Building a Product Marketing Team is Product Management

Randi Lee is head of product marketing at Fundbox.

Randi Lee really loves talking to customers. As head of product marketing for Fundbox, an AI-powered financial platform that gives small businesses access to credit and payments solutions, she works to make her team a hub across regions and departments in order to continually bring the voice of the customer into their products and day-to-day work. This centricity also helps get product marketing a seat at the proverbial table. 

“By leaning into those areas where you can deliver real value, people start asking you for more, and they see that it’s worthwhile to have your team earlier in the process rather than just at the end,” Randi says. “It’s ongoing work, both in terms of relationship building and delivering value and impact and really listening to needs. That’s how we’re really focused on trying to be more strategic, trying to be more proactive, as opposed to just being sort of an asset factory.”

Another way she secures a seat at the table is by building a product marketing team that fully supports the business’ goals: “The role of product marketing is really to help the business meet its KPIs. I usually start there when I’m thinking about building a team, because you want your product marketing teams to be organized, so you can deliver that impact. If our priorities are the same as the business priorities, we want to mimic the business or organization as much as possible.”

Get more insights from Randi on how to build a mighty product marketing team and how to pursue a product marketing career — as well as her, take on the importance of research and validation in developing a great product — on this episode of This Is Product Management.

Download the transcript

Here are some highlights:

• How to build a product marketing team
• What Randi looks for in a product marketing manager
• Validating the market need with research
• Advice for pursuing a product marketing career