7 product marketing lessons from the trenches

You know those moments in product marketing when everything goes sideways, and that chaos teaches you exactly what not to do next time? 

Yeah, I’ve had a few of those.

I’m Jeremy Hemsworth, and I lead product marketing for Jira Product Discovery at Atlassian. I’ve been lucky to work at companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Ramp – and let’s just say I’ve collected my fair share of marketing merit badges (and battle scars).

In this piece, I’m sharing seven hard-won lessons from the trenches – lessons about internal advocacy, sales alignment, digital experiments that paid off, and the big misses that taught me to think differently. 

You might already know some of this (King Solomon was right; there really is nothing new under the sun), but I promise there’s something in here you can apply today – or when your next big pivot hits.

Lesson #1: Focus where it counts

In a job interview, have you ever been asked, “Tell me about a time you failed”? Me too. This story is my answer to that question.

After business school, my first role was at Microsoft, on the go-to-market team. I owned a tool called the Value Discovery Workshop – essentially, a customizable presentation in a box for salespeople. Sales reps could select industry types, personas, and customer problems, and a tailored presentation would pop out. It was an amazing tool.

However, the tool faced a significant problem: nobody was using it. Only about 60 to 100 sellers used it monthly, which were horrible metrics for a tool that had a dedicated PMM and cost hundreds of thousands to maintain. My first task was to make this tool better. I asked my manager where I should start and was told that the major issue was the content, so I spent about six weeks working to improve it. 

I spoke with every product marketer and product manager across the Microsoft Office suite to ensure the product truth was reflected. I consulted industry vertical managers, incorporating their insights. For weeks, I camped out at my agency’s office, meticulously rewriting hundreds of permutations across 16 scenarios, 11 industries, and three personas. 

After all that work, I did some enablement calls and sent a few emails. The result? Still, only 60 to 100 sellers were using it – all that work for no appreciable impact.

Key learning: Always think about first principles

Looking back, the issue wasn’t the content. The problem was that sellers didn’t even know the tool existed. I spent all my time in the wrong place, trying to perfect content when the fundamental problem was awareness and enablement. 

The lesson here is to always think about first principles: what’s the core problem, and what is the simplest, most effective way to solve it? Sometimes, it’s not what your leadership thinks the problem is.

Lesson #2: Don’t neglect internal marketing

The flip side of that Microsoft lesson came later when I was on an account-based marketing team focused on internal tooling for sales. Our tool surfaced insights to salespeople, using third- and first-party data to identify “hot leads”. Despite the value, the tool had only a 30% disposition rate, meaning only 30% of our recommendations were acted upon by sellers.

Armed with my previous experience, I knew the content or recommendations weren’t the issue; I left that to the product managers. My focus was entirely on educating the sales team and running an internal marketing program. 

Driving adoption with internal campaigns

I joined as many sales team meetings and all-hands as possible. I had sales leadership send messages on my behalf and got top sellers to record testimonials about how they used the tool. To top it off, I ran an internal contest, giving away laptops and goodies like gold bar stress balls and cubicle flags (back when people were in offices). 

This internal marketing campaign worked wonders, boosting the disposition rate from 30% to a staggering 90%. Salespeople saw the value of the tool, and crucially, they learned about it from their peers, which resonated far more than hearing it from marketing.

Internal initiatives at Atlassian

Now, at Atlassian, I’m running a similar internal initiative linked to our sponsorship of an F1 racing team. Sellers can earn spiffs for deals, which directly supports my goal of quadrupling revenue. 

The internal marketing hook is that we’re sending top sellers to F1 races around the world. This not only excites the sales team, but it also helps me marshal internal resources. It gets budget from the CMO, prompts communications teams to push the message, and, importantly, gets the revenue operations team on board to prioritize our contest amidst internal competition for seller attention. 

Lesson #3: Stay on top of trends

Now for the tea, as the kids say. ☕