After realizing she could combine her interest in tech, data-driven decision making, and products, Nathalia Borges (Fuqua, ‘21) decided to recruit for product marketing internships and landed an opportunity at Microsoft. During her summer internship, Nathalia got the chance to work on key PMM projects such as building the go-to-market strategy for a new launch. During this interview, Nathalia shared why she chose product marketing, her internship experience, and her advice for MBA students interested in product marketing.
MBASchooled: What initially attracted you to Product Marketing?
I was attracted to product marketing because of the opportunity of translating the product to the world, the data-driven decision-making process of marketing in technology companies, and the exposure to the engineering and design of products. The concept of positioning a product in the market and using data to adapt and improve it resonated with me. I also liked the idea of serving as the connection point between customers and the product/engineering team, and to accurately represent the voice of the customer.
MBASchooled: What did you do for your summer internship and what projects did you work on?
I interned at Microsoft as a Product Marketing Manager in the Azure Customer Success team. My main project was focused on building the positioning and go-to-market strategy for a new Azure service available to improve the quality of cloud architecture. The idea was to show the value recommended best practices and recommendations would bring to the customers’ results. To achieve these mains goals, I interacted daily with the cloud engineers to build the value proposal for the service and was constantly validating my ideas with the sales and partner teams to come up with a single message useful for all channels.
Therefore, my key deliverables were the Messaging and Positioning Framework for this architecture service, a detailed go-to-market strategy for its launch considering all Microsoft channels and some customer facing assets for initial presentation about the theme. Additionally, I was also involved with some Diversity and Inclusion initiatives in the company, creating group discussions about allyship in my organization and among the intern class, and participating in a project to increase awareness about mental health issues.
MBASchooled: What were the important skills you had to use to be an effective PMM Intern?
To be successful in an internship as a PMM, one must intensely explore cross-functional work and negotiation skills. In Microsoft, the PMMs are the owners of a big part of the product strategy and that means connecting the interests and goals of many different areas into working for the same unified product goal.
In terms of marketing requirements, some fundamental marketing frameworks really help regarding doing messaging and positioning of a product/service and creating go-to-market strategies.
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?
Some aspects of my previous experience that were extremely relevant to my PMM internship were my negotiation and analytical skills, given that in my project I was exposed to many different teams and had to have a lot of support content to come up with one unified strategy for the product.
That said, among some skills I developed in the summer, one of the most important ones was my project management capacity since I had to organize remotely not only the content for the strategy but also approval from 9 different areas and dozens of different stakeholders.
MBASchooled: What was it like to build relationships virtually? What helped? What was hard?
Building relationships virtually was very different from what we all expected from an ordinary in-person internship. Although I had the expectation of living the experience of being on campus and meeting people in person in professional and social settings, I believe we all adjusted our ways of connecting under the new circumstances. Although the virtual setting demands more intentionality to reach out and network with new people, the company and its employees figured out many new ways to make people relate to each other.
Employee Resource Groups (some close to affinity/diversity clubs in the MBA) played a big part in connecting people who have something in common and a series of social events facilitated by Microsoft also showed the importance of keeping the community close (even senior leadership would participate to set an example).
MBASchooled: What people (ex: teams, roles, etc) did you work most within your internship?
During my summer, I had an extremely cross-functional experience, being the connection point between many different teams among engineering, communications, market research, finance, sales, and partners.
Since my project was focused on translating and showing the value of technical service for developers, I had a very close relationship with the engineering teams to understand what we were offering more than our competitors and why our customers would benefit from that service.
MBASchooled: Knowing what you know now, what would you do to prepare in order to be even more successful in your internship?
Since I had a strong background in analytics but not specifically in marketing, I would have prepared more for the communications piece of my internship.
Even though a big part of my experience was about learning the technicalities of the product I was working with and creating a strategy to highlight its value, I also had many deliverables on the communication strategy for iterating with the customer. For that, marketing frameworks would have been extremely helpful.
MBASchooled: What was a challenge that you had to overcome or work through?
Like in many other internships this summer, the remote nature of my experience turned out to be more challenging regarding personal connections. Even though Microsoft hosted countless networking and social sessions, those didn’t compensate for the interaction we would have had with employees and other interns. However, this difficulty was overcome with more intentionality in reaching out to people, participating in meaningful conversations, and connecting with peers.
Another thing I would highlight was that my internship occurred in a moment of a lot of social distress, because of COVID and other issues happening in the world. Working remotely in this critical moment was a unique experience, but I was extremely impressed at Microsoft’s efforts to talk about important issues and support all employees to participate in initiatives that would make a difference for the company’s internal and external community. I was even given the opportunity of organizing allyship sessions in my team and among the other interns, also helping me to connect with people while talking about important topics.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for MBA students considering internships in Product Marketing?
For MBA students that are interested in Product Marketing, I would recommend understanding the industry and having some previous preparation on marketing frameworks and theories. Because the PMM is basically the connection between the customers/market and engineers/PMs, understanding the industry and some technicalities of the product/service is extremely valuable to have more effective interactions.
Also, knowing what are some of the powerful frameworks for PMMs (such as Messaging and Positioning Frameworks) can help one to hit the ground running when starting a Product Marketing Internship and be a little more prepared to have initial suggestions (other than learning everything on the job).
Additional Reading: