The One Hire That Will Transform Your Go-to-Market Strategy (Yet Most Teams Hire Too Late) — with Shirin Shahin

#17: Most B2B marketing leaders think they have product marketing covered—until growth stalls, GTM alignment breaks down, and messaging misses the mark.

In this episode of Growth Activated, I sit down with product marketing expert Shirin Shahin to unpack why product marketing is often the critical blind spot in marketing organizations—and how strategic leaders are closing the gap to drive faster, smarter growth.

We’ll cover:

• What product marketing really is—and why it’s often misunderstood (even by seasoned CMOs)
• How to fix broken personas, positioning, and product launches before they derail your GTM
• The biggest blind spots marketing leaders have when it comes to activating product marketing
• Why hiring product marketing too late costs more than you think—and how to get it right
• How AI is reshaping product marketing workflows (and what it can't replace)

If you're serious about building a stronger marketing foundation, accelerating your GTM strategy, and leading at the next level, this episode is a must-listen.

🎯 Learn how strategic product marketing can unlock faster growth, better alignment, and a stronger leadership brand.

🎧 Hit play now and start thinking (and winning) like a next-gen marketing leader.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Growth Activated: Helping B2B Marketing Leaders Elevate
• 0:28 What Is Product Marketing and Why It’s Critical for Marketing Strategy
• 1:55 Meet Shirin Shahin: Building Product Marketing Functions in B2B Tech
• 4:44 From Product to Product Marketing: A Career Story
• 8:23 Breaking Down Product Marketing: Who, What, and Why
• 9:44 Product Marketing vs. Brand: Aligning Corporate and Product Messaging
• 13:15 Why Product Marketing Should Report to Marketing, Not Product
• 16:16 Common Gaps in B2B Marketing Leadership: Hiring Product Marketing Too Late
• 20:30 Early Stage Startups: When to Hire Product Marketing for Go-to-Market Success
• 25:57 The Product Marketing Blind Spots CMOs Need to Know
• 30:38 How AI Is Transforming Product Marketing and Go-to-Market Strategy
• 34:26 Final Advice: Why B2B Marketing Leaders Must Invest in Product Marketing Early

Transcript

00:00 | Welcome to Growth Activated: Helping B2B Marketing Leaders Elevate

Welcome to Growth Activated.  I'm Mandy Walker, your host with 15 years of experience leading marketing teams ranging from small startups to large service organizations.  I've built high performing teams of all sizes and have seen firsthand how fast the landscape is evolving,  making marketing leadership more complex than ever.  Today, I help marketing leaders elevate their strategies,  lead with confidence and build careers they love.

00:28 | What Is Product Marketing and Why It’s Critical for Marketing Strategy

If you're ready to drive impact and unlock growth for yourself and your company, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.  If you've ever felt unsure about where product marketing fits in your org or how to use it as a strategic growth driver, not just a launch machine, you're not alone. Product marketing is one of the most critical and misunderstood functions in B2B marketing. It's the engine behind clear messaging, smart segmentation, effective launches and sales enablement that actually lands.

00:58

but too often it's under-resourced, brought in too late, or siloed from the rest of the marketing organization. That's why I'm so excited for today's conversation with Shireen Shaheen, a seasoned product marketing leader turned consultant who has built and scaled product marketing functions for both startups and enterprise tech companies over the past 12 years. In this episode, we talk about what product marketing actually is  and where it fits in your broader work.

01:25

Why CMOs should hire product marketers earlier and what happens when they don't. How product marketing managers drive demand, alignment, and customer clarity across go-to-market teams. And the blurred lines between brand, product, and corporate messaging and how to fix them. So whether you're running a lean team, leading a brand refresh, or trying to figure out what product marketing really should own, this episode will give you the clarity you need to make product marketing your strategic secret weapon. Let's dive in.

01:55 | Meet Shireen Shaheen: Building Product Marketing Functions in B2B Tech

Hey, Shireen, welcome to Growth Activated. We're so excited to have you here today. Hey, Mandy. Thank you. I'm excited to speak with you in this capacity. I know we met in a different capacity. So really excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm  so excited for today's conversation. And you're right, we have worked together before. I know you know a little bit about my background, but I spent my first 10 years in my marketing career at a B2B professional services company.

02:22

we didn't have a product to be doing product marketing for.  And so it really wasn't until I went to  the B2B SaaS startup that we both  worked at together where I really learned, started to learn  and uncover what product marketing was as a function, how hard it is, how talented you have to be. And so  I'm really excited to just enlighten our audience today for those who maybe aren't in SaaS and aren't doing

02:51

product marketing on a day to day basis. think it's a really fun conversation and  it's been such a pleasure working with you and I've already learned so much from you  in the small amount of time we've had to work together. Yeah, no, thank you for all that. And yes, I was just so excited to hear about your own journey. And I know we met, as you said, through a previous client  and you hit the nail on the head. Product marketing can have so many different definitions and there's just so much that can go into product marketing. It's like an endless list.

03:21

And think that's actually both the beauty of it, but also a challenge for anyone who's like entering product marketing or has been in it. I've been in it 12 years now and almost 13. And it's like, still, it can still be kind of like very necessary function, but somewhat confusing as to what it entails. When's the right time to bring a product marketer on to your organization? And I know all things that we're going to speak about. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

03:50

Well, let's, I'd love to start with a little bit about your background. It sounds like you've been in product marketing for 12 to 13 years, but tell us more about your, your journey and what led you to product  So I pretty much fell into product marketing, which I think a lot of us can say about different parts of our career. But after grad school, I started at Constant Contact. So tech company here in the Boston area  and  they're in the email marketing space. And I actually started in product.

04:15

And I was there for in product for a couple of years in a research function. So was a market competitive and customer research role, which actually has a big place in product marketing, but I didn't know that at the time.  And so  we were the company constant contact was starting to work  on a new product launch. And in doing that, I started to interface with the product marketing team there. So that's how I even learned about it.  And now we're taught, we're talking like this was 2012.

04:44 | From Product to Product Marketing: A Career Story

So quite a bit like a while ago  and  and yeah, so  that's how I entered into product marketing and I was there for another couple years and I stayed in tech after that I then went to actually left and went to services for about a year and a half as well  and I was a recruitment company still in product marketing, but I realized very quickly how different it was and again, there wasn't like that tech kind of more tangible product that I was very used to

05:09

Um, wasn't as fast pace, kind of all of that. So I realized pretty quickly I wanted to go back into tech. And then I was last at Brightcove. So in the video tech space, and I was there as an individual contributor and then a director for my last couple of years. And then just to close out the journey in 2019, I started my own product marketing consultancy. So I'm hitting five years of, sorry, oh, six years, six years of that this summer. Congratulations.

05:37

Thank you.  So it'll be six years this summer for that. And yeah, I'm happy to talk more about that. But that's been pretty much my career journey. Awesome. Awesome. OK.  And out of curiosity,  when you like your product marketing peers, how do people typically get into product marketing?  Do they come in through product? Because I do feel like and maybe this is my own perception, but from working with yourself and other product marketers, it feels like an elevated role.

06:04

that  maybe there's not like a junior entry level product marketing role or maybe there is and I'm just ignorant to it. But yeah, great question.  I think there are some more junior level rules like my first title. If you want to get like very specific with product marketing specialist, that's probably the most junior level  that I've seen. But to your point, it's it's so interesting. I'll have individuals reach out to me saying they're trying to get into product marketing.

06:33

but they're not. But every job that's hosted asks for two to three years at least of experience in product marketing. So you're like, well, how do I start if I don't get the experience, right? Catch 22. So I've seen product and the beauty about product marketing because we work so cross-functionally and what we do is that I think you could go to product marketing from product. I think you can go actually from sales because you know the customer so well, you know the market hopefully pretty well because you're in sales.

07:00

I think you can go into it from CS.  You are, again, very close to the customer, which is so critical to product marketing.  You can go into it from a content role. I've seen that happen. So,  maybe that's my rose-colored glasses, but I think you can get into it from many different roles, and it's really about how you position yourself and how you can translate those skills into product marketing.

07:24

It's kind of like that, it's kind of a double-edged sword in a good way. Like we cover so much in what we do, but because we can do so much, there's lots of different ways you can get into it, I feel. Yeah. And how would you describe what product marketing represents at an organization or what really the responsibilities are?  Yes. So  two definitions, and I know you and I talked about this a little bit previously. So  one kind of more, I put this on a slide, kind of a definition is to

07:54

really clearly communicate a product's value to a specific audience so that it resonates, it differentiates, and it drives growth. Those are all very important terms and they all, can dive into kind of all of that.  But then, you know, when I speak with clients or  I'm having a conversation with a friend and I want to make this more simple to digest, I'll say product marketing is the who, the what, and the why of your product.

08:23 | Breaking Down Product Marketing: Who, What, and Why

And then how do we then communicate all that across a variety of channels? So who is your target audience? What is your product? And that's everything from like the nitty gritty. think that is one of the skills of a product marketer is to really get into the product and really understand it. We have to like dissect a product to really understand it because we have to then be able to take that and translate it into language and messaging and all of that. And then the why is why is your product so unique? What are the differentiators? So  how do you stand out?

08:53

So that's my who, what, why is how I say it little bit in more simple language. OK.  And I imagine  you work really closely with other departments. I think one of the things that I still to this day have to try to piece out is what is company level messaging and positioning and branding versus product level messaging, positioning and branding. And yeah.

09:16

How have you seen, do others have that misunderstanding too sometimes? Can that be a pain point for people to understand or how do the teams come together in a smooth way? There's a bit of a collaboration there. So when I work on even company level positioning, and I always start with positioning before we even go to messaging, there's a foundation that we need to have. I believe that that role or that team needs to be very closely integrated with brand or corporate marketing.

09:44 | Product Marketing vs. Brand: Aligning Corporate and Product Messaging

But there is kind of like a Venn diagram. There is where we overlap and then there's areas that we have our distinct functions and distinct responsibilities. So where brand and corporate do not overlap with product marketing is like very high level mission, vision,  everything from brand tone to colors, to logos, to all of that is where I would say we don't in product marketing quite interface with that. But as they define the mission, the vision, the direction of the company,  absolutely  impacts

10:13

product and should influence the direction of the product. That's where our product story and product narrative does come into play. So I think there's a distinction between the two, but they have to connect and they have to be aligned. And  often I don't see them completely aligned.  And that could be for multiple different reasons.  If the product marketing work was just not started yet, it tends to be, I think we'll talk about this, but it tends to sometimes be an afterthought that happens a little bit later than I would like.

10:43

Um, but yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of influence they have on each other, but they do each have their distinct role. Okay. Yep.  And what would be  buckets of pro like, what are you feel like the buckets or roles or responsibilities under the, the large product marketing umbrella? How would you categorize?  Okay. Let's see. I hope I don't miss any, there's so many. Um, but let me,  let me try to narrow this down. So.

11:12

I would say  voice of customer and market is one big bucket. That's everything from a research perspective, market intelligence, competitive research,  running customer forums, speaking to our customers regularly. We'll just lump all of those together. I would then put another one as our positioning and messaging work. So, and these all actually kind of flow in a circle. I actually do have a diagram for this somewhere.  How do we then take that and then figure out how do we talk about?

11:41

our product and how do we position it in the market given that information? How do we message it? All of that.  I would put sales enablement into its own bucket as well. So how closely we work with sales and CS, I would say, to make sure we're enabling them with the right messaging, right collateral, all the right materials so they can go out and speak very intelligently  and effectively  with their customers and audience.

12:07

And then product launches, I would put in its own bucket because there's a distinct, I think, skill and task under a product marketer to help drive and run forward with product launches, which is a very big cross-functional effort.  So let's see. The few I'm betting I'm missing something. Product adoption, like tracking and measurement, usually can also be its own bucket. That one, it's a trickier one.

12:35

Measurement of product marketing, I do think is a little bit tricky. I think it's not necessarily quantitative all the time.  There's qualitative metrics to measure, but that's like a whole other thing in itself.  Yeah. Yeah.  And I imagine too, there's  like product cares so much about a lot of those things as well. So you're probably attached at the hip. If you're doing it well, you probably attached at the hip with the product and engineering team. Yes. I love that you said that. we are very, I think the three teams we are the most closely connected to our  product.

13:05 | Why Product Marketing Should Report to Marketing, Not Product

sales and marketing. I've typically seen,  and this is a debate  that I've seen, is like where should product marketing sit? Should it sit with product or should it sit with marketing?  And I've typically seen it  more often.  even when I was in-house, I was always reporting into marketing.  And I personally believe in that direction.  I think product is such a close partner.

