The top 11 product marketing interview questions include:
1. What’s one of the most effective product marketing strategies you’ve used in the past? What deemed it a success?
2. How have you dealt with customer churn in the past?
3. Who do you think you’ll need to collaborate with in order to succeed in this role?
4. What tool stack have you used in previous product marketing roles?
5. As a product marketer, are you data-driven or creative-driven?
6. What’s a good company or product that’s marketed well? What do you like about their product marketing experience?
7. When launching a new feature, what metrics do you use to determine the success of a campaign?
8. How do you see the product marketing landscape changing in the next 5 years, and what are you doing to prepare for this?
9. Have you ever built or marketed your own product?
10. How do you communicate negative news to users (e.g. downtime or price increases) without increasing churn rates?
11. What are three of the most important things you’ve learnt in your career as a product marketer?
With access to more products than ever, users from across the world have no shortage of alternatives to help solve their problems.
Whether it be digital or physical, it’s easier than ever for brands to now build and ship new products. As a result, it’s also increasingly difficult for these brands to promote their products amongst the noise within their industry.
In order for brands to differentiate their product from competitors, it’s important to have a unique product marketing strategy that helps both acquire and retain users.
The role of a product marketer was created to drive the promotion and adoption of branded products. Unlike general digital marketing roles, product marketers aren’t responsible for managing an overall brand, but are instead tasked with leading the success of an individual product.
This in-depth article covers everything you need to know about becoming a product marketing manager, including:
- An overview of what a product marketing manager does
- Insights about the demand for product marketing managers and their expected salaries
- A detailed guide of the 11 most commonly asked interview questions for product marketers
- A list of the best places to source product marketing manager job opportunities
What does a product marketing manager do?
The position of a product marketing manager can often be confused with different roles across a marketing team.
With the sole objective to promote a product, this position can often fall under several marketing verticals, including; social media, SEO, SEM, and email marketing.
In summary, a product marketing manager is responsible for developing marketing strategies that promote a product, drive user adoption, and maintain user retention.
This position lies at the intersection between marketing, development, and product management itself.
In my personal opinion, a product marketing manager can also be identified as a marketing project manager. By understanding how to best utilize the available skills and resources within a marketing team, this role can develop and execute an effective strategy that integrates across all key marketing channels.
The essential product marketing skills include:
- Analyzing user and market insights to create effective digital strategies
- Work alongside the product and development team to identify core product features for marketing content
- Prepare campaigns to promote new product features and changes, as well as educate existing users and potential customers
- Manage the deployment of campaigns with marketing team members across relevant channels
- Review performance data across each channel to identify trends and areas of opportunity
- Report directly to the founder or CEO to validate the tangible value this work adds to the success of a brand
The average salary for a product marketing manager
If you’re a digital marketer with experience working in a product-driven company, you might be ready to make the switch to become a product marketing manager.
With brands continually releasing more products and features than ever, the demand for qualified product marketing managers is reaching an all-time high. As a result, the average salary for this position has also continued to scale.
According to data from Indeed, the average base salary for a product marketing manager in the U.S is over $123,000 per year.
In comparison, the same data from Indeed has classified the average salary for a social media manager to sit at just under $50,000.
As brands rely on products to drive value to their bottom line, the role of a product marketing manager is an essential component to the overall success of a company.
If you’re ready to make the transition into a product marketing role, you should first identify if you have the necessary skills to be a suitable fit.
If you’re a digital marketer with previous experience working with lead generation or customer acquisition strategies, you’ll be familiar with some of the key components of this role.
Even without direct experience working with products, these key skills can highlight your understanding of user lifecycles, custom acquisition strategies, and user purchasing behaviors.
The top 10 product marketing manager interview questions
If you’re preparing for an interview as a product marketing manager, or even a general product marketing role, it’s important to properly prepare for some of the common questions a hiring manager will ask.
To help you get ready for an interview, I’ve created a detailed list of the most important questions that relate to the position of a product marketing manager.
As a digital marketer myself, I’ve also taken the time to write thoughtful responses that you can repurpose when responding to these queries.
After reading this guide, you’ll be ready to confidently nail any interview and land your dream job.
