Defining a North Star for everything PMMs do

One of the questions I've been asked most often about product marketing is surprisingly simple: What exactly does a product marketing manager do?

After many years in the function, I conclude that "it depends" is probably the most accurate answer.

Product marketing can cover positioning, messaging, go-to-market strategy, launches, competitive intelligence, customer research, pricing, analyst relations, sales enablement, content, and quite a few things that nobody thought belonged to Product marketing until they suddenly needed someone to own them. It depends on the company, the product, and the business's maturity.

Flexibility is essential to product marketing, but it can also create a practical problem: when your role sits between product, marketing, sales, customer success, and sometimes engineering, there's a wide range of ways you can provide value.

The real question is: which creates the greatest impact?

Listing activities – product launches, presentations, battlecards, customer sessions, and webinars – didn't help me separate the work that truly mattered from the tasks that simply filled the calendar.

That realization pushed me to reflect more deeply. Eventually, it led me to identify my personal North Star – the principle I use to decide where my time and energy can have the greatest impact.

For me, that guiding principle is creating organizational clarity: helping teams cut through the noise, align on priorities, and move forward with confidence.

Why prioritization is particularly difficult in product marketing

Every product marketer receives requests from many areas. Sales may need help with a customer presentation before an important meeting. Product may need positioning for a release. Marketing is preparing a campaign and needs the narrative. Customer success wants material to explain a new capability. Leadership is asking what competitors are doing.

I've been on the receiving end of all of those requests, sometimes during the same week.

The challenge is that there usually isn't an obviously bad request you can remove from the list. Each one has a stakeholder, a deadline, and a business reason.

At the beginning of my career, I often prioritized requests based on urgency and visibility – what was due first, who was asking, or which project had leadership's attention.

But product marketing can become very reactive this way. You can spend an enormous amount of time being useful to everyone without ever stopping to think about the type of contribution you want the function to make. And that was the gap I was trying to solve.

I found my North Star by looking backward

I discovered my North Star by looking back at the different projects I had enjoyed most and trying to understand why some felt more meaningful than others. Some projects involved product launches; others were focused on sales enablement.

In some cases, I worked closely with engineering to align technical decisions with customer needs. In others, the challenge was keeping messaging consistent across teams working in different markets and languages.

There wasn't a single thread connecting all those projects. What stood out to me was the effect they had once the work was done. Sales could explain a complex product with more confidence. Engineering understood more clearly why a customer problem mattered. Teams across different markets were telling the same story instead of reinventing it. Product, marketing, sales, and customer success shared a common understanding before a launch picked up speed.

I found it rewarding watching the confusion fade and alignment take shape. Recognizing this gave me a way to name the impact I wanted my work to have: organizational clarity. 

I'm not suggesting this one should be every PMM's North Star, but giving my North Star a name helped me see whether a project was strategic or transactional – though necessary.

How I use it in practice

I don't treat my North Star as just another KPI. Of course, KPIs still matter.

• Is enablement being used?
• Are launches gaining traction?
• Is messaging resonating with ICP?
• Is product marketing contributing to commercial outcomes?

Instead, I use my North Star when I'm deciding how deeply to engage with a problem or a request. The question is: Will this reduce confusion? 

Let's take sales enablement, for example. It's pretty common to receive a request for a customer-specific deck. But what happens if several people start asking for different versions of essentially the same presentation? 

At that point, creating another deck may solve the immediate request while leaving the underlying problem untouched. Sales might not have a sufficiently clear narrative. The existing material might be difficult to use. Different people may be interpreting the positioning differently.

In those situations, I've found it more valuable to step back and ask whether we can fix the story itself. That may take longer initially. It can also save a significant amount of duplicated work later. 

The same happens with launches. There have been times when the most useful thing I could do wasn't add another asset to the launch plan.

It was to spend more time with product and other stakeholders to ensure we agreed on the audience, the problem, and how we wanted to explain the value. Those conversations rarely look as productive on a task tracker as producing another deliverable. They often make every subsequent deliverable easier.

Clarity is easier to observe than to measure

One obvious question is how to measure something as abstract as organizational clarity. And here's my response: I don't try to measure it directly; instead, I look for signals.

For example, when messaging requires fewer rounds of interpretation before people feel comfortable using it, sales starts reusing enablement materials rather than rebuilding them. That's a signal.

Same thing when different teams describe the value proposition in broadly the same way, even if they adapt it to their own audience.

None of these shifts provide a perfect "clarity metric." They are, however, powerful signals. 

When teams share the same narrative, when materials are reused instead of rebuilt, or when PMM is invited into conversations earlier, the organization moves with less friction and greater alignment. And clarity arises. 

It changed the way I prioritize

Having a North Star hasn't made prioritization magically simple. I still face urgent requests. I still have weeks when the calendar dictates the pace. The right answer is to update the presentation because the customer meeting is tomorrow, and that's what the business needs.

What has changed is the way I decide where to invest extra effort. I'm willing to spend an additional hour clarifying positioning with product to prevent weeks of confusion with sales later. 

I've also become more comfortable saying "not now" to certain requests. Earlier in my career, that was harder. Like many PMMs, I wanted to be helpful, and saying 'yes' felt natural because almost everything we were asked to do had some value.

Over time, I realized that being helpful and creating leverage are not the same thing. Today, I still want to support the people around me, but I'm more mindful of whether I'm solving today's task or improving how the organization will handle the same challenge next time.

Carrying a North Star beyond roles

One reason this idea has been so useful to me is that it isn't tied to a specific job description. Over the years, my responsibilities have shifted dramatically. Products evolve. Companies reorganize. Priorities change. The relationship among product, marketing, sales, and engineering varies across organizations.

A very specific objective can matter a lot one year and become irrelevant the next. What I've found more valuable at a career level is knowing the kind of impact I want to be associated with, regardless of those changes.

For me, clarity has remained constant. Whether I'm helping explain a complex product, aligning stakeholders around a launch, working with technical teams, or adapting a narrative across markets, I naturally gravitate toward situations where different groups need to understand one another better.

That realization has also helped me define my professional identity beyond the responsibilities listed in any job description.

Finding your own North Star

What I recommend to find your own North Star is to start looking at your own career. Think about the projects you still remember fondly years later. Consider the problems colleagues repeatedly turn to you to help solve. Reflect on the feedback you've heard more than once – especially when it came from different people or organizations.

Then ask yourself: what actually changed because you were involved? You may discover the answer has little to do with the deliverable itself. Perhaps you consistently help teams better understand customers. Or your strength lies in turning market insights into better product decisions. Perhaps you excel at moving organizations from strategy to execution, or at making complex products easier to sell and adopt.

Whatever the pattern, most people don't need to invent their North Star from scratch. Chances are, it's already visible in the work you've been doing for years – you need to recognize it and give it a name.

Final thoughts

Product marketing will continue to change: AI will automate parts of the work we do today, new responsibilities will emerge, and companies will continue to define the function differently. I actually think that's good.

I'm much less interested in finding the perfect definition of product marketing than in understanding the impact I want my work to have, regardless of how the function evolves. For me, that impact is clarity.

Finding that North Star didn't change the way I work on launches, positioning, messaging, sales enablement, presentations, and cross-functional initiatives. What it changed was the question I ask myself about all of them. 

At the end of a project, or sometimes simply at the end of a very busy week, I try to look beyond how much I completed and ask: Did my work make the organization clearer than I found it? 

I've found that to be a much more useful measure of my contribution than counting deliverables.

And, for now, it's the North Star I keep coming back to.