13:32

And we do influence them to they give us information. We feed them back information like market and competitive information, help influence the roadmap, all of that. However, I do think primarily our output and where we have the bigger impact, I believe is on the go-to-market organization side. So  I pretty strongly feel that product should sit.  I'm sorry. Product marketing should sit under the marketing team. I don't know if you've seen or heard differently, that's my take on it.

14:02

I have seen that debate  and heard about it. And honestly, the question I guess I would ask is in  the organizations I've actually consulted to, there's been that question.  typically,  if there's a desire to move product marketing over to product, it's because the marketing leadership team isn't, maybe they have gaps or challenges and they're not necessarily, the organization is not showing up the way that it could or should. so,

14:31

product out of dire need just says, we're going to take product marketing.  it's  rarely do have I seen it, at least in my experience where product marketing is functioning really well in the broader marketing organization with a very strong CMO and then product is fighting to take product marketing. I don't see that as much. Yeah, you're right. So I think what you're saying, let me, I just want to see if I'm following that.

14:57

Usually there's some break or some pain  that's happening and the product's like, well, I'm going to this stuff then.  I would agree with you on that. I think they would really would value and always have, from my experience, appreciated having a product marketing counterpart, but when it's not there and they just need the work done, this is where often your right product managers will start doing that competitive and market research.

15:18

And by the way, they should also be doing that.  I would never want to advocate that a product marketer is the only one speaking to customers and doing the marketing competitive research. But I think the angle in which product managers do that research is different from our angle. We're a little bit more forward thinking, a little bit more looking at market trends, as well as speaking to customers directly. But our eye and our lens is a little bit different, I would say, product usually when they speak to the customers. And prospects are typically doing more feature testing,

15:47

showing them wireframes, getting very, very direct feedback, which is also valuable. That's why I think they both need to happen. Yeah, absolutely.  And so what would you say that CMOs, in the CMOs that you've worked with or marketing leaders that you have rolled up into, what are some of the gaps that they're missing  that  could make the product marketing function stronger? So  this might be an obvious one, but I would hire a

16:16 | Common Gaps in Marketing Leadership: Hiring Product Marketing Too Late

product marketer early.  think that is  one of the bigger gaps is that  I often feel product marketing. I think this is getting better, by the way.  So I lot of credit to many CMOs actually I've spoken to recently is I do think they're starting to think about product marketing earlier, but I more often have seen

16:41

you know, CMO perhaps experienced some sort of trigger, some sort of pain, or they notice something, conversion is dropping, or close rate is dropping, all of that. And they're like, what is going on?  And I actually do think that product marketing is a great place, great to hire and bring in. So I support that. But had we had product marketing earlier, I wonder  what impact that could have had to kind of avoid the problem we're in now. And often it's

17:08

I don't want to say it's as simple as, because nothing is simple, but as simple as, we really understand our personas? It really comes back to basics so often. And that's what I think is overlooked sometimes, is it's not actually rocket science.  Do we understand our personas? When was the last time we spoke to our customers? That is so valuable. And it's so often forgotten or deprioritized, again, until there's a problem. And then they're like, oh, shoot.

17:38

think we need product marketing. So  first  piece of advice I guess I would give to CMOs is hire us earlier. Bring us on as one of your first couple hires actually. That's probably what I would say. And  I'm so glad you mentioned that because I do.  So I come from the demand gen side and that's obviously my background. And so often  demand generation is just expected to

18:06

perform really well and convert really well when we as a business have not addressed a lot of those critical, even addressed messaging and personas and we don't have a clear ICP and you know, it's blows my mind that we think DemandGen will perform well when we don't have a lot of those foundations. It blows my mind too. Yeah.  I'm like,  it's just a foundation. I'm so glad  you see that and unfortunately you felt that. Where I'm sure there's a lot of pressure on you to  like deliver and you're like,

18:35

We're jumping from this ICP to the other ICP. Let's take a minute and who are we actually targeting? And are we being reactive versus proactive? That happens a lot. One number changes, we're gonna go and do this other thing now. It's like, well, wait a second, let's look for patterns. I  I've seen all of that a lot, so spot on, yeah. Yep.  And one of the things I see all the time too when there's not a really strong product marketing function in place and it's heavy demand, Jen, is

19:03

the marketing function becomes  supportive and reactive to what sales is doing. And we all know that sales is thinking about tomorrow. They're thinking about the last deal they just closed. They're not necessarily thinking strategically in terms of which segments do we want to penetrate, what's going to provide the most profitability back to the business. so they're, you know, and we're supporting those  reactive  efforts. And it, just, again, the whole thing.