1. What’s one of the most effective product marketing strategies you’ve used in the past? What deemed it a success?
Why it’s important
In any interview scenario, this question is still one of the most commonly asked queries by hiring managers.
By learning about past examples of your work, it can provide a tangible overview of the skills and experience you have as a product marketer.
Your response to this interview question can be used to analyze your strategic thinking capabilities, the tools you’re capable of using, and the way in which you work.
When a hiring manager can gain a clear insight into the outcomes of your work, it allows them to benchmark your ability to properly measure the value of your future potential.
If you’re a candidate that’s previously worked on similar strategies to those of the hiring company, it can also highlight relevant experience – indicating that you’re qualified to succeed in the new role.
How to best respond
When preparing for this product marketing interview question, I’d suggest taking the time to review a list of tangible examples you’re happy to share.
By analyzing an end-to-end campaign, it will summarize your problem-solving process, as well as your ability to effectively measure performance results.
Start by identifying the initial objective of your campaign. Was there a new product feature you were launching? Perhaps you were tasked to drive product retention and reduce churn.
Use this interview question to articulate the unique approach you took when addressing the campaign.
What specific channels did you choose to utilize throughout the process? What was unique about the campaign messaging?
As it’s more important than ever for product marketers to remain data-driven, you’ll also need to actively share some tangible insights about the campaign performance, and how you were able to measure these results.
Take the time to explain the process of identifying your success metric, then the steps involved in recording this data. Were you required to collaborate with a development team to set up new goal events?
By sharing these specific details, it provides a thorough overview of your working style as a product marketer.
Remember, the more information that you provide, the better chance you’ll have at nailing the interview.
2. How have you dealt with customer churn in the past?
Why it’s important
One of the most common product marketing manager interview questions will often touch base on the importance of handling customer churn.
Regardless of what company you work for as a product marketer, churn is a very real scenario that you’ll face within your day-to-day work.
With customer churn having a significant impact on the overall growth of a brand, it’s an essential problem that qualified product marketers should be comfortable resolving.
By analyzing your ability to resolve customer churn, it highlights both your problem-solving capabilities, as well as your product marketing skills.
Although product marketers are traditionally responsible for directing customer acquisition strategies, it’s the role of a product marketing manager to oversee the entire customer lifecycle – including the scenario of churn.
Product marketing managers need to understand how to develop strategies that resolve these core problems. The best candidate for a role will be one that can provide long-term value, not just a band-aid solution.
How to best respond
Once again, this question will require you to prepare real-world examples from your previous experiences. Has there been a unique scenario where you’ve dealt with customer churn?
I’d recommend to start by emphasizing the insights that allowed you to identify the initial problem, then share your step-by-step process to addressing the issue.
Did the resolution require a new product onboarding experience, or did you have to A/B test alternative product designs?
It’s also important to mention if you openly collaborated with different departments throughout this process. This highlights your ability to understand and effectively communicate across a team.
3. Who do you think you’ll need to collaborate with in order to succeed in this role?
Why it’s important
As product marketing lies at the intersection of so many different roles, it’s important for a product marketing manager to successfully collaborate across different teams.
Whether it be creating social assets with the design team, or adding event analytics with the development team – a product marketer must work closely with different departments to take ownership of outcomes.
As a candidate, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the resources you’ll need to succeed within the role. With clear objectives, it will indicate that you’re ready to hit the ground running once recruited.
How to best respond
Use this time to share an overview of the previous team structure you’re familiar working within.
What role did you play when collaborating across departments? Did you actively lead communication across these internal teams?
What departments did you frequently rely on to deliver outcomes?
You should also use this question as an opportunity to learn more about the resources you’ll have access to within the new role.
If the hiring company doesn’t have an internal design team – and this is a department you’ve previously relied on – you’ll need to identify that this will be necessary to succeed.
By setting a clear precedent throughout the interview phase, it will create realistic benchmarks for the work and outcomes you’ll be expected to generate.
4. What tool stack have you used in previous product marketing roles?
Why it’s important
When onboarding a new product marketing manager, it’s important for teams to identify what tool stack a candidate is currently familiar with using.
Whether it be tools for measuring analytics, creating email workflows, customer communication, or even paid campaigns – these essential tools will play an important role within their position.
