So you’ve landed an interview for a product marketing role—congrats! Now, it’s time to prepare. But where do you begin? What can you do to make sure you do well in the interview and get the job as a product marketer?
Use The Muse to find a job at a company with a culture you love. Select the career path that aligns with you:
Know that you’re not the only one who is wondering these things! I did too when I was getting ready for my first product marketing interview. I have now not only worked as a product marketer for a while, but I have also hired product marketers and helped people who want to become product marketers through the interview process. It is possible to get your first job in product marketing if you know what the job entails and prepare well for the interview.
So you’ve landed an interview for a product marketing role—congrats! Now it’s time to prepare so you can nail the interview and land the job
As a product marketer myself, I know firsthand how daunting and stressful preparing for product marketing interviews can be. But with the right understanding of the role and thorough preparation, you can confidently ace your interview.
In this article, I’ll share the 12 most common product marketer interview questions, examples of strong answers, and tips to help you stand out.
What Skills Do Product Marketers Need?
Before you go through the interview questions, you should know what skills companies look for in product marketers.
Product marketing is sometimes the job of customer success, marketing, product management, and sales, but this varies from company to company. Experience in these areas is extremely valuable.
Regardless of your background, these core competencies make a stellar product marketer:
-
Communication skills: Product marketers must craft compelling messages for various audiences. Strong written and verbal communication is essential.
-
Customer insight: Product marketers should deeply understand the customer. Use empathy and research to uncover their challenges and motivations.
-
Collaboration skills: Product marketers regularly work cross-functionally. Being able to collaborate with diverse groups is critical.
-
Process and project management: Juggling multiple projects and deadlines comes with the territory. Organization and leadership skills are a must.
-
Prioritization: With numerous competing demands, product marketers must identify and focus on top priorities.
Bring these skills, plus passion for the role, and you’ll be off to a strong start in your product marketing interview.
Now let’s look at some of the most common product marketer interview questions and how to prepare winning answers.
1. What’s an Example of a Product With Poor Marketing?
This classic marketing question tests your knowledge, creativity, and thought process.
How to answer: Avoid trying to identify the “right” answer. Instead, share an example you can expand on to demonstrate your understanding of marketing, messaging, and positioning.
For instance, I might say:
“I think Debbie’s Delicious Sandwiches is missing an opportunity with its ‘sandwiches delivered fast’ tagline. It doesn’t convey the high-quality, fresh ingredients that differentiate Debbie’s. I’d reposition the messaging to highlight the premium, homemade taste. This could pull in new customers seeking a high-end sandwich experience.”
2. What Recent Marketing Campaign Caught Your Attention?
This open-ended question reveals your interests and perspectives on effective marketing.
How to answer: Focus on explaining why the campaign was memorable and stood out from others. For example:
“I saw an ad from my local energy company featuring real technicians talking about their community impact. It made the company seem relatable and human versus distant and corporate. I think personal, people-driven ads are extremely effective for large brands.”
3. Walk Me Through Your Last Product Launch
Hiring managers want to hear about your experience managing launches.
How to answer: Provide an overview of the process, your specific role, and results. Use the STAR method – Situation, Task, Action, Result. For example:
“We launched new collaboration software for SMBs. My role was building messaging, testing it with customers, and enabling our 50-person sales team. The launch exceeded our pipeline goals. I’m happy to provide more detail on my specific activities.”
4. What Did Product Marketing Look Like in Your Last Role?
Share how you’ve done product marketing previously and what excites you about the open position.
How to answer: Highlight experiences relevant to the role you’re applying for. If you’re new to product marketing, discuss how you’ve engaged with product marketers in the past.
For example:
“My role focused on go-to-market planning, sales enablement, and competitive analysis. I really enjoyed driving pipeline and launches. Given this role also involves sales enablement and launches, I think it would be a great fit.”
5. How Do You Measure the Success of Product Marketing?
Demonstrate your grasp of metrics and driving impact.
