Favorite Parts Of Being A Senior Product Marketing Manager At Adobe
Ryan, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Adobe with experience at Microsoft and Compass, finds the most rewarding aspect of the role to be "it's always different," constantly learning and adapting across various industries. This is fueled by a deep passion for helping customers— "people don't buy a car because they want a car"—and a focus on understanding their underlying needs and motivations, which drives their daily work.
Problem-Solving, Communication, Customer Empathy, Adaptability, Passion for Product
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Ryan Khademi
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Adobe
University of Washington, Michael G. Foster School of Business, 2013
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Marketing
Technology
Product / Service / Software Development and Management
None Applicable, Worked 20+ Hours in School
Video Highlights
1. The constant learning and change in the field. Ryan's experience across different companies and industries highlights the dynamic nature of product marketing, requiring adaptability and continuous skill development.
2. Passion for the product and its customers. Ryan emphasizes the importance of genuine enthusiasm for the product and a deep understanding of the customer's needs and motivations. This passion fuels his work and enables effective marketing.
3. Empathy and customer focus. Ryan stresses the significance of empathy in understanding customer needs and motivations. This is presented as a core competency for success in product marketing and highlights the importance of a customer-centric approach.
Transcript
What do you enjoy most about being a product marketing manager?
Yeah, there are a lot of things I enjoy. What I really enjoy is the challenge. Having done product marketing at three separate companies, I can say that.
I was at Microsoft first. Before Adobe, I did product marketing management at Compass, a real estate startup that is really big in California. I worked on the technology team, building the technology platform for real estate agents. It was a completely different industry, but the same job title.
It was a B2B2C model, which is business-to-business-to-consumer. That's kind of what you'll experience if you ever work in education or real estate. Then, going to Adobe, it's the same job title, but it's always different and always changing.
You have to have the same skill sets of understanding the customer, the product, and all these key things. But because the industry is different and things change so fast, it's always different. That's probably one of my favorite things about my current role; it's always different. I'm always learning. So, if you're eager to learn, it's great. It's never boring.
Something else I really enjoy is helping people. At Adobe, I often have people come up to me who work on products as a product manager or product marketing manager. They might have options for a role and say they're just not super passionate about the product or don't know if they could sell it.
I think you should be fully convicted about the product. You don't just have to like it; you should be passionate about it. A good marketer can sell a product they're not into, but they won't do it very well.
I always tell people they need to look at the customers that product serves. Are you passionate about the people you're helping? Products always change. Things you'll learn if you go down the route of product management or product marketing is that customers don't just buy products. They're really just buying things to solve jobs.
They call it "jobs to be done." People don't buy a car because they want a car; they buy a car because they want to go from point A to point B. Over time, that might have been a horse, now it's a car, and it might be teleportation in the future, but it's the same need, the same underlying need.
If you think about that, always thinking from the customer's perspective, that's where the passion is. For me, the customers today are people who are photo hobbyists or creatives. They just want to make their pictures look better or learn a valuable skill that will help them in the job market. Today it could be Photoshop; tomorrow it could be a completely different product. But I love the customer I'm helping.
That's what gives me a lot of drive and energy to go to work every day, knowing I can make their lives just one percent better. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it means you're helping people around the world do something better. That also resonates with me because I use the product.
I tend to think about whether I'm enjoying the people I'm coming to work to help serve. As I said before, you have to have a lot of empathy and really be able to own that to be a good product marketing manager.