If you’re a candidate that has experience utilizing the same tools as the hiring company’s stack, it can help streamline the onboarding process when transitioning into a role.
Having experience with the same tools can also provide reassurance for hiring managers as it sets a benchmark for your ability to perform certain tasks. By understanding how to maximize the capabilities of select tools, it can empower the effectiveness of your overall product marketing strategy.
How to best respond
When responding to this question, take the time to not only outline a list of the tools you’re familiar with, but also the key role they played within your overall product marketing strategy.
Did you use Amplitude for measuring conversion events? Perhaps you’d also used Intercom for both onboarding tours and email workflows.
By taking the time to share a thorough overview of each tool, it highlights your competency to maximize the value derived from each product.
I’d also suggest outlining a list of the tools you helped introduce within your current role. Articulate the initial problem your team experienced, and how you came to the conclusion that the tool would solve this pain point. This showcases your initiative to identify problems and proactively source solutions.
If you’d even like to explore a specific tool, you should use this opportunity to share your interests in learning about this product. If this is a tool that the hiring team actively uses, the recruiter can identify areas of opportunity to help upskill your knowledge.
5. As a product marketer, are you data-driven or creative-driven?
Why it’s important
With access to more data than ever, product marketing managers are now expected to analyze customer insights when building the foundations of their strategies.
At the same time, it’s also just as important to continually build creative experiences that separate marketing strategies from competitors within the industry.
Within each brand, marketing teams will often prioritize different skill sets that cater to both their industry and audience.
As a product marketing manager is responsible for leading not just a team, but also a brands overall strategy, it’s important that they align with the same values and practices of a hiring company.
How to best respond
Before taking part in an interview, I’d recommend researching the company at hand to discover what key skills they internally prioritize. This will allow you to prepare the best response that aligns with their current objectives.
When preparing your response, I’d suggest summarizing a tangible example of a previous campaign that also utilized the same core skills.
Can you remember a campaign that used data-driven insights to influence your decision-making process?
Was there even a creative experience you helped build to better engage your audience?
Take the time to elaborate on the details of the scenario and how you used each skill to guide your strategy.
Additionally, I also recommend sharing any unique skills or certificates you have that are relevant to each category. If you’ve ever completed any design, analytics, or data science courses, these can be credible ways of verifying your skillset.
6. What’s a good company or product that’s marketed well? What do you like about their product marketing experience?
Why it’s important
In a world that’s saturated with new products and experiences, it’s more important than ever for product marketing managers to evaluate the competitive landscape and identify new areas of opportunity.
By monitoring brands and products, marketers can source inspiration and gain insights that will influence their own unique strategies.
Not only does this question help indicate how passionate you are about the industry, but it also highlights your ability to critically analyze a marketing strategy.
Marketers that closely follow brands and products are more likely to remain on the cusp of new trends and best practices. As a result, these are the candidates that are most likely to succeed throughout an interview.
How to best respond
Think hard and answer these questions…
What are your favorite products that you use each day?
Can you identify what exactly it is that you love about them?
Now, outside of the product itself, how does this brand leverage digital platforms to continually keep you engaged?
If nothing currently comes to mind, allocate some time before the interview to start experimenting with a handful of products within a similar vertical to the hiring company.
Take this time to analyze everything about the product itself, as well as the brands marketing strategy.
Are there any particular aspects you found to be engaging?
It could be something as simple as the organic social content they publish to educate users, or even the retargeting ad experiences you received after initially visiting their website.
By noting these experiences, it will not only help you better prepare for an interview, but will also make you a better product marketing manager in general.
7. When launching a new feature, what metrics do you use to determine the success of a campaign?
Why it’s important
Having the ability to clearly define and measure key metrics is an essential skill for any product marketing manager. With access to so many unique tools and metrics, identifying which core data to measure can quickly become overwhelming.
This interview question allows a hiring manager to gain a real-world insight into the strategic approach you’d take as their product marketing manager.
By understanding what core metrics you’d prioritize, it can uncover an alignment with the same outcomes they deem to be the most valuable to their business.
How to best respond
As a candidate, it’s important to not just share a list of the metrics you’d like to measure, but instead, also be specific about how you’d actually measure each individual metric.