19:33

It's so inefficient when it runs like that. Yes, marketing can become like an agency to sales and product marketing can too. If product marketing doesn't have clear priorities and shares what those priorities are with other cross-functional leaders and really clarifies why we're doing what we're doing, we can easily just become like, I'm blanking on the word right now, but just like requests coming in, just like we're just being reactive. And yeah, literally like an agency model. It's like, that's not actually what we're here for.

20:01

distinct responsibilities that will all help every other team. If we're just able to really focus and do that work,  it impacts every, pretty much every team, I would argue, in an organization. Yeah.  So,  Shireen, when you're thinking about, when you're working with startups,  I guess  I'd love to hear your view of when you are an early stage startup, like as a product marketer, like the number one hire you should be making.  Is it one of the top three? Like where

20:30 | Early Stage Startups: When to Hire Product Marketing for Go-to-Market Success

Where are, where do you see it work really well and they're brought in at the right time versus obviously we know that a lot of times they're brought in too late. So I don't necessarily believe product marketing is the first hire a startup, but I do believe they should be your first hire on the marketing team. So once you're starting to build your marketing team and let's say you have like

20:58

80 % of your product build. we're now thinking like pretty early stage company is how I'm answering this.  And you have, you have 80 % of the build, you have like the bread and butter of your product developed and you're just starting to think about your go-to-market, just starting to think about, okay, we have to get the word out. We need to go  build our go-to-market engine. What are some campaigns we want to run? Very often teams run to that. Everything I just described.

21:25

But exactly like what we were just describing before you do any of that, who has looked into documenting exactly who our personas are, how are we positioning ourselves in this market? How are we messaging in this market?  Do we need to do any external, any other research before we go do all that? So the foundation has to be there. So I would argue first hire in marketing  should be a product marketer. But I also acknowledge before that person's even hired product is usually first, you've to develop your product.

21:54

So engineers typically in any startup I've worked with or the broad, the majority of the team is typically product and engineers, which makes sense. Yeah. And where,  where in your experience,  um,  does sales fall into that? Like if you're hiring product marketing first on the marketing side, is there  in your, in  your experience, are there, are they already selling?

22:17

and we're learning and product marketing is working very closely with them or is there a case to be made where product marketing could even come in before sales and make sure that sales is set up? think both would be possible. Obviously, these are more complicated answers because or complicated questions because we're obviously speaking more generally, but I totally understand that sometimes a startup has like very aggressive and very important

22:41

important goals for the year. They're looking for funding. They need to get some customers on board. If they don't, they're not going to raise their seed round. So their mind is on a target. So I want to just empathize with that. Sometimes we don't have the luxury of saying, oh, I'm going to work with a product marketer for six months and then hire my first salesperson. Sometimes you just don't have that luxury. So I get that. So you may want to do both those hires together, but you set a really important point. Those two people need to be collaborating really closely because while we're doing our first conversations,

23:09

With assumptions we have, there's always some assumptions around our personas. have hypotheses. Product marketing, I would say like sit with your salesperson in that case. Sit and listen. There's so much gold there  to learn in this early stage. So I could argue for both, but I think it really depends  on the pressures, honestly, because I think there's a lot of pressure at that stage. The pressures that are on the company and being realistic about that. Yeah.

23:35

Well, certainly there's a lot of ways to still get the product marketing expertise and outsourcing being one of them, not having to hire a full-time role.  Where do you see that that model really well  for  different stages? So I've come in on so many different stages. So one I would say is a great, this is a little bit later stage company, but if you've lost a product marketing leader or you have a gap on your team, it's a great time to bring in somebody to help fill a gap.

24:05

help kind of either lead an existing team, I've done that before,  or there might already be a team. I worked with a client recently, had actually like seven or eight product marketers,  sorry it was last year, not super recently, but  they needed  just extra bandwidth to produce some content.  So we were brought in for that.  Another, I'll go earlier stage now, is in  early stage growth when, this is actually when you and I met, so I'll give that as an example.

