Transcription
You wake up. It's 8:00 a.m. The alarm is blaring, and for a brief second, you consider snoozing. But no. You're a product marketer, and there's work to be done.
By 9:00 a.m., you're in the office. Time for the daily standup. Your marketing team huddles together like a pack of wolves, each taking turns sharing their priorities. This is where you prove that you are, in fact, very busy and extremely valuable. Messaging updates, sales enablement, and strategic initiatives, you say. They nod back. They have no idea what you actually do, and that's okay.
You're off to the next stop: the sales team weekly check-in. Now, sales weekly check-ins are a spectacle. Wins, losses, opportunities. It's like watching the stock market, but with more emotions and less regulation. "I have a customer who's hesitating because we're missing feature X. Any talking points?" a sales rep asks, eyes on you. You scribble down "Feature X customer objection talking points" on your Post-it note.
Next up, a product launch meeting with a product manager. A PM sits across from you, whiteboard marker in hand, ready to walk you through the entire engineering process of a new product. You nod. You smile. You wait for the moment they finally explain why a single customer would care about this. "So, how does this actually help customers?" you ask, cutting through the noise. The PM stops. They blink. Their whole world has been shaken.
But there's no time to dwell on their existential crisis. It's 1:00 p.m. Lunch break. Chipotle. You order the same thing you always do.
Back at your desk, you start drafting the messaging outline for the product launch. You're in the zone, deep focus, until, "Hey, can you make some slides for a sales call?" A sales rep is standing there. "There's a master deck in Notion," you reply. "We have a master deck?" they ask, genuinely surprised. You write another note. "Make product marketing onboarding videos for new hires." You finish the product messaging outline and send it off to the PM for review.
Now time to work on that go-to-market checklist. But before you can even start, the CEO swings by. "Got a quick minute?" "No, you do not." But is the CEO? So, yes, you do. They show you a companywide All Hands deck. You nod through most of it. Then you see an opening. "Analogy that needs work. Work you might want to tweak that," you suggest. They nod, enlightened. You have justified your salary for another day.
Back at your desk, you remember the feature X customer objection. You ping the PM. Who's working on that feature? Busy? Maybe next week. You open their calendar and schedule a meeting with them for tomorrow.
Anyways, by 7:00 p.m., it's time to head home. You eat, work out, and unwind. At 10:00 p.m., a Slack notification pops up. The PM loves the messaging outline, but can we add some technical jargon to make it sound more high-tech? You facepalm. For now, it's time to watch Netflix. You lose track of time. Oh no. It's 1:00 a.m. You close your laptop and go to sleep. Tomorrow, you do it all over again.