How to answer: Share which metrics you’ve used previously and why they were important. Tailor your answer to be relevant for the role you’re interviewing for.
For example:
“In my last role, I measured launch success by adoption of new features. I tracked usage over time and content engagement. I also conducted customer surveys and focus groups to gather qualitative insights.”
6. How Do You Build Relationships with Colleagues?
Strong professional relationships are critical in product marketing.
How to answer: Share tactics you’ve used to develop trusting, credible relationships with peers. You might say:
“I build relationships by reaching out to colleagues to learn about their roles and challenges. This gives me a rapport to draw on for future collaboration. I used this approach successfully at my last company.”
7. Describe a Cross-Functional Project You Worked On
Interviewers want to hear how you impact and collaborate with large teams.
How to answer: Explain the objective, your specific contributions, and the end result. Use the STAR method.
For example:
“We created a resources hub to support newly remote customers during COVID-19. I identified and developed engaging content based on SME insights to drive adoption of our collaboration tools. The result was a 10x increase in site traffic.”
8. What Are Your Thoughts on Our Website Messaging?
This evaluates your ability to critique messaging and share suggestions.
How to answer: Provide an informed perspective based on researching the company’s website and products. Frame suggestions constructively, like “Another idea could be…”
For example:
“Your website speaks directly to key customer pain points – privacy, security, protection. One idea could be including testimonials highlighting how much customers love your product. This provides an additional customer-focused perspective.”
9. Share a Time You Influenced a Leader’s Decision
Product marketers must be able to influence stakeholders.
How to answer: Explain how you used data, relationships, or persuasive communication to change a leader’s mind. Use the STAR method.
For example:
“The sales team wanted time-intensive training I knew wasn’t effective. I proposed bite-sized videos instead. The leader resisted but compromised. The new training saw 30% higher engagement, so they agreed to continue it.”
10. What Do You Know About Our Target Audience?
Interviewers want to see you’ve researched the company’s market.
How to answer: Demonstrate your understanding of the company’s customers, informed by website research, product reviews, informational interviews, etc.
For example:
“Your CRM targets sales leaders needing productivity and IT buyers wanting integration and ROI, especially in healthcare and financial services. Reviews praise your mobile functionality but want reporting improvements.”
11. How Does Our Industry Compare to Yours?
Share your experience and connect it to the role you’re pursuing.
How to answer: Demonstrate your industry knowledge. Draw parallels between your experience and the company/role you’re transitioning into.
For example:
“In HR tech, buyers want solutions driving productivity and cost savings, like in your training software industry. As companies want employees to learn and grow skills, HR will likely buy more training tech, putting you in a good position.”
12. What Project Are You Most Proud Of and Why?
Highlight an impactful accomplishment that gets you excited.
How to answer: Share details on a project you drove results for. Explain why it stands out to you.
For example:
“I expanded our external marketing to feature more customer stories versus just a few. This better championed customers, a core company value. I proposed and led this initiative over 2 months, resulting in much greater customer representation.”
Ace Your Product Marketing Interview!
Preparing winning answers to common product marketer interview questions is key to landing your next role.
This article covered the 12 questions you’re most likely to encounter along with tips to help you craft strong responses.
Bring your knowledge, passion, and a little practice, and you’ll be ready to knock your product marketing interview out of the park!
Tell Me About a Time When You Were Able to Influence a Decision Made by Another Leader.
One hard things about being a product marketer is that you don’t always have the power to make a choice, even though you are in charge of reaching a goal. This means you will have to persuade a leader or person who makes decisions in your company. As an example, as a product marketer, you might not be in charge of making the product; that would be the job of the product manager. However, you might need to tell the product manager about the features that customers want. The person interviewing you wants to know if you can well explain your point of view and accurately speak for the customer to meet their specific needs.
Explain how you influenced another key leader to drive a decision or outcome in your favor. Influence can come in many forms. Perhaps you had a good relationship with the leader and used data you knew would speak to them. It is important to stress the exact way you were able to persuade someone to see things your way, which made them listen to your point of view. This is another question where you can lean on the STAR method.
