Editor’s note:
Starting your first Product Marketing Manager role can feel overwhelming. Every company defines product marketing differently, and new PMMs are often expected to quickly learn the market, support sales teams, and drive successful product launches.
In this article, Ryad Berkat shares what he learned during his first PMM role at OpenClassrooms, including how he approached competitive research, sales enablement, Go-to-Market planning, and collaboration to make an impact quickly.
I did not set out to become a Product Marketing Manager. My path has been anything but linear. I studied communication, marketing, even at one point, before eventually landing on Product Management studies. It was during that chapter that I stumbled upon a PMM role almost by chance, and something clicked. The blend of strategic thinking, customer obsession and cross-functional storytelling spoke to me in a way I had not anticipated. Everything I know about Product Marketing, I built by doing, by asking questions, and by genuinely caring about the people around me.
I want to share what I have learned since joining OpenClassrooms, because I think there is something valuable in the perspective of someone who walked into this role without the traditional playbook. If you are early in your PMM career or considering the switch, perhaps my experience will resonate.
Before I go any further, though, a necessary caveat. Being a PMM looks different in every company. The scope of the role shifts depending on the product you are marketing, the way teams are structured, where the company stands on its roadmap, and what the global and team-level OKRs demand at any given moment. What I describe here reflects my experience at OpenClassrooms, in a specific context and at a specific stage of growth. It is not a universal template. Take what resonates, leave the rest, and always adapt to the reality of the organisation you are joining.
First, Some Context
OpenClassrooms is not a typical tech company. It is a mission-driven organisation, and that distinction matters more than people might think. The core purpose is to make education accessible, to help individuals find a path in their professional lives, whether they are pivoting careers entirely or building one from scratch. What makes it particularly compelling is that the commitment does not stop at delivering training paths. Career outcomes are genuinely central to everything. For employers, it is about finding the right person to help grow their business. For students, it is about real transformation. That context shaped every decision I made as a PMM, because the stakes felt personal from day one.
When I joined, there was already a PMM team in place, which I was fortunate to be part of. My manager led the B2B division, one colleague focused on the B2C side, and I came in to strengthen the product marketing function across launches and sales enablement. The structure gave me room to operate, but also demanded that I figure things out quickly.
The First Thing I Did Was Listen
I could have spent my first weeks building decks and drafting messaging frameworks. Instead, I chose to listen. I sat in on sales calls. I read through existing materials. I asked colleagues questions that probably seemed obvious but gave me a map of the organisation that no onboarding document could provide.
One of the first things I did was conduct mystery shopping on our competitors. I went through their entire sales funnels as if I were a prospective client, calling them, collecting publicly available documentation, analysing their onboarding flows and pricing structures. The goal was simple: understand exactly how they position themselves and where the gaps are. That intelligence became the foundation for the battlecards and competitive assets I later built for our sales team.
This hands-on approach taught me something I still carry with me. You cannot write effective positioning from a conference room. You have to go out there, experience what the customer experiences, and bring that lived understanding back to the team. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but curiously few people actually do it.
Building the GTM Engine
Once I had enough context, I started focusing on what would become the core of my contribution: the Go-to-Market process. Over the following months, I led the GTM for more than ten major launches, each with its own complexity, its own stakeholders, and its own timeline. Every single one shipped on time, which I am proud of, though I will admit some of those deadlines were met with more adrenaline than I would have preferred.
The work involved product positioning, messaging frameworks, launch briefs, sales enablement assets, and coordination across marketing, product, design and sales. I structured a centralized B2B content library that gave our sales teams immediate access to the materials they needed, from one-pagers to objection-handling guides. The impact was tangible: sales cycles shortened, and the teams told me they felt better equipped to have meaningful conversations with prospects.
On the growth side, I designed and executed the content roadmap for our B2B blog, which scaled to over four thousand monthly visitors. That effort, combined with broader brand initiatives, contributed to moving OpenClassrooms from the fourteenth to the fifth position in market awareness within our segment. The sales team had flagged a clear need for better prospecting tools and content, and much of what I built came directly from those conversations with them.
Cross-Functional Work Is Really About Empathy
Product Marketing sits at a crossroads. You are not part of one team. You are the connective tissue between several, and yet you are expected to influence all of them. That requires a particular kind of humility and a willingness to adapt your communication style depending on who you are speaking with.
At OpenClassrooms, I found that the most effective way to build those bridges was to genuinely invest in understanding what each team needed. Not what I thought they needed, but what they actually told me when I asked. The sales teams needed sharper competitive intelligence. The product team needed someone who could translate user feedback into market context. Leadership needed clarity on how launches were performing relative to the broader brand strategy.
This is the foundation of everything a PMM does, and doing it well compounds over time. The relationships I built in those early months became the infrastructure for every launch and campaign that followed.
What I Would Tell a New PMM
You do not need to come up with all the answers. In fact, arriving with too many preconceptions might be worse than arriving with none. What you need is the willingness to be uncomfortable, to sit in rooms where you understand perhaps thirty percent of what is being discussed, and to ask the questions that feel basic but are actually foundational.
Cross-functional collaboration is often listed as a PMM competency, and it is, but I think it goes deeper than that. It requires empathy, a genuine interest in how other people think and work. I have been fortunate that this comes naturally to me, but I also believe it is something that can be cultivated with intention.
The mission behind OpenClassrooms made this easier in one important respect. When everyone in the organisation genuinely cares about the outcome for the student and the employer, alignment happens more organically. Culture fit is not a buzzword. It is the difference between pushing a boulder uphill and walking alongside people who are already headed in the same direction.
So if you are stepping into your first PMM role, or if you are considering the transition from marketing or communication, here is what I would offer. Be relentlessly curious. Prioritise understanding over output in your first weeks. Find the colleagues whose passion is infectious and learn from them. And remember that your job, at its core, is to make everyone around you more effective. That is how you make an impact fast.
Being a Product Marketing Manager is not about understanding the market, selling the product, or managing the business in isolation. It is about creating a reliable ecosystem where every team around you operates at its best, so that the product itself becomes the story worth telling.
You Might Be Interested In
- What Is Product Marketing Exactly?
- Product Marketing Managers Report to Product or Marketing?
- What Is a Product?
- PMM Hive Talk with John Kreisa: Product Marketing Career Roadmap
- From PMM Hive to Product Buds: Here’s a Little Gift.
- Three Steps to Land Your First Product Marketing Manager Job
- Book Review: Decoding Silicon Valley
- PMM Hive Talk with Jon Baer: Decoding Silicon Valley