For example, if you’d like to measure the conversion rate of users who have completed the onboarding process for a new feature, you can highlight that you’d need to first integrate tools like Intercoms product tours.
By providing specific examples, it not only highlights your knowledge of industry best practices, but also your thought process as a product marketing manager.
When answering this question, I’d also recommend focussing on a key North Star metric. As Mixpanel states, a North Star metric is;
“One measurement that’s most predictive of a company’s long-term success. To qualify as a “North Star,” a metric must do three things: lead to revenue, reflect customer value, and measure progress.”
By focusing on a North Star metric, it showcases your ability to think beyond basic analytics by measuring performance results that impact the business as a whole.
If a new feature is launched, a North Star metric could be the total number of users who upgraded their accounts to pay for this new addition.
By striving to measure this performance goal, it encapsulates all additional core metrics that are required to reach this end result.
In order to enhance custom adoption, you’ll first need to drive awareness, education, then conversion across all of your marketing channels.
8. How do you see the product marketing landscape changing in the next 5 years, and what are you doing to prepare for this?
Why it’s important
As the digital landscape continues to evolve at such a rapid scale, it’s never been more important for product marketing managers to remain at the forefront of new industry trends.
By asking a product marketer this interview question, it allows a hiring manager to clearly understand how passionate a candidate is about the industry.
Effective product marketing managers are those who can analyze external factors outside of their daily roles, then determine how these will influence their overall strategy.
If a candidate shares the same vision for the industry as a hiring company, it will often lead to a better match as they can work towards the same collective goals and objectives.
How to best respond
Before responding to this question, it’s important to remember that there’s no right or wrong answers. What is important, however, is being able to effectively justify your beliefs.
If you believe the industry is set to evolve in a particular way, share some insights about how you came to this conclusion.
Do you have any data or past experiences that can support these assumptions?
Prepare some key user trends that you’ve noticed from your past role, as well as any strategies that can help capitalize on these insights.
If you didn’t have access to this kind of data, you should consider sharing a list of resources you’ve used to help influence your decision. Are there any key product marketing blogs you read that have shared useful insights?
By summarizing a list of these resources, it emphasizes your passion for the industry by proactively engaging with resources outside of work.
9. Have you ever built or marketed your own product?
Why it’s important
Although this question isn’t essential in all product marketing interviews, it’s often used to gain a further understanding of your experience and product marketing skills.
If you’re a product marketer that’s previously experimented with side projects, this additional work shows relevant experience, as well as your initiative to take ownership of tasks.
If you haven’t gained experience throughout your full-time positions, you may have built relevant knowledge by working on a side project.
The best way to gain experience is often by creating it yourself.
How to best respond
If you’re a candidate that does have experience building their own product, take this time to share a detailed overview of not just what you built, but everything you learnt throughout the experience.
Share the tools you used, the strategies you created, and the results of the process.
It’s even helpful to outline your reason for creating the product to begin with. Were you interested in building a business, or were you simply looking to gain your own experience?
If you were fortunate enough to also work alongside others throughout this process, you should share the relevant experience you had managing these team members.
If you’re a product marketer that doesn’t have any official full-time management experience, this time in your side project can be a nascent indication of your management capabilities.
10. How do you communicate negative news to users (e.g. downtime or price increases) without increasing churn rates?
Why it’s important
When promoting new features and product information, the traditional role of a product marketer is often quite exciting.
It’s also inevitable, however, that these marketers will need to deliver essential information to users throughout negative events. These can include experiences like price increases or product downtime.
Understanding how to properly handle and communicate negative news to customers will often separate a good product marketer from a bad one. By maintaining effective communication with users, it can influence the overall churn rates throughout these periods.
It’s essential for hiring managers to understand how a candidate would triage these negative scenarios. A product marketing manager needs to be effective at all areas of their role – throughout both the good times and bad.
How to best respond
If you’re an existing product marketer, you’re more than likely to have experienced a scenario in which you’d had to deliver bad news to customers.
Throughout this experience, what was the process you followed to deliver this news?
Did you remain as transparent and authentic as possible?
Beyond this, can you explain what role each channel played when delivering this negative news?
Did you choose to send a personalized email to each customer, or did you simply publish a social post announcing the news?
