Product Marketing Spotlight Series: Tamara Grominsky

Crayon's Product Marketing Spotlight is an interview series where we chat with product marketers to get a glimpse into their careers and gain unique insight into product marketing strategy. In this edition of Product Marketing Spotlight Series, we shine the light on Tamara Grominsky, Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce.

ED: What is your role?

TG: I’m the Director of Product Marketing at Unbounce. I lead the product marketing department and manage the go-to-market strategy, including segmentation, messaging, pricing, feature adoption, and product launch.

ED: What does the company do?

TG: Unbounce is a landing page builder that helps SMBs convert more sales, leads, and customers. We help marketers create and optimize dedicated landing pages that prompt visitors with one focused goal instead of sending traffic to generic websites with plenty of distractions. Over the past decade, we’ve facilitated more than half a billion conversions, so we’ve really fine-tuned the path to conversion.

ED: How much of your day-to-day involves competitive intelligence? 

TG: Most of my days are spent building revenue and product strategies, and socializing them with other stakeholders across the organization. However, in order to build an impactful strategy, I need to understand our position in the market, and how Unbounce compares to others. Competitive intelligence is a foundational layer of every strategy the product marketing team develops.

ED: Did you always know you wanted to be in Product Marketing? What led you to where you are today?

TG: Product marketing definitely wasn’t on my radar when I was in school.

I studied professional writing in university and always imagined myself working in publishing. But, I completed a digital publishing class in grad school that completely changed my trajectory. Instead of waiting months to publish a magazine or book, suddenly I could create something online and then publish it immediately. Instead of going into media, I decided to pursue digital marketing instead. 

Working at an agency, I discovered I was really energized by the business side of marketing. I started asking questions like, “How do we decide how much to charge our clients,” “Is there a specific type of client that is more successful than others,” and “How should we position our services in order to close the deal?” A friend of mine who worked at Yellow Pages Canada mentioned they were looking for someone to bring a new digital marketing product to market. I jumped at the chance to combine my expertise in marketing with my newfound interest in business and go-to-market, and luckily I got the job! 

ED: What are your top three product launch tips?

TG: 

1. Ensure that product marketing is involved in the product development process from the very beginning to help define the market opportunity, business impact, and go-to-market strategy. 
2. Align on the customer problem and build a measurement plan with Product Management as soon as possible. Make sure you are both working towards the same goal, and have a shared definition of success.
3. Build one messaging framework that is the main source of truth for the launch. This will ensure that all of your stakeholders speak about the product in the same way and will help to amplify your message.
   

ED: Product marketers have a lot of different responsibilities. How do you prioritize what to focus on?

TG: I always start by asking, “What are the biggest business challenges?” I want my team to focus on high impact projects that impact the entire organization. From there, I narrow down the shortlist based on urgency (does something need to be done immediately) and the challenges my team is uniquely qualified to solve.

ED: What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a job in product marketing? 

TG: First, spend time developing customer empathy. The best product marketers I know are customer obsessed. 

Second, build your business acumen. A product marketer needs to understand the fundamentals of how a business works, and which levers they can pull to create growth. The ability to complete opportunity sizing, business casing and segmentation analysis are critical to being successful in the role. 

Third, immerse yourself in the industry. Attend PMM conferences like Product Marketing World, and take a training course from Pragmatic Institute or Reforge.

ED: How have you seen product marketing evolve since you’ve been in the space? And how do you think the role of a product marketer will change within the next few years?

TG: The old work of product marketing was focused on execution and “in the weed” tactics. PMMs spent their time building sales collateral and marketing content. But, the role of product marketing is evolving. The new world of product marketing is now rooted in strategy, and focuses on high impact work like pricing, segmentation, and growth models. 

I believe the role will continue to evolve into a highly strategic function that supports the entire business - I often refer to product marketing as an internal management consulting team. Our unique value lies in our ability to solve complex problems, identify patterns, and tell compelling stories.

ED: What is the best career advice you’ve ever received? 

TG: Take time to understand your own secret sauce. What combination of skills can you offer that no one else can? Write your own value prop and position yourself the way you would position a product.

ED: If you were given a free trip to anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go?

TG: The Italian Riviera! There’s nothing more enjoyable than a glass of Italian wine, homemade pasta and Mediterranean views.