Quynton Johnson is a Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, and a MBA Student at the University of San Francisco. We spoke to Quynton about his career journey and how he got into product marketing, his responsibilities in his current role, and his advice for those interested in careers in product marketing
MBASchooled: What did you do prior to Product Marketing?
Prior to Product Marketing, I worked in Property Management for a large firm called Greystar. The role I held consisted of managing a 200-unit apartment building, ensuring that the building occupancy remained at company standard so the building remained profitable. My role consisted of creating all marketing materials to create awareness of available occupancies for the building, performing a monthly pricing analysis to determine if the buildings rents were competitively priced for its local market, and scheduling and performing all showroom demonstrations for prospective tenants.
Property Management was never an industry I aspired to be in. Like many students coming out of under-grad, I struggled finding entry-level positions. After submitting at least one hundred applications to tech companies around the Bay Area, with absolutely no responses, I decided to take whichever role was offered to me. Greystar gave me the opportunity to generate some sort of income, and allowed me to relocate to the Bay Area, where I knew I wanted to be long-term. During my time with Greystar, I began developing my professionalism, while also building a network, so I could eventually find myself within the tech world.
Working in tech was always something that I dreamed of. I’ve always loved playing with and being around all sorts of technologies. I even worked at a local Best Buy during my undergraduate years for this very reason. However, attending a state school in Northern California, with the reputation of being a party school, didn’t help secure keyword searches for recruiters looking to fill entry-level positions at top tech companies at the time. That, coupled with a lack of a professional personal network made it extremely difficult for my resumé to generate any attention. I knew I’d have to take the time to add valuable bullet points to my resumé in order for me to be viewed as a viable candidate for competitive tech roles.
MBASchooled: How did you break into product marketing? What were the skills or experiences from your past role that helped you transition into Product Marketing?
After spending a little more than two years working with Greystar, I was fortunate enough to secure a role as a Product Marketing Associate with an educational technology company called Cengage. Little did I know at the time that the work I did at Greystar of creating marketing materials, crafting a competitive pricing structure based on my buildings local market, and positioning and demonstrating my buildings availability to attract potential tenants would translate into a career in Product Marketing.
The accomplishments that I had achieved while working for Greystar, caught the attention of the Director of Marketing at Cengage, which ultimately led to her granting me the opportunity to to work in my first Product Marketing role. To this day, I remain close friends and a professional mentee to the Director of Marketing I had while I was with Cengage.
MBASchooled: How did you get to LinkedIn?
I was fortunate enough to have been recruited to work at LinkedIn. At the time, I was working as the lone PMM for a medium-sized Point of Sale organization called Revel Systems. The accomplishments that I had while with Revel, coupled with my MBA candidacy, was enough to trigger keyword searches to catch the eye of the recruiter for my current position.
Overall, my interview process was a little over two months, and included rounds of phone and on-site interviews, and a project.
MBASchooled: In your role as a PMM now, what are your responsibilities? What’s an example of a project/deliverable that you work on?
As a PMM, I play a pivotal role in shaping the product roadmap through competitive insight, product positioning, go-to-market strategies, and the execution of critical launches that push the brand and business forward. I work each day with a cross-functional team of product managers, data scientists, engineers, marketers, and salespeople to build and launch products globally – from initial market validation, positioning & messaging to go-to-market strategy and launch execution. As a PMM, I also own the user and product insights by performing market analysis that allows me to understand how users engage across products. This analysis is what gives me the know-how to create actionable insights that inform product strategy.
While I was with Revel, we launched a new line of ancillary products and a fresh UI for our core product. As the PMM, I was able to work on every essential element from the development of the product, the development of the market, and ultimately create the launch plan for our new products. For product development, I brought my knowledge of the consumer to aid in designing our products and helped my product managers decide which features the product should consist of.
MBASchooled: Now that you are in business school, what aspects of your MBA program have been helpful to your role as a PMM?
I decided to embark on an MBA journey to expand my business knowledge and learn more about how all business elements connect and intertwine with each other. While I had been a PMM before I started my MBA, I admittedly didn’t know much about how a business works outside of what I had done in product marketing.
During my MBA program, I’ve had the opportunity to take courses on business operations, finance, data science, and engineering elements. While I’ll never be an expert in these fields (no one can be an expert after taking one course), it’s helped me understand the work my colleagues do and how it relates to my work in product marketing. Since my role is mainly cross-functional, having the knowledge that I’ve obtained during my MBA program has made me a better partner, as I’m now equipped to ask more pointed questions to help my team find business solutions. The ability to ask good questions is one of the top skills I’ve acquired during my MBA program.
MBASchooled: What skills or experiences in an MBA program would be helpful to MBA students who are interested in Product Marketing roles after an MBA?
For MBA students interested in a career in product marketing, I would recommend focusing on honing your research skills and synthesizing research findings. The ability to perform the market analysis is one of the critical elements of product marketing, as the study will be a catalyst towards developing recommendations on product development.
I recommend taking courses around market research, market strategy, data visualization, and spreadsheet building. It also wouldn’t hurt to take any intensive writing courses.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students who are interested in breaking into PMM, either for an Internship, or Full-Time opportunity?
I would recommend that students engage in as many product marketing related conversations as they can. MBA students should study product marketing LinkedIn profiles to gather ideas about which skills they currently have and should build upon, or which skills they need to learn. MBA students should focus on building their narrative for why they want to be in product marketing and how their MBA experience will propel them in that direction.
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