In 2019, when I officially transitioned into a Product Marketing Manager role, I knew very little about Marketing or Sales. In college, my major was Information Systems (basically IT 🥱) with a minor in Graphic Communication (basically graphic design + print 🎨).

Since then, I’ve led product launches and marketing campaigns, gaining skills and lessons that I now apply as a solopreneur.

These are skills you can use too, whether you're looking to pivot your career or start your own business.

Table of Contents

• 🤔 But first, what is product marketing?

• 💡 Lesson #1: Know Your Target Audience

• 📖 Lesson #2: Storytelling is Painting a Vision

• 🫡 Lesson #3: Influencing is Hard But Necessary

• 📣 Lesson #4: Good Sales People Have This in Commo …

• 🤝 Lesson #5: It Takes a Village

• 💓 Lesson #6: Enjoy What You’re Building

• 💬 Your Turn

• ✨ Weekly Feels

• 💼 Ways to Work With Me

🤔 But first, what is product marketing?

Here’s how the Product Marketing Alliance defines it:

When I was a product marketer at a company, I was focused on marketing the product.

But if you want to venture off on your own or pivot your career, YOU become the product.

So, in this case, how can you market yourself to bring your own relevant skills, unique differentiators, and story to your audience?

Which brings me to my first lesson…

💡 Lesson #1: Know Your Target Audience

This one sounds simple but is tricky. It’s easy to share a general message out to multiple audiences.

My personal example: When I was building Slack Connect, a way to use Slack with external partners, we knew we needed to create messaging for specific segments of “external partners”, so if you landed on the page, you could find out how Slack solved your specific pain.

Apply this to your situation: Let’s say you’re a Product Manager interested in leaving your full-time job to build a fractional consulting business. You could get clear on…

• Type of company: B2C

• Company Stage: Series A

• Person who will hire you: CTO

• Problems that they have: Creating a product strategy, making their first full-time Product Manager hire

Knowing your audience allows you to craft a story (Lesson #2) that directly addresses their problems.

📖 Lesson #2: Storytelling is Painting a Vision

While a good story is made up of way more components than this, painting a compelling vision was one of the lessons I learned growing up in B2B software.

My personal example: This “promised land” in B2B meant cost savings, business impact, and innovation. Now, I get to do more emotional (and fun!) storytelling, but I’m still trying to paint a vision.

This newsletter, for example, talks about a life of freedom and fulfillment. Each week I talk about the “how”, but I start with the vision.

Apply this to your situation: Let’s say you want to become a personal stylist 🛍️ and are writing copy for your new website.

Instead of writing down the tasks that you’ll help accomplish (put together outfits, staying on top of trends, wardrobe analysis), think about the future state and transformation you’ll have on this person. Maybe it looks something like…

• Feel more confident in the clothes you wear

• Get excited to go to the office

• Save money with simple, go-to outfits

🫡 Lesson #3: Influencing is Hard But Necessary

My personal example: Unlike email marketers who own emails that go out to customers or social media marketers who own social channels, product marketers don’t really own anything (besides messaging).

That means I had to get good at influencing other teams to prioritize my product and ask myself what mattered to them.

Apply this to your situation: Let’s say you’re trying to switch to a new team internally and you’re talking to the hiring manager. Before you meet, you might write down what matters to them as talking points to hit in the conversation:

• Don’t need to onboard a new person

• Already has established relationships with the team I’d be working with

• Top-performer in current role

• Current team members could help mentor me & get experience

📣 Lesson #4: Good Sales People Have This in Common

My personal example: Before I landed in Marketing, I used to think Sales people were all the same—big talkers. You’ve probably been on the end of a call with a sales person who wouldn’t stop talking.

But the more I interacted with top-performing sales people, the more I learned that they were really great at discovery.

They dug a layer deeper to uncover their prospect’s challenges by asking questions. Then, they consulted them on the right solution.

Apply this to your situation: Let’s say you’re a social media consultant talking to a potential customer for the first time. Instead of sharing how you can help, ask questions to understand their problems and needs first. Here are just a few:

• Why did you decide to take this call with me today?

• What is your #1 challenge when it comes to [XYZ] topic?

• How have you tried solving this challenge so far?

🤝 Lesson #5: It Takes a Village

My personal example: After a huge launch, my manager and I added everyone’s face on a slide with the title, “It Takes a Village”. While it was tedious and time-consuming to find 60+ people’s pictures in Slack, crop them, and size them down to a little circle, we wanted to everyone on the team to be seen.

As a product marketer, I had lots of people I was working with. When I left my job, I didn’t have friends who were on a solopreneur path, so I had to create my own village.

Apply this to your situation: Let’s say you want to venture on a solopreneur path, but you don’t have people in your network doing the same thing. You might consider joining communities, attending events, and connecting with people on LinkedIn to start establishing your “village” before you make the leap.

💓 Lesson #6: Enjoy What You’re Building

Personally, it’s hard for me to make a concerted effort if I don’t believe in what I’m building. I know a lot of you might feel this way, too. I read a stat that only 31% of people are engaged at work… yikes!

While I was able to go through the motions for awhile of doing work I didn’t love, at the end of the day I wanted to enjoy my work and build something of my own.

💬 Your Turn

What did you think of this topic? What lessons resonate with you most?

✨ Weekly Feels

• Feeling Visionary: A few of us went to Haricort Vert in Williamsburg to create our vision boards for the year. I usually do a digital vision board via Canva, but it was such a fun, peaceful way to spend the afternoon!

🌟 Upcoming Events

• Friday, February 7 | Saba Studios Opening Party: Saba Studios is a photography and event space that has been in business for 2 years but getting an upgrade! I met Brianna last year and love her energy and good vibes. Hope to see you there! 📸 

• Friday February 14 | OGC Galentine’s Day Meetup: This is an open event from one of the communities I’m part of happening on February 14. We’ll be writing love letters (to whoever you choose) 💌 and they’ll mail them after the event.

📖 Keep Reading

• How I went from product marketing to planning a 150 person company retreat

• How I'm attracting aligned career opportunities (and how you can too)

💼 Ways to Work With Me

• Reply to this email to learn about 1:1 private mentoring & coaching! (Highly discounted rates for my first 3 clients)