There hasn’t been a single month as a product marketer where I haven’t been asked, “what does your team do here?”

Anyone else feel the same?

Product marketing is an emerging function — and it’s still in its infancy — so this isn’t surprising, but it is frustrating. We’ve all heard the excuses:

• PMM is misunderstood

• PMM is different in every company

• PMM metrics are hard to track and measure

These may be true. But, it’s equally true that no one is coming to save us. It’s our responsibility to educate our stakeholders on:

• Who we are

• What we do

• How we win

Enter the PMM team charter. In today’s edition we’re going to dig into the definition of a team charter, how to build one, and an example of my team’s charter at Unbounce.

Let’s get into it.

Build Your PMM Charter

So, what’s a team charter? I love this definition from Miro:

For me, I’ve always viewed the charter as an agreement you have between your own team members AND an agreement between your team and the rest of the organization.

At it’s core, it provides clarity on who your team is, what you’re working on, and how you’re measuring success. This is equally important if you’re a team of 5 or a solo team of 1.

Here are the main components you should consider for your charter.

Team Mission

Why does your team exist? How do you support the business? What’s the broader mission and objective you’re trying to achieve?

Now, this needs to be grounded in reality — it can’t be too aspirational or your team and stakeholders won’t buy into it. It needs to be an honest reflection of your team’s current mandate.

Areas of Focus

Your areas of focus should connect your team’s mission back to your day-to-day work. These are the main types of initiatives and buckets of work the company can expect your team to either lead or be heavily involved in.

These areas of focus will vary company to company (example below of mine from Unbounce). I’ve found that as your company grows and evolves, your focus areas may evolve too. As the team leader, this is something I’m evaluating on an annual basis as I build the plan for the year ahead.

Roles & Responsibilities

Next up, roles and responsibilities. What does your team structure look like? Who are the people bringing this work to life? What information do your stakeholders need to know to work effectively with your team?

For the sake of privacy, I’m not going to share this part of my team’s charter. However, I like to include the PMMs name and role, which portfolio they are assigned to, and their areas of expertise.

I love to phrase this as “Come to me for…” This may look like: “come to me for insights on competitors”, “come to me for voice of customer data”, “come to me for spreadsheet support”, etc. If your team has crafted personal positioning statements, this should easily fit in here.

If your company participates in personality assessments like StrengthsFinder or DISC, it can be fun to include these details as well.

Success Metrics

Finally, it’s equally important to share the metrics your team uses to measure the success of their work. I try to keep this at a high level — sharing the metric itself, not the goal or target for that metric (this level of detail can be found elsewhere in my team’s scorecard).

This part of the charter can be particularly helpful when navigating challenging conversations with stakeholders around resource prioritization.

Bonus Sections

Want to expand your team charter even further? Here are a few sections I’ve come across on other team charters that you may want to consider:

• Team values

• Team strengths grid

• Standardized team tooling

• Communication and feedback norms

CAMPER ESSENTIALS

🛠️ Tools: Want to create your team values? Use this template from Miro to run an interactive workshop with your team.

🗓️ Events: The third cohort of Ready for Launch is open for registration. Join Jason, Andy and I for one month of live learning and master the skills you need to launch new products successfully. Class starts August 29.

Until next week,