Vignesh Jeyaraman (McCombs, ‘20) was a Data Analyst in the Financial Services industry before deciding to pursue his MBA at UT-McCombs. During his first year, Vignesh discovered his interest in data, tech products, and marketing made him a great fit for Product Marketing, which led him to an internship and full-time role in that field. During our conversation, Vignesh spoke about his journey to discovering Product Marketing, and his advice for MBA students who are curious about the role.
MBASchooled: What did you do before business school, and why did you choose to go?
I used to work at Capital One as a Data Analyst – I sat on the analyst side of the problem as we’d dig out information that helped answer customer segmentation and product experience questions. We later moved several of these algorithms to the cloud packaged into their own min-products which introduced me to the rigors of product management. This, combined with a desire to actually be able to make decisions based on the data I was seeing (it’s frustrating just presenting the data and not being involved in discussions!) was why I decided to pursue B-School.
As an international student, it was also an extremely enticing opportunity to explore another country and gain perspectives that I could not back home.
MBASchooled: What did you want to do for your internship? How did you then discover product marketing?
I was pretty sold on being in ‘product management’ as a large umbrella and initially hunted just for cloud-based software PM roles (think Adobe, Salesforce, etc.) thinking it’d be easiest for me to break in given my experiences. As I began talking about my experiences and touched on aspects like the customer segmentation work, there was a consensus that that experience could be incredibly useful in PMM work and that my quant skills could be leveraged a ton there.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the McCombs marketing conference (and case competition!) which was the first time I worked with peers and tech companies on solving a marketing problem and I realized I had immense fun and was perfectly challenged solving those problems. After which, it became much easier to narrow down on PMM.
MBASchooled: One of the common challenges is that product marketing roles can look very different. How did you navigate through this?
Honestly, I didn’t. There were definitely days and informational chats where I was ‘flying blind’ and piecing together what a certain role might look like. It takes a ton of trial and error (or a helpful blogger like you!) to wade through the myriad of designations and responsibilities. It doesn’t make it any easier that every company has a different interpretation of a role.
My piece of advice would be to identify sectors (B2B v B2C, Software v Hardware, Small vs Large) within the tech industry that interest you from a marketing perspective and then dive deep into specific roles for that company. I say that because typically that dictates how the marketing and sales are structured and you will find many overlapping roles (maybe named differently). This also helped me be mindful and targeted when I asked questions of people and helped it make less surface level for both of us. Having said all that, I think it’s important to not get too caught up in the weeds of a role as it’s impossible to guarantee that a role is just perfect!
MBASchooled: When you were interviewing for PMM internships, how did you connect your experience to specific aspects of the PMM role?
I leaned heavily on my experience working with data to show what I could bring to the table. Like I’d mentioned earlier, a bunch of my work revolved around customer segmentation models and that translated naturally to a marketing skillset. I was also able to demonstrate that I’d be confident in hunting for proof to back my claims up and hypothesize answers to problems based on a thorough understanding of the information I was presented.
Secondly, I was able to show recruiters that I had worked successfully with a ton of different people. Most roles needed someone who could work cross-functionally and I demonstrated that I could speak the language of developers, analysts, or execs.
Finally, it also helped me that Capital One is a very tech-forward company and a lot of the workaround moving information to the cloud and using analytics tools meant that I could also talk about the applications of a lot of the products I wanted to work with.
MBASchooled: During your time in business school, what activities, experiences, classes, etc were valuable to you in building skills to be a PMM?
I would highly recommend any introductory marketing, pricing, and brand management classes just so one can get a footing for the various areas of marketing in general. Beyond that, I think I found value in diving deep into the tech industry as far as classes went. It’s remarkable how fast things are changing and I feel like without the ability to disconnect and just ‘study’ the tech industry it’s extremely challenging to piece together a macro-level understanding.
I also really enjoyed hands-on work. I was a case competition fiend and hunted down almost every PM/PMM case competition I could find. I also had the chance to work with HP on a semester-long consulting engagement and worked on market research in the gaming space. This quite, fortunately, turned out to be something Dell was super interested in when they interviewed me! But beyond that too, just working with a PMM team across a whole semester helped me find answers to questions I didn’t even know I had!
MBASchooled: As a product marketer, what are some examples of some of your responsibilities in your job?
I work on Workstations for Dell. This means that it’s the hardware B2B space just for the context. My primary responsibility is to make sure that the right customers receive the right messaging about my product. When buying a workstation, customers often don’t understand the right solution for them. A lot of my work involves understanding their use cases and tuning our offerings to line up with that. I try to demystify the process and develop campaigns, messaging, and presentations that help customers.
Secondly, (and maybe even more importantly), I need to empower my Salespeople. This means that any salesperson around any corner of the globe needs to feel confident enough about my product that they can go accurately target customers and make the perfect pitch that wins them the bid. This involves internal sales training, frequent conversations across regions to see what is working and what is not working, that way I can inform and enable other regions accordingly. This tends to peak closer to a product launch and tends to die down as sales become more comfortable with the product itself.
There are a few functions that I am not directly responsible for such as pricing and product planning, but I do have leverage over these decisions if I believe that they are urgent and will make a significant impact.
MBASchooled: Now that you are in a product marketing role, what are some examples of skills you built-in business school that you use in your role as a product marketer?
In terms of tangible skills – an MBA provided me with the frameworks and tools to evaluate everyday decisions. This could be pricing decisions or handling customer feedback or analyzing large volumes of data. These skills almost become my toolbox when I approach any problem that I’m looking at.
More importantly, though I think are the intangibles – namely an ability to understand the priorities and roles of different stakeholders involved in a project. Before school, I would have very little idea what an Operations Manager might do, or how a corporate accountant might account for my product’s performance, not to mention roles related to people management and non-product related verticals like Brand. An MBA allowed me to interact with people who were going to be doing very different things to me and understand the skills, priorities, and deliverables that drove them. This helps me navigate cross-functional product teams where I don’t have any hierarchical leverage but still need people to do things for me!
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students who are considering transitioning into product marketing roles?
Talk to people, and find products (or on a smaller scale, a company) that excites you.
It’s almost impossible to navigate the tech recruiting landscape without in-depth conversations about product development and marketing life cycles at various firms. B2B, B2C. Social Media, SAAS, Analytics, Hardware, and/or Software products all have very different product development and product marketing atmospheres.
Talking to alum and other connections can help fill in the dots and give you a sense of a day in the life of someone in that role. Secondly, I think it is extremely energizing to be excited about the products that you work on. This means you have to be tuned into tech blogs, influencers, and magazines. Keep an eye out for the way the industry is changing and find your niche within that. It happened to me where I thought I was 100% going to end up in a software firm before I worked with HP during my MBA, and this led to me realizing that hardware was the kind of product that I was more excited about working with.
To summarize I think that finding the right space within the tech industry is extremely confusing and the more intentional we can be about that, the faster we probably end up in the right place for us!