Tori Chang (Ross, ‘21) is the Co-President of the Tech Club at Ross, and this past summer, was a Product Marketing Intern. During our conversation, Tori spoke about her decision to recruit for product marketing and how she went about learning and immersing herself in the function. Tori also provided advice to first years about how they can be successful in the product marketing internship search process.
MBASchooled: Why did you go to business school to get your MBA?
Prior to business school, I was a marketing manager at Estee Lauder. I saw firsthand the transformation that tech had on the beauty industry and it got me excited about the prospect of working in the technology industry. As I thought about my short and long-term goals, I realized that while I did enjoy marketing, the idea of bringing new and innovative tech products to market was truly exciting as a potential next step in my career. Long term, I have real aspirations of leading my own team of marketers, so there were some additional skills that I wanted to build in business school , such as finance, accounting, and organizational management.
MBASchooled: Why Product Marketing?
My desire to pursue product marketing was a mix of two P’s: Passion and Pragmatism.
Having worked in CPG, a lot of my responsibilities fell within the integrated marketing space in terms of developing and executing a marketing plan. I had a desire to move “up the funnel” and closer to the actual product itself to focus more on the “what are we building and for whom?” The opportunity to take on responsibilities like customer research, defining the product or features, and building a roadmap were exciting, as was figuring out “how do we get this in the market and to whom?” As I did my research, I realized that these are things that Product Marketers do each and every day.
Another aspect specifically around why tech products came from my experience working in the beauty industry, and seeing how tech disrupted it. My “aha” moment came when we worked with a company based in Taiwan that created a product using A/R technology to help customers try on makeup without having to go to a store. One of the problems (especially topical during the COVID-19 outbreak) is that makeup counters are not the most hygienic places with so many people touching the same testers. The A/R product they created solved a really messy (literally!) problem and made an improvement to the customer experience. This got me really excited about tech products, and the idea around identifying what these products were, and finding ways to take them to market.
MBASchooled: What from your past experience was relevant to a role in Product Marketing?
I started my career at Red Bull, in an analytical role within sales where I spent my time analyzing sales data and creating data driven presentations to drive category growth. Since Product Marketers work closely with sales teams (and with sales data) this was a pretty transferable experience.
After that role, I transitioned to Estee Lauder where I had a number of responsibilities such as running forecasts and demand planning processes. Each month, I was responsible for running these consensus meetings with a cross functional leadership team, where I would provide data and recommendations around marketing programs to achieve our sales targets. This required me to work cross functionally to achieve a goal, and to use my relationship building skills and influencing skills to help leaders make business decisions.
Again, I realized through research and talking to lots of Product Marketers, that this is a really critical aspect of the life of a Product Marketer, especially one who is focused on working with Product Managers. As a PMM, you’ll often have to work with your PMs to build the product roadmap or to define which features to prioritize. While you don’t own that specific decision, you can influence it. I realized that my past experience running those demand planning meetings and figuring out how to influence the regional directors was not so different from figuring out how to influence product managers.
MBASchooled: During your first year at Ross, how did you discover that Product Marketing was the right fit for you?
A big portion of this came from talking to people. As all MBA students probably know, networking is important, even more so that most programs are virtual. It’s going to be a challenge this year to get face time with recruiters and hiring managers, so tactically, it’s going to be important to find as many opportunities to gather information or showcase your interest, which is why networking becomes even more important.
Like many other people who went through the product marketing recruiting process, I learned that product marketing can look very different company to company, or in some cases even within the same company. For example, at LinkedIn, some of the business units are very different, and the PMM teams work very differently. In general, I would say I focused on learning the following things from my conversations
- What Product Marketing is, and why it is important to a company
- What Product Marketing looks like at a specific company, and examples of how it’s structured
- What skills PMMs need to be successful, and how are those applied for PMM deliverables or projects
- What metrics PMMs use to measure success
Another area that I spent time on, and I encourage others to spend time on, is to figure out what you are interested in. “The world of tech” is immense,, so it’s important to understand where you want to land in the tech world. Do you want to do B2B enterprise software, or is B2C your thing? Are you more of an AdTech person or are you super interested in eCommerce? Do you even know what those things are (and trust me, it’s totally okay if you don’t!) I spent time thinking about what “lane” within tech was most interesting to me, and then finding opportunities to immerse myself in that specific lane. I found this to be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons.
First, I was able to learn fast on specific areas of tech, which I believe helped me navigate interviews, and certainly also reduce the “ramp” time when I started my internship.
Second, it also helped me get a deeper understanding of why product marketing can look so different company to company or vertical to vertical. Mostly, this stems from the nature of the business and how products are made and sold, but by learning the nuances of the vertical, I was able to get a deeper understanding of how product marketing could play a role. Finally, it also expanded my opportunities. Instead of just trying to think of companies to add to a list, by focusing on a specific “lane” (ex: FinTech, or eCommerce) it allowed me to identify the companies within that space that aligned to that particular lane. In general, I just felt it helped me focus more on where I wanted to go, as opposed to just thinking of “tech” as one big thing, or a list of companies
MBASchooled: Is there anything you wished you had learned sooner?
In my previous roles, I knew that product development relied on customer research to inform how they built products, but I wasn’t a part of that process, I was just a benefactor of the outputs. In my internship, all three of my projects involved talking to members and stakeholders, understanding people’s preferences to stack rank features to help PMs build a roadmap.
To do this, I often had to rely on a number of market research tools in order to generate and then analyze customer data. I was surprised at first at how much I would need to rely on these tools, and since I hadn’t used them before, I had to get up to speed on them fast. I think a big takeaway from me is that product marketers have to rely on data, and while you don’t always need to know every single tool, the more you understand the tools, what they are used for and how to pull the data, the more influence you are going to have when you talk to your product managers or other stakeholders.
As a note, not all product marketing roles rely on using all these types of tools, but my role did. I think it’s fair to say that all product marketers use data, but the kinds of data that they use, and what they use to generate the data is often different. As such, I think as a general rule of thumb, it’s good to do some research to find out what types of data skills and tools the role you are looking at is going to require, and to plan accordingly.
MBASchooled: What opportunities from your first year were helpful to you as a Product Marketer during your summer Internship?
Courses – First, I think at the most foundational level, it’s important to immerse yourself in the marketing classes, especially in your first year. I found the marketing core and elective classes to be extremely helpful during my internship. Furthermore the general management core is why companies hire MBAs – you need to know enough about each function so that you can showcase how pieces fit together in many of the summer internship projects.
In addition to the marketing courses, I also recommend taking courses in organizational behavior and leadership. Product Marketers need strong relationship building and influencing skills. They are often in a role where they have to drive a specific outcome or toward a goal, but they need the cooperation of others (product managers, sales leaders, engineers, customer success managers) in order to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, PMMs don’t have power over those teams, so if they want to get alignment, they need to have influence. Taking some organizational behavior or leadership classes can help build those core skills to figure out how to succeed even when you can’t directly manage other people.
Another set of courses that I think are helpful are any communication or public speaking courses. Product Marketers are always communicating, whether it’s written (emails, blogposts, product documentation) or spoken (meetings, internal presentations, customer presentations) so anything you can do to improve these skills is going to help.
Case Competitions – During my first year, I participated in two case competitions, and found them extremely valuable learning experiences for being a product marketer. The process of working with a team to conduct research on a specific industry or problem, and then working collaboratively with a team to develop a solution and pitch and present it in a way was a great learning experience for being a PMM.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students interested in Product Marketing Internships or Full-Time Roles?
As I previously said, Product Marketing looks a little different across various companies, so in addition to doing the information gathering to figure out what Product marketing looks like, I also think it’s really important to find your “tech lane,” or the area within tech that you find most interesting or compelling. Figuring out what you are interested in, and then going deep to learn it whether that’s through research, jumping into hands on projects, or conversations with alum and practitioners is going to give you a much deeper understanding of the areas of tech that you are most interested in, which I think is going to yield better results (and be more fun)!
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I think a lot of people put a ton of pressure on finding that internship and converting it to a full-time offer and see that as the end all be all. I think that’s a great thing, but I think it’s also important to realize that the internship is one aspect (albeit an important one) of your journey to your post-MBA career. In addition to those 10 weeks, you have plenty of other opportunities to build skills and take on projects or experiences to develop your product marketing skills.
While I hope everyone who has the chance to convert an internship to a full-time offer, I also hope that people find ways throughout their first and second years to immerse themselves in projects, classes, hands-on learning experiences, volunteer opportunities, startups, classes, etc that can help them build skills in product marketing so that they will position themselves well for product marketing careers.
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