66: Growing into a Growth PM

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Red Russak welcome Peter Kazarian (Yahoo), Ryan Caddell (SounderMind), and Carolyn Carter (Wayfair) to talk about being a growth product manager and how to grow as one. Being a growth PM matters because their focus is to identify the key growth opportunities and growth strategies for businesses and improve business metrics.

Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 06:31 Growth PM vs. other PMs
• 09:03 Growth PM vs. marketing
• 14:03 Metrics of growth PMs
• 15:08 Ask their KPI
• 16:35 Is growth PM consumer focused?
• 18:31 Are growth PMs replacing sales?
• 20:41 Well designed products doesn’t need sales
• 22:33 How to make growth happen through testing & optimization
• 25:12 Understand your secondary KPIs
• 28:43 Retargeting 
• 33:22 What to do during a conversion problem?
• 38:31 Difference between product marketing manager, growth PM, and PM 
• 42:16 There’s no vision involved
• 47:50 Final thoughts