By sharing your entire thought process, it can summarize how well you’ll maintain and prioritize future relationships with customers.
11. What are three of the most important things you’ve learnt in your career as a product marketer?
Why it’s important
This product marketing interview question is often left towards the end as a way to summarize a candidates overall experience.
Hiring managers will often evaluate a candidates takeaways to identify what key experience they can bring to a team. Ultimately, these takeaways will be used to determine how successful a candidate will be in the position.
How to best respond
As a candidate, your response to this question should aim to summarize the three key areas that you’re confident to deliver as a product marketing manager.
The key areas I recommend covering include:
- The most effective way to acquire users
As user acquisition is a core focus for product marketers, it’s important to share the most valuable takeaway you’ve learnt from your experience acquiring customers.
Has there been a particular channel or strategy that has helped drive the most users at a cost-effective rate?
2. The most effective way to retain users
After acquiring users, it’s just as important to identify how to retain these individuals and reduce churn rates.
Throughout your experience in previous roles, what’s been the most effective strategy for retaining customers and driving product revenue?
3. The most effective way to work with a team
As a product marketing manager, managing a team and driving performance outcomes is an essential part of the role.
When working alongside others, how have you made use of the available team resources to help you succeed in your role?
By highlighting your experience across these three key areas, it will indicate that you’re a suitable fit for any product marketing manager role.
Where to find the best product marketing roles
Now that you’re ready to nail your next product marketing interview, you can begin the process of researching for the best opportunities that align with your interests.
With access to so many job boards and available roles, knowing where to begin can be overwhelming.
To help you get started, I’d recommend dedicating some time to identify what specific requirements are important to you within a role.
Is there a particular industry you’re passionate about? Are there any specific types of products you have experience working with?
More importantly, it’s essential to also identify what style of team environment you’d like to work within throughout your day-to-day.
Do you value working in an environment with a flat organization structure? Is cross-department collaboration important to you?
If you’re unsure about the values that are important to you, I’d suggest taking five minutes to analyze this list and make note of the ones that resonate the most.
Once you have a specific search criteria, it’ll streamline the process of filtering for the most relevant job opportunities.
When searching for the best product marketing jobs, these are the top four platforms to get started:
1. AngelList
As a community platform connecting the startup landscape, AngelList features a directory of brands that are building unique products across all industries.
The AngelList job board allows you to easily filter through a list of job roles, as well as companies, helping you quickly source the most relevant opportunities.
One of my favorite features about AngelList is the process of applying for a role. As each application is sent to the founder of the company, it allows you to include a personalized message, increasing your chances of becoming the successful candidate.
2. Built In
Built In is a series of platforms that services each major tech hub within the U.S.
From San Francisco, to New York, and even Los Angeles, each dedicated platform features the most relevant updates and information about startups within these locations.
The Built In job board constantly features a stream of new jobs specifically in product-based startups. Whether it be a new team that’s recently raised an angel round, through to a publicly-traded company – there’s a myriad of roles to cater for product marketers with any interest.
3. We Work Remotely
With remote work becoming ubiquitous across all industries, there’s never been a better opportunity to source a flexible work opportunity.
With over 2.5 million monthly visitors, We Work Remotely is one of the leading job boards for discovering remote work roles.
As the platform primarily services brands within the startup landscape, it’s common to find remote roles specifically for product-based marketing positions.
4. ClickThrough
I’ve built ClickThrough as a culture-driven directory of marketing teams. The platform allows companies to identify their core culture values and share how they translate into daily practices.
With the goal of servicing brands across the startup landscape, most featured marketing teams are focussed on scaling their product adoption within their respected industry.
If you’re ready to find your next marketing opportunity, ClickThrough is a great place to begin your search by identifying teams that share your personal values.
There’s never been a better time to explore a career as a product marketing manager. With the scale of product-based brands continually growing, the demand for product marketers is set to only increase over time.
As you begin the process of finding suitable job opportunities, use this list of interview questions for product marketing managers to help best prepare for any scenario. When you can articulate the most appropriate responses, you’ll significantly increase your chances of success.
If you’re a Product Marketing Manager based in San Francisco, I’ve recently highlighted the best places to find jobs at high-growth startups in the Bay Area.
