What makes a product marketer at TotallyMoney?

Recently, TotallyMoney’s CMO, Nathan Levi, dived into why product marketing remains the most misunderstood function in tech.

To understand more about product marketing, and explore how the function works in reality, we spoke to our product marketing manager, Molly Beake.

“Well, I joined TotallyMoney almost five years ago as a marketing executive. I reported to our head of display at the time, and mostly managed our paid social activity. The company was completely different back then. It was half the size and the marketing team was structured in a more traditional way, with specialised roles and channels — but it was growing exponentially.

“As the company grew, so did I. I realised my strengths, as well as what I enjoyed and found interesting, and began to carve out my own path. I started to broaden my responsibilities by being involved with CRM and PPC, which gave me more knowledge of marketing as a whole. Paid social remained my specialism, but I was taking on project work outside of it, including working on our branding, customer testimonials and corporate videos. 

“As TotallyMoney’s product grew, a product marketing-shaped gap emerged. We were developing new features so quickly, it was brilliant, and we realised we really needed product marketing. I knew product marketing was something I really wanted to explore, so that’s where I stepped in.”

“As Nathan mentioned in his recent blog, there’s a lot of confusion around what exactly product marketing is. Product marketing is about being the 'voice of the customer'. It means putting the customer first, so we build things that customers truly want and need. It's then about creating a story for those products or features that communicates the value and benefit in a way that resonates with your customers.

“It’s really what excites me about the role and the company. Product marketing’s customer-centric approach to everything keeps people at the heart of what we do. It means we genuinely help those who need it. And that’s what TotallyMoney is all about, which makes product marketing here such an inspiring function.”

“We sit within the marketing team, but we work closely with the UX leads and product managers. It involves a lot of plate-spinning and strong cross-functional communication. 

“The challenge of product marketing is — as Nathan alluded to — people not being totally aware of your role. With it being such a new function, everyone is excited by it and keen to get product marketing involved in all projects. So, at the moment we’re demonstrating where product marketing can help. It’s a function in its own right, but it sits in the middle of lots of different teams, projects and workflows.”

“Product marketing is a really important function at TotallyMoney because it's the bridge between the product and marketing teams. My role makes sure marketing is considered at the start of the development of a new feature, so the feature and how we talk about it is right for our customer from the off. It also means that as we grow and launch new features, there will be consistency in the way we communicate value to our customers, which builds and maintains a strong brand identity.”

“The function is definitely going to become more specialised. What I think we’ll see is the function continuing to develop and change — the same way the product does. 

“Product marketing is at an exciting stage with a small but growing team, and as such can pivot and adapt to whichever route the product goes down. That path is fed into by product marketing. Our role in speaking to customers hugely influences how we build the app. We have input on the sort of features they need and what their financial requirements really are.”

“In general, I’m just really impressed with how quickly TotallyMoney adjusted to working from home. It still kept so much of the culture that makes it such a great place to work, and everyone banded together so brilliantly.

“But, I must say, I’m really looking forward to getting back to the office. I can’t wait to see my colleagues and friends in real life. And, I’m never ever going to miss a Friday pub lunch!”