Marcus Harris (McCombs, ‘22) spent his MBA Internship as a Product Marketing Manager Intern at Mulesoft. During this interview, Marcus shared what he did during his Product Marketing internship, what he enjoyed about the experience, and his advice for others who are interested in Product Marketing Internships.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship and what projects did you work on?
I was a Product Marketing Manager at MuleSoft, a Salesforce Company. I was tasked with building-up MuleSoft’s marketing assets within the manufacturing industry. Day-to-day, I collaborated with our sales and customer success teams to learn how manufacturers are currently using our product. From these conversations, I began developing new content and use cases specific to manufacturing: webinars, customer stories, and sales enablement decks.
MBASchooled: What initially attracted you to Product Marketing, and how did that play out during your summer internship?
So many things! For starters, MuleSoft is a highly technical product, which makes our job as product marketers extremely rewarding. In my opinion, some products sell themselves — you don’t necessarily need a strong marketing team to sell Clorox Wipes in the middle of a pandemic.
MuleSoft presents a unique challenge, because to the non-IT professional, the impact of an integration platform isn’t always as obvious as the Clorox example. It’s up to us to break down the technical into an impactful narrative that our customers can understand.
MBASchooled: What were the important skills you had to use to be an effective PMM Intern?
I always joke that our team is fluent in metaphors. We are SO GOOD at distilling the complex into easy-to-understand pieces. Outside of storytelling, I’ve also always been in awe at how beautiful this team performs in front of a camera. Salesforce is known for their world-class events like Dreamforce, and my team has excellent presentation and public speaking skills. Finally, a touch of creativity goes a long way! My team is constantly asking how we can elevate our existing content for the customer.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped? What was hard?
It was actually much easier than I expected. Initially, I put pressure on myself to make sure I was “on” in each of our team meetings, since I only had 2-3 touchpoints with the team weekly. I felt pressure to have structured agendas and talking points for every touchpoint, but building relationships is also about being informal. Hearing about someone’s travels, weekend cooking class with the family, a recent hike etc. can go a long way. Fun fact — the state of Idaho drops a giant potato each year to ring in the New Year! This factoid came from a more recent meeting from one of my colleagues, Alexa.
Overall, it felt relatively easy to build relationships, but I think that’s also in large part due to the culture around the team. One of our values at MuleSoft is “be a good human.” I found it fluffy at first until I received a wonderful birthday present from my team 7 days into my internship.
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
I’m not sure there’s any one right way to prepare for your summer internship. What helped in my case is that I was connected to my project manager months before my internship began. I felt that I had a wonderful time working on the team, because she knew my working style and my skill set far in advance. So if it’s possible to build rapport with the team before you start working, you cannot go wrong!
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
My internship was 12 weeks. I felt that I came in swinging for the sky. I had to remind myself multiple times that while 12 weeks is short, running on full speed for 12 weeks can also be exhausting. If I had to redo my internship experience, I would have thought more intentionally about my pacing. I felt ready for a spa day by the time my internship came to an end. Overall, managing the pressure I put on myself was the biggest challenge.
MBASchooled: What was an important lesson that you learned from your summer internship?
I didn’t realize how transferrable my consulting skill set would be. As a consultant, I was always pitching ideas, products, and solutions to my clients. Product marketing can have a similar feel.
I suppose I felt intimidated in my first few weeks, having never come from a marketing role previously. As a result, one of the more important lessons for myself was to trust the skill set I brought to the table. Trust yourself!
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students considering internships in Product Marketing?
The first two weeks of any internship are often the most important. In many ways, it felt like the “add / drop” deadline in business school. I used those two weeks to explore different project opportunities and possibilities for spending my summer. Try to develop a list of “contacts” you’d like to meet before the internship begins. When you start — make those connections right away and use that information to inform your scope of work.
My final piece of feedback — product marketers are authors of their product. And like authors, we all have different writing styles and presentation habits. Let your uniqueness shine throughout the interview process; no team is looking for a product marketer that writes and presents just like everyone else on the team. Product Marketing is as fun as you make it! Enjoy the ride!
Read Marcus’s previous interview with MBASchooled