24:34

is when your company is moving from founder led sales to now growing their sales team and actually putting that engine together across sales and marketing. I think that's an excellent time to bring in someone that may not need to be full time. So like when we work together, there were specific projects and initiatives and positioning we wanted to get in place. Some sales collateral we needed to get in place. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't say you necessarily need a full time person to be able to get all of that.

25:03

Um, sorted. So that's another, uh, really great time to bring in someone. would say those are the two. Top, um, categories of bringing in whether you call it a fractional person or a team to that you don't need someone full time. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Hey, I'd love to pivot the conversation a little bit to the product marketing persona. And, you know, we talked about what CMOs are.

25:32

what some of their blind spots are when it comes to product marketing or the broader organization. But  I'd love to hear from the flip side, what do you often find working with product marketing leaders that their blind spots are?  And how could CMOs be better leaning in to support their product marketing leaders? Yes, I love this question. So  I think we are often expected

25:57 | The Product Marketing Blind Spots CMOs Need to Know

product marketers, when I say we are often expected to be tied to marketing goals and marketing KPIs.  Yet  we don't have that visibility fully. We don't always get that visibility. So you can't really have that expectation  unless you give us that visibility. So I think it's sometimes overlooked to include product marketing in the,  sometimes, sometimes admittingly, I feel like we're a little bit of the forgotten child, like the middle child in a marketing team.  And

26:25

giving us that same level of attention and level of, you know, just a level of knowledge that's being shared and help us figure out how we can track  against your marketing goals.  We talked about this earlier,  but I around the corporate story, it's like how is brand and corporate marketing kind of different from  positioning work.  And similarly, I would say  we need to do a better job. I would say in product marketing even.

26:53

to make sure we partner really closely with corporate and brand work.  Even in my consulting business, I actually remember a client I was working with  and we did more of a handoff from our project to an agency that came in to update the website  for a specific client based on the messaging work that we did. And in hindsight, I feel like that handoff was a little bit more abrupt than it should have been and we actually should have stayed.

27:19

for a couple weeks on the project. And this was feedback we talked about in a debrief after the fact. But if had we stayed with the project, I think there'd be a more cleaner handoff,  knowledge share, it would have just been a smoother process.  I think product marketing can also just do a better job of being intertwined more with that kind of broader  brand and corporate marketing team.  Those are the top two, I think, that  come to mind right now. Okay. Okay.

27:48

Fascinating.  And  I see that too, I think being fractional on my end,  a few things I see happen. One is that the marketing, the functions within marketing end up being so siloed  oftentimes, and we're not collaborating and integrated as much as we should be or could be to get better work product.  But the other thing, it's been interesting to go through from the fractional side this past year is,

28:17

And maybe this isn't directly what you were talking about,  it's this idea of  activation. Like, how does the client activate the work that has been done? And so on my  end, do a lot. I often do 360 degree assessments and audits and put together a road map and a plan. And then I just  worry that clients don't actually know how to activate that playbook or implement the playbook.

28:45

And with product marketing being such a critical part of so many other teams, like DemandGen needs to be very clear on product marketing strategy and content needs to be clear on product marketing strategy. I  I wonder if you also see some of those activation challenges.  Yes. And I, I, I've been asked this question before, like when I think about the impact of my work in a consulting capacity where

29:10

people have asked me like, have you seen like how they've used it? Or sometimes I'll even go and check a website for previous clients. Did they ever update the website? Did they change their messaging? Actually, one of my contractors recently, just yesterday told me,  so and so the client we worked with a few months ago was supposed to update their website after we did some messaging work. And then she's like, they haven't done it yet. And I was like, Oh, it was like such, was such a concrete like thing they were going to do. So yes, it's a great point. But then sometimes I wonder to what extent can we

29:40

I think there's an extent, as you hand off and roll off a project, like having a handoff plan, or I love that word actually, what's the activation plan? But at what point too are we just done with the project and we kind of have to be hands off because we're not full time, right? So we come in on a contractual basis, three to six months, whatever it may be. And I think that part is a little, probably what I don't love. I love what I do and I love having my own business and a consultancy, but probably that piece is like,

30:09

I feel the impact when we're actually working on the work, but I don't usually see what happens after. And I just get curious to be like, well, what did they do with all that work?  Yeah.  Absolutely. Well,  I'd love to hear as we're sort of wrapping up the conversation, I'd be remiss not to ask you, like,  what are some of the trends that are out there impacting product marketing? I know a lot of product marketing feels like it's tried and true and it's,  you know,

30:38 | How AI Is Transforming Product Marketing and Go-to-Market Strategy

the foundations maybe don't change, but how are you seeing tools like AI and other things that are happening in the marketplace impact product marketing either in a positive or a negative way? I would say mostly positive. And I think AI is the biggest, like it's affecting everybody. So probably no surprise there, but I, for majority of what we do, I don't see AI replacing what we do. I really think it augments what we do so well. We're using it in our work.

