Fanta Kaba (Olin, ‘21) came to Olin’s MBA Program with a desire to switch into the CPG Brand Management Career. During her first year, Fanta realized her interest in the tech industry and her desire to market innovative products, and switched to pursuing an internship in Product Marketing. During this interview, Fanta shared what attracted her to Product Marketing, and how she was able to land a MBA Product Marketing internship at Microsoft.
MBASchooled: What did you do before business school, and what attracted you to Product Marketing?
Prior to business I worked in Operations as an Area Manager. I actually never gave much thought to being a product marketer. I think this was because I thought I was going to be in the CPG realm. When I started business school, I was heavily interested in the beauty and cosmetic industry and wanted to do Brand Management. However, as I became more interested in the technology industry, I realized that I would really enjoy product marketing because of its benefits to society and businesses. I am the owner of Golden Roots Essentials, a skincare brand that mostly operates online as an ecommerce and is heavily reliant on technology for everyday communication and logistics. My experience from using G-Suite to Cortana for my small business made me realize how much technology products contribute to the success of businesses and that is what inspired me to pursue the role of PMM.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship and what projects did you work on?
This past summer I was a product marketing intern at Microsoft. I had one major project, which dealt with the effectiveness of display ads on social and affiliate channels. I was responsible for reviewing content pieces of the past year and quantifying them based on their various front cover attributes, which were the same as the display ads. Upon going through the process of first categorizing the contents (based on title length, wording, presences of a logo or not,) I was responsible for finding patterns among top performers based on form fills and cost per lead and making recommendations for future content creation.
The cool thing about the project was that it gave me exposure to many of Microsoft’s products that I never used as an everyday consumer! I really enjoyed getting to learn about the various target segments and what the company had to offer them! It was a very insightful internship experience.
MBASchooled: What were the important skills you had to use to be an effective PMM Intern?
The most important skills I had to use this past summer were actually a mixture of technical and mostly soft skills. My project was heavily excel based and if I’m being honest I had not used excel to that degree in a while so it required some homework to get going. If I had came in with the excel knowledge, it may have made things much smoother however, I used my communication skills to get acquainted and receive the help I needed. I had a co-worker on my time that was very well seasoned with excel and familiar with my project so I leveraged his understanding to learn from him. We often met twice a week and I would explain what I was doing and my methodologies and this helped to gain clarity on my direction and the outcome of my project.
Also as I was working on a project that included many products, I used some networking skills to meet with the leads of those products to gather information that helped me better grasp those specific products.
MBASchooled: What was it like to be a product marketer this summer, and what did you enjoy most about the PMM role?
My favorite part of being in the PMM role was learning about Microsoft’s various commercial products and really seeing how marketing directly affects how businesses interact with these products. The experience truly confirmed my interest in being a PMM. Although I was working with information from the previous year, I still was interesting and insightful. Observing the customer journey was pretty interesting as various customers have preferred ways in being attained so that was fun to observe.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped? What was hard?
Going into my internship I was nervous about it being online and virtual. I was afraid that I’d be missing a large part of the internship: networking and building relationships. However, it was actually not that bad this summer. I got to meet a lot more people than I thought possible in an online setting. I think accepting the fact that we are online now and creating certain expectations was what allowed me to meet new people. Have realistic expectations and acknowledging that we’re all virtual and going through similar things was good to keep in mind.
I took advantage of various coffee chats, mentorship opportunities, and virtual events to meet other people. I think the most challenging part was reading the room since there wasn’t much of a room as we were online. But to be honest, everyone that I came across and asked to speak to were very kind and forthcoming. People at the company were very open to just booking some time off their calendar and having a chat! I really enjoyed the people I came across this summer!
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
Knowing what I know today, the only things I would have done to prepare myself for going into my internship was brushing up on my technical skills and being more confident when I started my internship. The internship turned out well and I will be returning to the company this summer as a full time employee, but for a smoother internship experience, I would have played around with excel a bit more before starting my internship. I think it would have allowed me to feel a bit more confident coming into the internship. I also wished that I would have been less guarded when I started my internship. Contrary to what many MBAs think, your summer internship is an opportunity to learn and grow, at least at Microsoft. Coming in open minded and willing to grow in the coming 10-12 weeks will lead to the most fulfilling internship experience, as you will learn about the culture of the culture and leave with new found skills.
MBASchooled: What aspects from your previous work experience, or skills you had were relevant in your PMM internship? What were some new skills you had to build or use?
Prior to business school, I used to operate a beauty and lifestyle blog. I am still actually a content creator. My writing skills and eye for creativity came in hand during my internship when I was evaluating various content pieces and assigning their attributes. Choosing on the things I knew had an affect on people’s willingness to engage with a piece of content came easy for me because of my time as a content creator. My writing skills also came in handy as I was dealing with a lot of data that needed to be digested into understandable insights and actionable recommendations. Writing those recommendations also allowed me to improve upon my story telling skills.I don’t think a lot of people realize this but storytelling is very important to the role of a PMM. As PMMs we are responsible for relaying the magic behind our products and their offerings to our clients.
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