“The sales team needed a new training program around products they were being asked to sell this year. Because they wanted to use the same training format for a product we released in the last quarter, they asked me to make it. I knew the format we’d used the year before was very time- and resource-intensive to execute. In addition, some of the materials I had made were on our sales training portal. I saw that very few people were using them, which made me think they weren’t working.
“I offered a different solution because I knew it would take a lot of work to make the same kind of program and there was evidence that it wasn’t helping the sales team as much as it could.” Instead of a live workshop and a lot of extra PowerPoint presentations, data sheets, and training materials, I suggested a shorter training program made up of short, interesting videos. The sales leader pushed back, but we came to an agreement to try it this new way. If it didn’t work, I promised to send training materials in the old way.
“But the new approach worked. In addition to getting high scores on the training surveys, the usage metrics showed a significantly higher increase in the number of views and downloads. The sales leaders were doubtful at first, but after seeing the feedback and results of use, they were glad we had rethought the training and agreed to use the new version on all future products. ”.
Can You Talk About a Cross-Functional Project That You Worked On? What Was Your Role and How Did You Contribute to the Impact and/or Success of the Project?
I work with Jason Perocho, who is a senior director of product marketing and has hired and built product marketing teams. He likes to ask this question to find out how a candidate gets along with others and how they can make a difference on a big team. Perocho says, “When you work on a cross-functional project like a product launch, it usually takes a lot of people to make it work.” “Not only do I want to know what the team did to succeed, but I also want to know what the candidate did to help the project succeed.” ”.
When you answer this question, you should talk about the type of project, the main people involved, and the end goal. That being said, you should also talk about what role you played and how you helped the team reach its goal. People often make this mistake when they answer this question: they talk about the project without going into detail about what they did. You can use the STAR method to help ensure you include all the relevant information in your answer.
“In the beginning of COVID-19, we saw that our customers needed help as they started to work from home more and more.” We thought this might be a great chance to help them during this tough time because our company makes digital collaboration software that lets businesses talk to each other from anywhere. We decided to make a resource hub with content and best practices for how to use our products to boost productivity and effectiveness, especially since teams were now working from home. But we had never dealt with a pandemic either, so we needed a group of top product experts from different fields to work together quickly to make something.
“It was my job to figure out what kinds of content to make based on data and strategic direction. I then had to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) to get their ideas and help our content team turn them into content by giving them advice on messaging and storylines.” Because of this, we made a website with more than 20 different resources, like blog posts, videos, podcast interviews, and recorded demos, that show how to use our products to work together better in a virtual setting during COVID-19. Our website got 10 times as many visitors a month, and our sales teams asked hundreds of times for our experts to do live virtual demos for customers who were interested in finding out more. ”.
Product Marketing Management (Khan Academy, LinkedIn) Mock Interview: Why PMM?
FAQ
Why do you want to be a product marketer?
How to use product marketing interview questions as Product Marketing Manager interview questions?
Therefore, it’s essential to hire the right person. To do that, you need to have the right product marketing interview questions. Product marketers usually work at the same level. As a result, you can use product marketing interview questions as product marketing manager interview questions and vice versa.
How do you prepare for a product marketing interview?
This means planning for events such as periodic check-ins. Successful execution in your marketing campaigns also involve creating a detailed project plan that includes tasks, who is responsible for what, due dates, and milestones. Hopefully, this list of product marketing interview questions was helpful for your interview prep.
What is a marketing interview question?
This is a classic marketing question often asked in interviews. The purpose of this question is to get a sense of your marketing knowledge as well as your creativity and thought process.
What skills should a product marketing manager have?
“A product marketing manager should have a balance of both – management and technical skills. So I ask questions that unveil their understanding of positioning, messaging, and marketing campaigns and demonstrate the results they managed to get through their techniques in previous jobs.