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as consultants with my team, we're using it to work more  effectively, more efficiently.  And I just think we can all work a lot faster. Now that doesn't mean we want to ever sacrifice quality. So I would always say I personal, more personal opinion in this early stages of AI. I still think we need to be very careful and very diligent and  like, you know, I don't have full trust in what ChatGPT is spitting back out after I give it some questions, but I do read, always read through all of that. typically edit all of that.

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Um,  so I don't see a big negative.  think content,  um, and content sometimes sits under product marketing and also often as its own role completely altogether. actually feel like AI plays a little bit more of a threat. I don't know. I haven't looked into this in deep detail, um, for content marketers. So yeah, that's not exactly what your question was, but because some product marketers, um, do work on content, that's why I'm bringing that up is I think for

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that side of our work. But again, I think it's only going to help us  more.  I think hopefully better and maybe even more, honestly, more intelligently. I mean, we're starting to talk about with contractors on my team is how we can create better, great instances in ChatGBT for each client. And then you feed it like positioning doc, feed it at messaging doc. This is not rocket science, there's probably many people doing it already. And then leveraging that to say, hey, based on the personas I just uploaded for you,

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this updated positioning doc, I'm looking for messaging for this landing page for this promotion. See what it gives you back. I bet you would do a pretty good job. Yeah. So I'm pretty excited to see. I'm still trying to keep up with all of it to be really honest  and see how we can use it. But I'm pretty excited to see what it's going to be able to do. Well, it's been fascinating. I've even just played around in rudimentary ways  when it comes to even identifying like the full personas that I want to target with this,  with my business  and

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doing market research and it's incredible.  I feel like whereas before a lot of these types of strategies would take us months, it was like, oh, we gotta do personas, that's gonna be another two months and then, oh, we gotta do market research, that's another two months and  it's almost like days now, if  not hours, if you've got enough, if you know enough to be able to  give it the right thing. Yeah, and I think for us, it's okay.

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If that's going to go from months to days,  what are we doing next? Like there's so much then that we can do with that, that we probably weren't able to do before.  So I think it's opening up our potential of  like what we can execute.  And I'm transparently trying to still learn and figure out, okay, like yeah, personas,  documenting and identifying personas is not going to take as long. can ask chat GPT a couple of days.

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Play with the inputs and the prompts, validate it with teams, always validate.  But then what do we do with that? Now that we got that done pretty quick, it leaves us a lot of room to  test with it, test some messaging now,  feed it back, customer calls to validate, maybe update those personas. There's just so many things we can do that I think is gonna make us all better product marketers actually.  And marketers, any of us, yeah.

34:26 | Final Advice: Why B2B Marketing Leaders Must Invest in Product Marketing Early

That's a great point. And one final question is,  as we're thinking about the future  of product marketing and marketing and  everything in general,  what is one final  word of words of wisdom or word of advice that you would give to marketing leaders out there right now? Hire us early. Just like bring us in pretty early. And I don't think you're going to regret it. There's just a lot of foundation we can help work on and then build from there. That's going to

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greatly impact your team and set them on the right direction. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Shireen, it's been so wonderful having you today. I've so appreciated this conversation.  If people want to learn more, I know they can check you out on LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else you would direct them to to get in contact with yourself? Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me. It's been awesome to chat with you and reconnect in this way. yeah,  LinkedIn is best, honestly. And then I have my website. I am Shireen Shaheed. Awesome.

35:23

Okay. Well, thanks, Shireen. We appreciate the conversation again. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Growth Activated.  I hope this conversation sparked new ideas,  challenged your thinking, and gave you practical tools to help elevate your impact as a marketing leader. If it did, I would love for you to pass it along to a friend or a colleague in B2B marketing.  The more we grow together, the more we raise the bar for what marketing leadership can look like.

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And as always, in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company.  See you next time.