Hiring your first (product) marketer

“I'm hiring our first marketer. What do I need?”. I get asked this all the time. Here's my advice after 15 years of building teams at Atlassian, Intercom, and Loom, and advising early-stage founders.

I’ve built early marketing teams at three unicorns. I made some great hires and some not-so-great hires along the way. Some of the best went on to build teams of their own at Intercom, Figma, Loom, and Zapier. 15 years on, I‘ve formed some strong opinions on what to look for in your first marketing hire.

Start with a product marketer

I’m biased, but I’ve seen this movie enough times to have high confidence that you will rarely go wrong by making your first marketer a product marketer. Why? To answer that, we first need to take a step back and understand what we mean by marketing itself.

Unpacking “marketing”

It’s a loaded term. And it’s why almost every founder you ask will have a different answer to “What do you want from marketing?”. Some know. Some don’t. And it’s not surprising because marketing is multi-faceted.

I’ve written before about how marketing should be involved at every stage of the funnel, from the first point of contact to the decision to purchase to ongoing product education. That’s why it’s a mistake to think that marketing is a single team – it’s a function of many.

The many facets of “marketing” in a B2B SaaS company

The fact is marketing is an umbrella term for many teams – each with differentiated sets of core skills – united around creating, capturing, and converting demand. So, why hire a product marketer first?

If you build it, they’ll come stick around

There’s no point in spending a bunch of money to acquire new customers if you haven’t figured out how to communicate what you’ve built and why people should care. People will land on your website and bounce. They’ll close the tab and move on with their lives. Product marketing can help prevent this.

The role of product marketing

There’s already plenty of great content out there about what product marketing is (👏 The Product Marketer) and what it isn’t (👏 Emily Kramer of MKT1). I won’t pile on. Instead, I’ll simply say this:

Product marketing should help you build what you sell and sell what you build

That’s something that every business needs. And it requires a specific type of individual. One that’s expected to wear many hats and be a jack of all trades. So, here’s what to look for when you’re trying to hire “the one”.

Top traits of the best product marketers

You’ve probably heard of an Ideal Customer Profile. Well, here’s my take on the Ideal PMM Profile:

1. They are exceptional communicators
They have world-class written, verbal, and visual communication skills. They can adapt to and win over both internal and external audiences.

2. They are curious about the product, the customer, and the market
They always have their finger on the pulse. This gives them intimate knowledge of the key ingredients for crafting compelling narratives and developing winning marketing (and product) strategies.

3. They are a trusted partner to product
They have opinions that are desired vs. required. They’re able to earn their seat at the product table. This puts them in a position to not just influence product strategy but actually help develop it.

4. They are incredible storytellers
They think creatively while maintaining clarity. They craft stories that command attention and motivate action. Whether the market is crowded or nascent, the best PMMs define and own their product's position in it.

5. They are natural collaborators
There are few roles more cross-functional in nature than product marketing. Knowing how to work well with others, but more importantly, with whom and when, is key to success and building trust.

6. They are analytically savvy
They might not know how to write SQL, but they can read and pull out insights from data, develop hypotheses and ask the right questions to validate or invalidate.

7. They think full-funnel
They care about the entire customer journey. They deeply understand what levers can be pulled to optimize each stage. No change is made without consideration for its impact on the experience as a whole.

8. They crave outcomes over output
They know that less can be more, know how and when to say no, and hold themselves and others accountable to measurable results.

9. They have deep empathy for the customer
They understand their wants, separate those from their needs, and always have an eye toward improving the customer experience, whether that be through marketing, product, or both.

10. They build what you sell and sell what you build
They know their role is getting people to understand what you're building. And why they should care about what you're building. They understand that product and marketing are two sides of the same coin.

Your mileage may vary

These are just my own opinions based on what I've learned building and growing product marketing teams at Atlassian, Intercom, and Loom. And from advising many founders at early-stage companies along the way.

There will always be many flavors of product marketing based on the specific needs and stage of the product and business. But, I strongly believe these characteristics to be universally true of the best product marketers regardless of their specific focus.

Happy hiring. And good luck.