clear to Rob that Product Marketing Core would provide him with the desired level of support and quality of resources he was after, with tuition from product marketing experts playing a significant role in his decision to Get Certified.

“The biggest differentiator I found as I investigated the courses available to me was the fact that the PMA certification shared a wealth of information about their course online.

“It was crystal clear what I was learning, who taught the lessons (industry leaders who are in the field right now), and why it was valuable. I struggled to find concrete information about the other courses. It was mostly high level and I couldn’t tell if one was better than the others.

“The PMA certification also stood out because the course covered the PMM function as a whole, it was taught by industry leaders who are doing the job right now, and they are constantly sharing useful industry information online. I had far more confidence that I’d get a lot of bang for my buck from the PMA course vs others.”

What are Product Marketing Core’s main benefits?

Rob identified expert tuition from renowned product marketer Tania Clarke as the core benefit of the certificaiton.

“The most appealing part of the live course was the fact that it was taught by an experienced local industry leader, Tania Clarke, who works for a well-respected company (Atlassian) in a similar industry to my own.

“Tania shared real-world stories and concrete examples from her experience. This was the most valuable part of the course.”

The wide breadth of product marketing topics covered in the curriculum, as well as the exclusive templates included, have previously been identified as highlights by other PMMs who’ve completed the course. This perspective was also shared by Rob, who said:

“I got a ton of value from the course but the Go-To-Market module and templates. This is an area that I need to mature and improve at my company.

I’ve started using the supplied templates and I’m applying/improving our processes already. This is useful now and also as our product marketing team grows.”

Key outcomes

Real-life context and experiences

Upon enrolling in Product Marketing Core, Rob Pearson signed up hoping to improve his product marketing knowledge to boost his professional credibility within the industry.

Having completed the course and secured his certification, did the course fulfill his expectations?

“Product Marketing Core is fantastic. It nailed what I was looking for in a core product marketing course; it offered full coverage of product marketing with good depth of each topic.

“I’m very thankful that I was able to attend the live version as Tania Clark, the expert delivering the course, provided a lot of context and real-world examples from her experience. It also allowed me to ask questions and clarify topics along the way.”

Improvement of day-to-day practices

Such is the depth of the curriculum provided by Product Marketing Core and the supplementary templates and frameworks made available to PMMs who enroll, this often assists with the daily operations of the product marketing team as a whole. This proved to be the case for Rob, who says he has seen a marked improvement in productivity since taking part.

“Product Marketing Core has helped me greatly with annual strategic planning as well as launch planning. I’m able to take the example templates and run with them instead of searching for good quality templates online. This is faster and I don’t have to deal with tons of spam to access templates.

“I’m also growing our product marketing team this year and we’re maturing our capabilities. I’ll be revisiting the modules and resources supplied as we improve and expand our responsibilities. The breadth of the course is extremely useful as I can revisit any topic in the future and do a deep dive as needed.

Advice for prospective students

After experiencing Product Marketing Core for himself, Rob Pearson offered a glowing endorsement for the course and advised any product marketers interested in signing up to invest in their personal development, citing high-quality tuition and additional resources as just two of the many reasons why they should Get Certified.

“I believe the Product Marketing Certification is well worth the cost, time, and effort. It provides in-depth coverage of product marketing and the core aspects of the role. It includes useful high-quality templates that you can adopt and adapt for your team on demand. This saves an immense amount of time searching for templates.

“I took the live and online version of this course and I can’t describe how impressive it was. It was taught by an experienced industry leader who gave real-world examples from her experience which made it that much more concrete and relatable. It gave me an answer to ask questions and get more information on topics that were relevant to me.

“I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to level-up their product marketing skills and knowledge; if I hadn’t signed up, I think our product marketing capability would’ve stayed the same and we’d have struggled to deliver on our goals and support for the rest of the business.”

Not sure if Product Marketing Certified: Core is for you...? 👇

Enroll in Product Marketing Core: Live and Online, gain expert tuition from an experienced PMM and work toward a coveted PMM certification with access to 11 chapters and 68 modules of material, plus a whole lot more. Awesome expertise. Continued support. Unrivaled insights. Get certified.